November is a time for Citrus

Last week two of my coworkers brought in bags of citrus from their trees.  The satsumas that my boss brings in are tasty and sweet and people just eat them as a snack.  I have also used them to make a marmalade in the past.

This year the boss of my boss brought in what she described as northern (frost tolerant) key limes.  I was wondering about this and after doing some searching I think they might be limequats, a cross between the key lime and the cold hardy kumquats.  You can buy a limequat tree at Just Fruits and Exotics in Medart.

I was excited about them and when there were still a bunch left at the end of the week I brought them all home and planned to make a key lime pie with them.  I figured that I could also freeze the juice for future use.

A basket of limequats

 

The recipe I was using was an "easy" key lime pie recipe and it called for 1/2 cup of lime juice.  It took about ten limequats to make that much juice.  Luckily my aunt recently sent me a vintage juicer.

Juicing limequats

I also had to use 5 egg yolks.  My eggs come from my chickens in the backyard.  They are all different breeds and lay different sized eggs.  I am not sure if it mattered that much for egg yolks (even the tiny bantam eggs seem to have regular sized yolks) but the standard egg size in baking is large so if you are using other sized eggs you need to make sure you are using the right amount.  The My Pet Chicken blog has a great explanation here: 

My Pet Chicken Tips for Cooking with Backyard Eggs

 

So, I used my Jiffy Way egg scale (also from my aunt) to make sure the eggs I was using were about the right size, just to be safe.

I love my vintage jiffy-way egg scale.  It makes for great decor and it is useful too!

 

My daughter and I mixed up the ingredients and put it in the pie crust (going the easy way with some local ingredients here).  Then I noticed that the comments on the recipe had some modification recommendations to make sure it filled the pie pan.  Oh well.

Well, didn't quite fit all the way, but I am sure it will be tasty.

 And in the end it was pretty tasty.  My daughter didn't like it (it is very tart) but my husband and I did.

 

The final product with ready-whip.  So I used some local ingredients while still keeping it easy. 



Adventures in Beekeeping

So last year I decided I wanted to try beekeeping.  I took an eight week course from the Leon County Extension office.  In that course I learned that we have a local beekeeping association.

I started attending the monthly meetings of the Apalachee Beekeeping Association.  The people there are a wealth of knowledge about beekeeping.  Each meeting has an educational presentation and during the longer days of the summer they even hold open hive demonstrations before the meeting.  These have been so helpful in learning how to take care of my hive.  And trust me, there is a lot of information to know. 

Last February I took a shortcourse on beekeeping from the ABA.  They hold it every year and it fills up at 100 registrants so if you are interested be sure to get your spot early.  It costs $50 to register (and includes a year long membership to ABA) and ABA members can attend for $35.  I have been thinking about sending my husband and daughter this year (persons in your household under the age of 14 can join an adult for only $25).  Find out more about it with this flyer:  Apalachee Beekeepers Association Shortcourse

This spring we started keeping a hive out in our backyard.  It has become a family project.


My husband is showing our daughter how to use the smoker

Here they are looking for the queen and checking the health of the hive


I don't know how long my beekeeping hobby will last or how much honey will will get from it (none yet, many people often are not able to harvest honey in the first year of their hive).  But one thing I can tell you is that because of all the beekeepers in this area there are many options for sources of local honey here in Tallahassee.

I often buy honey from the Full Moon Apiary .  We purchase beekeeping equipment from them as well, they have been very helpful.  They are often found at the downtown market and you can buy their products at Tupelo's Bakery and Cafe up in Monticello.  They even hold a monthly breakfast with the beekeeper to answer all your questions about your hive.

Beekeeping isn't for everyone, but you can't beat the sweetness of real local honey.

Making a Worm Bin

I am not a very good gardener.  I did not inherit my Grandma Anna's green thumb.  But I always try to grow my own food.  One of the things that is really needed for growing things is good soil.  I have a couple of compost bins but I also wanted to make a worm compost bin so that we could also do vermiculture.  I had a simple one made from a plastic bin in grad school so I was excited when I saw these instructions to make your own worm bin from two plastic bins.  I saved it to my pinterest boards with the intention of doing it one day.

That day came this week when my daughter decided to do a project with worms for her science fair experiment.  We got a small container of 30 red worms so that she could test what material (rock, sand, soil, leaves) they preferred.

Red worms (Eisenia hortensis) 

 After we tested them we needed to do something with them so I used it as an excuse to make my worm bin.  Since worms eat about half their weight in food scraps each day 30 is not really enough so I will most likely get more.  They will also multiply on their own.  In the mean time I am making sure to only give them a small amount of our food scraps and the rest will either go to the chickens or into the regular compost bin.


This worm bin is so easy even a seven year old can do it (with adult supervision). 

1/4 inch holes are drilled into the bottom of both bins for drainage and worm movement between bins.  1/16 inch holes are drilled in one cover and around the upper edge of both bins for air exchange.



Getting the bedding ready for the bin is great fun for kids and even the toddler wanted to help.

Shredded wet news paper serves as bedding while coffee grounds and filter serve as food.  I later added some sand after remembering that the worms need it for their crops where they grind their food.

I put the bins out in a sheltered part of the deck.  The undrilled cover is beneath to catch moisture and vermicompost "tea".  This bin is small enough it could also be kept in the kitchen, pantry or garage. 

Some additional resources that might come in handy:
Ladybird Organics and Monticello Vineyards is a source for worms.  If you don't want to make your own worm bin you can also buy worm castings from them.  I have bought their castings at Tallahassee Native Nurseries and through Turkey Hill Farm.

Worms Eat my Garbage was a book I used when I was vermicomposting in grad school and I found it to be very helpful.

Date Night Means Eating Local

Several months ago my husband picked up a groupon for a restaurant called Liam's in Thomasville, Georgia that is known for utilizing local food sources.  He saw that they also served craft beer so it was a win win for both of us.  We rarely get date nights and when we do it is fun to support locally owned restaurants that use local food sources (like when we went to Miccosukee Root Cellar for Valentine's Day).

Our wedding anniversary is next week so we decided to use the groupon.  We made reservations, got a babysitter, and headed off to Thomasville forty minutes to the north of us.  To be honest with you I was wondering what we were going to do afterwards in Thomasville for our date night, we had the babysitter until 10 pm.

 

Liam's was charming and the food was incredible.  I started with a salad of

fresh greens.  We were both in the mood for beef so we had a hangar steak that was served with a hash of wild mushrooms and butternut squash.  I mentioned to the waitress that I was there for local ingredients.    

After we left Liam's we went down the street to Grassroots Coffee for some lattes.  Sure, you can't grow coffee locally (at least not any you might want to drink, there is a wild coffee further south in Florida) but this place roasts all the beans in the store.  It reminds me of the coffee shop that I worked at in college with a nice ambiance. 

 

I also grabbed some beans for brewing coffee at home. 

 

  

Now all this time I was logging into facebook and updating where we were going on our date.  I know, this isn't very romantic and it is a sign of a times of how we are tied to the internet.  However, I also like to let my friends know about these cool places so that they can enjoy them too.  Luckily for me though, one of my friends who lives in Thomasville posted a comment that we should go to Moonspin Pizza and have a chocolate peanut butter cookie for dessert.  So we did, and I am so glad that we did.  Not only was the cookie tasty, we also paired it with a pecan beer from Mississippi and it was a great combo.  We also learned more about Moonspin Pizza that uses local ingredients and makes everything from scratch wherever they can.  We decided to come back to have some of their pizza one day. 

 

They also had this quote up that I enjoyed:

"We eat to live But there is more to it than that.  Food prepared with mindfulness and intent, and eaten with thought and thanksgiving, satisfies hungers that are deeper than those of the body" - peace meals

Then it was time to go home to relieve the babysitter.  Thomasville has so much to offer it really made for a wonderful date night.