Parsnip cake with orange frosting

What is more quintessentially winter than parsnips? Don't like parsnips, perhaps? But, do you like cake?

This is an interesting twist on carrot cake.


Ingredients

• 5 eggs
• 3/4 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup maple syrup

• 2 1/2 cups baking flour of your choice (gluten free, or whatever)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp baking soda
• 1 tsp nutmeg
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 3/4 cup raisins
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts 
• 2 1/2 cups freshly grated parsnips (they brown quickly, so do it right before you put them in the recipe

Dye, you fool!

Madder and dyer's chamomile. Dyer's chamomile smells just like chamomile tea, so my daughter didn't hate this as much as weld. Thank goodness she wasn't around for the woad.

I always used to get orange out of madder, but I've got the hang of it now. This is the madder with dyer's chamomile. The picture doesn't do the colour any justice. It's a quite nice tangerine.

Fall herb harvest

 Chives and parsley. They're hard to air dry so I'm going to put them into the freezer. I have a dehydrator somewhere... I suspect it got put in the crawl space when we moved in, and I hate going in there. Freezer it is!

First Attempt at Mead

It takes me a long time to work myself up to trying something new. I'm always worried that I'll mess it up and end up having wasted my time and money. However, in this case, everything is either cheap or reusable.

I keep bees, and earlier this summer I was trying to do something with one of my hives (I can't remember what now), and I ended up with a frame of unfinished honey. This honey smells a little off, but it's perfectly safe to eat. I suspect there were some odd flowers or something that went into this batch. It just doesn't taste very good in my tea.

So, I saved it in the fridge until I was ready to try making mead. I have enough of that honey to probably make just about five gallons of this stuff.

More mead thoughts

As is usually the case I'm not the first person to have thought about the medieval way of making mead. I came across a great post in a forum recently that really clears up all my questions. This is the kind of mead that I'm going to be making at the end of the week-

Bee roundup for this year

Beekeeping has a very steep learning curve, and not a lot of leeway for errors. So far going into winter my own hive seems strong-ish, and the one that I'm looking after for a friend is dead. Getting a sneaky walking pneumonia for a month and a half really put a spanner in the works, and probably killed the second hive. Welp, at least my friend will be getting honey from his first year's investment. We can buy a box of bees in the spring and just install them into a hive that is full of drawn comb (ie. full of the wax cells arranged on frames and ready to go). He has a flow hive, so that's going to be interesting to see.

I finally got my own bees wrapped up for the winter and a mite treatment on them a few weeks ago. I also put some loose sugar sandwiched between sheets of newspaper. I tried making a solid candy block, but I did something wrong and it was quite liquid even when dry. Something to try again for next year. Maybe I didn't leave it on the heat long enough, or I didn't use the hand blender long enough to put in adequate air bubbles.I did use my cheese thermometer, which doesn't quite measure high enough, so perhaps it didn't hit the right temperature. I'd never tried candy before, so it's a bit of a mystery to me.

When I put the mouse guard on the front they started coming out at me, so that feisty-ness is a bit encouraging. I knew they wouldn't like the hammering on their hive so I saved that for last on purpose. Good thing, too. Despite the cold they were out for blood! I got out of there before they could sting me. May they stay feisty and alive through the next long months. And then promptly calm down and become docile again in the spring.

I can always hope...

So, I got 2kg of half-finished honey out of my own bees when I took out a frame to keep them from getting honey bound earlier in the summer, and I'll get 1/3 of my friend's honey when I go in there this week and remove and spin out the frames. I don't know how much that will be, but I'm hopeful. And so are some of my friends who have a standing order for honey, too, I'm sure.

I will make mead, darnit. I will. I have everything now except the honey.

Battening down the (garden) hatches for the winter

Here's a list of things you can do this month in your garden:

-Planting spring bulbs.

-Mulch up the base of tender roses to protect them from the freeze/thaw cycle- Use triple mix or clean topsoil. Rose shrubs and climbers should be fine without this.

-Dig in mulch and compost for the spring (so you don't have to do it when it's wet and partially frozen).

-Empty and put away anything that has water in it, such as hoses, and don't forget to turn off the water line in the basement that goes outside.

-Wrap up or put straw on plants that need extra winter protection.

-Plant garlic for the spring.

-Do a final and full weeding to get things ready.

Winding down for the winter

It's quite cold out there. There's something about damp air which ignores layers and insulation. And that lazy wind doesn't bother to go around... it just goes straight through.

But, my lasagne garden has some gorgeous, large worms in it now, and I uncovered a centipede (Chris called it a 'bazillopede' and got a bit squicked) whilst digging around. The soil is improving immensely. These are good signs. I have two composters digesting leaves and a bit of veggie scraps, but I don't want to put out much more than that because we seem to have rats. The green bin is for everything else. Thank goodness for that. I can feel less guilty about it.