Spiced Honey, At Long Last

Spiced honey falls under "not really thrifty, but cheaper than in a store" category of home food preserving. A frugal indulgence, if you will. One can pay a pretty penny for a very similar commercial product, but spicing and canning honey at home is so easy and it's such a perfect winter canning project that it would be a shame not to try it at least once.


There are those who believe that cloves and cinnamon sticks are the order of the day. Purists adhere to one or the other. I say go big or go home and load up on star anise. Beautiful, aromatic and delicious, star anise adds an ever-so-slightly licorice flavor to the honey alongside an indefinable what is that that lends the whole affair a decidedly mysterious bent.

I buy honey from a hobbyist-turned-microfarmer who lives a few miles down the road from me. If you can, try to find someone close by your neck of the woods from whom you can do the same. We're all a little spooked by the dying bees thing and, whatever the cause of the trouble, we'll all do well to help however we can. This does not mean that I believe you're disqualified from spiced honey if you can't locate a local provider. Not at all. File it under "trying" and carry on as best you can. This is supposed to be fun, not guilt-inducing.

So. You've got your honey, about 2 pounds of it, I'd say. All you need next is a bit of citrus juice, maybe a tablespoon, and some kind of spice. Lemon is canon, but I also like lime and what I've got tonight is a pink grapefruit (from my grandmother's tree! wheee! I love grapefruit) so that's what I'm using. For the spice, do what you will. You don't need a lot of it because you'll be infusing the flavor and don't have to include the spices themselves in the jar (unless you want to - the effect can be lovely).

Combine all your ingredients into a saucepan and warm over low-to-medium heat, stirring frequently. Keep on like this, tasting liberally, until you get something you like. Then jar according to the directions on the box, straining the spices out and leaving half an inch of head space, and process in a hot water bath for 10 minutes. If you have an odd amount that's too small to process, strain it into a clean jar and put it in the fridge. The honey will crystallize, but will be perfectly good for spooning into a beverage or spreading onto toast.


That's it. For maybe 15 minutes of hands-on time you've been rewarded with a few jars of pure sunshiney gold, not to mention a few tricks you can change up and switch around depending upon your mood the next time. And I can't imagine how there wouldn't be a next time.

I used half-pints tonight since I'm embracing honey-based selfishness with these and don't intend to share (but probably will anyway). For gifting I might go with quarter-pints (you know, those teeny tiny jam jars) and pair with some white tea or a loaf of really good white bread. If you've got a sick friend, a jar coupled with a small bottle of brandy and a new tea cup probably wouldn't go amiss. If you hang with unrepentant sweet mongers, then spoons are probably the best accompaniments.


But you didn't hear it from me.

Birdie Call

For four mornings running I awoke to the sounds of birds singing and emerged from my bed with thoughts of spring and sunshine on my mind. What I actually discovered was...something else entirely. We are still mired in the grey and gloom so characteristic of this month and have also enjoyed a few freeze/thaw/rain cycles which have gifted us with significant mud to boot. Not exactly what those singing birds promised. Maybe I dreamed of them? It wouldn't be the first time my delusions came with aural manifestations.

Still. Spring may be some time away yet but a girl's got to plan. In odd moments I'll jot a recipe here, an idea for a new hot pepper garden there or a maybe a reminder to buy gingham for sundresses on the corner of an invoice. I've found myself daydreaming of blackberry picking while, say, in a meeting most definitely not about such things. Last summer I didn't have nearly as much fun as I might have and I am determined to right that old wrong. Bread will be baked! Flowers will be planted! That old annoying yew? The dying/dead one? Along the front walk? Will be removed!

Work will be nuts, of course, with the news that my employer, an enormous company, is being bought by an even bigger one. What will this mean? I have no idea. There are the usual family worries, well worn, plus a few new ones that I'd just as soon not visit us. But there they are nonetheless. There will be bills and deadlines and annoyances in spades - things that make it all too easy to retreat from personal plans and goals. I will have to work hard to remind myself that the sun still will come up regardless of my employment status, the birds (not imagined ones, at that) will sing no matter how many meetings on my calendar and that gingham sundresses for one's daughter don't exactly sew themselves even when the family is completely happy and hale. I will have to work to remember that the meetings and expenses and errands and sorrow will always be with us, in one form or another, and that it's my responsibility to give them no more due than absolutely required.

Easy promises to make, harder to keep. I'd better get started.

The March Hare

I am not going to belabor how much I hate February. I refuse. I will only say that for a short month is has a heck of a long list of offenses to answer for. How does one month become so terrifically ambitious in the dismay and mayhem department? It boggles the mind.

Beyond the regular old economic news which, honestly, is like background noise at this point (futures? oil? jobs? it's all almost quaint) my own rather quotidian worries have been rather rapidly overtaken by events that, if made into a movie or a book, no one would ever believe. Typical of my incredible good fortune, these things don't happen to me, rather they happen around me, to those to whom I am to closest. I'd rather they didn't happen at all, of course, but I suppose that's an unrealizable request.

On Friday, when news of the crash of Flight 3407 started filtering into the news, friends and colleagues started saying things like, "Oh, I heard Buffalo and thought about your family but then realized that the town isn't that small What are the odds?" My response? You'd be surprised.

Clarence Center is a difficult place to describe to suburbanites accustomed to towns that run into one another in one unceasing flow of buildings and cars. Clarence Center abuts my hometown of Williamsville, New York, more or less. In between the towns there is a ruralish, sparsely-populated area and then you come to the hamlet of Clarence Center. Three, maybe four blocks long, there's a church, a coffee house, a gift shop, a bank and a firehouse. And an elementary school. The cross streets - the few of them there are - are almost entirely residential but for a contractor here or a day care center there. It's a short drive out of town into the horse, dairy and green bean farms. It's the kind of town people think about when they talk about those all-American places that Norman Rockwell might have painted.

It's surreal enough that a place I know so well, even after being away longer than I lived there as a child, was involved in something so awful and completely random and weird. The thing is, my sister lives in Clarence Center, about 100 yards from the single house that was destroyed. She now shows identification to a sheriff's deputy to return to her home after work or errands. She has described the smell in the air, one that promises to get worse before it gets better. My niece takes cover under the dining room table when a plane or helicopter is heard in the sky (just a few miles from the airport, this is not an infrequent event). The good men of the firehouse next door are doing their best to assist the federal departments that have descended, trying to do what they can before the next snow blows in mid-week.

My sister, and the town, are hurting. Survivor guilt is the talk of the day and veterans in the area speak knowingly of PTSD. There's little I can do but be as understanding as possible in that thoroughly insufficient way of someone who isn't there, hearing the crackles of the still-smoldering fire, who isn't organizing grief counseling for the many school kids who live on that block, who isn't wondering how to begin to talk about something so totally, horrifyingly random and from which there is no protection.