What did you do in the garden today?

[Nym]

Beautiful! Love it!

It would be very difficult not to walk by and slip one of those chocolates!

Gingerbread update:

No garden, but woods and a log cabin workshop in the back.

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My teen went a different direction and channeled her Swedish genes to create a more sparse scene.

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It was fun (and messy). I drop them off tomorrow.

Incredible!

 

[1cock2hens]

Got my 6 hazelnut plants put Into cloth pots today. I used different size pots with different soil mixes I made from foxfarms soil, my compost and soil from an hugelkulture bed. Will be interesting to see how each does.

 

[fuzzi]

All Honey is NOT the same!

I try to grow lots of the food we eat. I'm getting better at it. However, Dear Wife would go into the Amish open market on Saturday morning and pick up some great produce that either we don't grow, or just failed for us this year. Their produce always looks better than what we see at the big box stores. I don't know how the cost of the Amish produce compares to the big box stores, but it is nice paying the farmer directly.

Well, the Amish market had natural honey canned in quart jars for $12.75. That comes out to $0.39 per ounce. Normally, I buy little Honey Bears at the Dollar Tree and pay $1.25 for 1-3/4 ounces, or about $0.71 per ounce. Dear Wife and I decided to buy a quart jar, thinking that natural honey should have more health benefits for us, and it was even less expensive buying it in a big jar.

The honey we got is unprocessed. It's like spreading jam or jelly on your food, and if the food is warm enough, the natural honey will melt. I was OK with that, although the store-bought honey is always liquid, and you just squeeze the Honey Bear and the honey pours out.

Well, turns out that I really don't care for the taste of the natural honey. The store-bought honey is just a lot sweeter to me. Maybe I just prefer the store-bought honey taste because that is what I've always had? I have pretty much decided not to buy another jar of natural honey because of the taste. But maybe there is something I am doing wrong with the natural honey? Do you have to heat it up or something else to make it sweeter?

I prefer to eat most natural foods over processed foods. So, I was thinking the natural honey would be even better. Having said that, if I don't like the taste of any food, then it's just not worth it for me to buy. Case in point, I only buy name brand ketchup because the off-brand ketchups just don't taste as good to me. But most food items we are fine with the less expensive store brand food and save lots of money compared to buying the name brand item.

I can't believe that I would rather pay twice the price for artificial honey in a Honey Bear than buying natural honey with great health benefits as about half the cost! Somebody help me, please!

More information about adulteration of honey:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/12/06/honey-laundering.aspx

That link will expire in 48 hours, so I have attached a PDF of the information.

 

[gtaus]

More information about adulteration of honey:
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2023/12/06/honey-laundering.aspx

That link will expire in 48 hours, so I have attached a PDF of the information.

Thanks. The website was unreadable, but the .pdf link worked fine for me.

FYI, I discovered that the Honey Bears I was buying at the big box stores was mostly sweetened corn syrup, and not real honey at all. The .pdf article you provided indicates that the sweetened corn syrup fake honey we buy is probably doing more harm than good. I don't doubt that.

The good news is that Dear Wife prefers the real, natural honey we bought in the quart jar from the Amish market. So, next year, we will be buying some more of their honey.

As for me, I am using a spoonful of the real honey in my oatmeal along with a few squirts of the Honey Bear to sweeten it up just a bit. I am weaning myself off the corn syrup stuff.

All these years I thought I was doing myself good by using those Honey Bears instead of using processed white sugar. Turns out, it is the same only different if the honey is basically sweetened corn syrup.

Again, thanks for the .pdf link and that info.

 

[CNJ]

I have a sudden urge to eat salted pumkin seeds. Hmm, I need to go to the store to get some. I wonder how winter melon seeds taste; I saw an ad for winter melon garden seeds saying that the seeds on this variety make a tasty snack.

 

[Nym]

Thanks. The website was unreadable, but the .pdf link worked fine for me.

FYI, I discovered that the Honey Bears I was buying at the big box stores was mostly sweetened corn syrup, and not real honey at all. The .pdf article you provided indicates that the sweetened corn syrup fake honey we buy is probably doing more harm than good. I don't doubt that.

The good news is that Dear Wife prefers the real, natural honey we bought in the quart jar from the Amish market. So, next year, we will be buying some more of their honey.

As for me, I am using a spoonful of the real honey in my oatmeal along with a few squirts of the Honey Bear to sweeten it up just a bit. I am weaning myself off the corn syrup stuff.

All these years I thought I was doing myself good by using those Honey Bears instead of using processed white sugar. Turns out, it is the same only different if the honey is basically sweetened corn syrup.

Again, thanks for the .pdf link and that info.

All the good stuff stripped from commercial honey is used in the cosmetic industry. The same goes for all that skinless chicken we see on shelves (and I avoid like the plague). Beautiful on the outside while starving on the inside.

 

[gtaus]

Beautiful on the outside while starving on the inside.

Since I have gotten into gardening, I feel somewhat closer to my food that I grow. If something has a small blemish, or bruise, I just cut it and use the rest of it. And, the parts I cut out from our food that we don't eat, get put into the chicken bucket and the girls love it! I know some of those food items would just be tossed at the big box stores. Seems like we waste so much good food.

I bet all the discarded produce at the big box stores goes into a landfill somewhere, not even a composting landfill.

But speaking of tossing out blemished food, Dear Wife took out a half pack of meatballs from the freezer last night and they had some freezer burn on them. That was unacceptable. So, everything went into the chicken bucket last night and the girls got a meatball breakfast this morning. They loved it!

 

[gtaus]

I have a sudden urge to eat salted pumkin seeds. Hmm, I need to go to the store to get some. I wonder how winter melon seeds taste; I saw an ad for winter melon garden seeds saying that the seeds on this variety make a tasty snack.

I have some squash seeds drying out from food we ate on Thanksgiving. I have never made roasted seeds, but I am going to try and make some with those squash seeds. I guess you can add other spices as well, not just salt.

 

[Sally PB]

From that PDF:

"Other particularly savvy honey-making imposters go as far as to feed bees sugar and syrup to produce honey, rather than natural foraging — severely impacting theproduct’s nutritional benefits ..."

Beekeepers sometimes DO feed their bees... to keep them alive. In the late winter/early spring, if the weather warms up, bees may go out to look for food. There probably won't be any plants in bloom. They may also have eaten their store of honey, which is their food for the winter. So in February, it is VERY common for northern beekeepers to feed their bees a mixture of sugar and pollen. If the spring bloom is late, in other words, there is a dearth of nectar/pollen, beekeepers feed their bees sugar syrup. Else the bees would starve.

Late in the season, when there is another dearth, bees are often feed plain ol' beet sugar. This feeds them so that they don't have to break into the honey they've stored, and helps that last through the winter.

The goal is to keep the bees from starving. If they have not made enough honey -- for whatever reason -- they need something to eat during the winter to make it through.

They also need to eat to make wax, not just honey.

A colony of bees is about $140-165. Not cheap. You do what you can to help them keep them alive and get through the winter.

Anyone adding anything to honey but claiming it's pure honey, on the other hand, is ripping people off.

 

[Sally PB]

I have some squash seeds drying out from food we ate on Thanksgiving. I have never made roasted seeds, but I am going to try and make some with those squash seeds. I guess you can add other spices as well, not just salt.

Oh yeah!