Kelsey is currently a senior at the University of Washington, majoring in Environmental Studies. She has one more quarter to go in the fall. When Kelsey isn’t selling honey at the Columbia City, West Seattle or Maple Valley farmers markets, she’s working on her senior thesis: outdoor experiential education linked with urban beekeeping. She is building a curriculum with Seattle Tilth to teach kids and their parents about the ecology and importance of bees and how easy it can be to set up and manage your own small hive in Seattle. This project plays directly into Kelsey’s long-term dreams of pursuing a life in sustainable agriculture and inspiring the youth themselves to choose a sustainable lifestyle. In the future, Kelsey plans to farm and keep bees of her own!

Q. How long have you been working with Sweet As Can Bee?

A. Since December of 2009

Q. How did you get involved with them?

A. I Interviewed Isaac for an ethnography project in an anthropology class last autumn quarter. In exchange for Isaac’s time with the interview, I offered to volunteer at a special event.  Volunteering eventually turned into working farmers markets, so here I am now as a member of the Sweet As Can Bee family!

Q. What is your favorite SACB honey variety (at the moment) and why?

A. I really like the habanero creamed honey. I love to cook, and you just can’t beat the sweet heat from this honey. It’s great on yam fries or an incredible spicy BBQ sauce we make at my house. We put it on a slammin’ smoked Gouda purple potato BBQ pizza!

Q. Most memorable moment at the markets this year?

A. That’s tough to pick one moment. I guess I love watching kids taste honey for the first time. They’re hesitant at first, then they fall in love with the natural deliciousness of raw local honey. You can just tell they’re hooked for life!

Q. Why do you love honey and or bees?

A. I’m addicted to honey; it’s sweet and delicious. It also makes my skin looks great; I wash my face with honey every day. And bees are magical creatures. They are responsible for 1/3 of all the food we eat, all the while making the tastiest liquid gold I’ve ever encountered!

Q. What is your favorite honeybee fact?

A. It takes one million trips to different flowers for a colony to produce a one-pound jar of honey. Talk about hard work.

These is a picture of the pickled vegetables that my class and I did. They turned out great. Very delicious!

wade ourselves through all the information and really break down how to pickle, you will see that it is very easy to do.

Basically, pickling is a mixture of vegetables (you can pickle more then just vegetables though), spices, a sweetner, acid of some sort (vinegar for exmaple), and water if needed. Combine together, it makes the vegetables crisp, juicy and wonderful.

There are some things that need to be noted. You want a vinegar that is at least 5 percent acid . The acid will basically protect from any mold or bacteria that could grow inside. The spices can be basically anything. I like to use a combination of spices and dried herbs. I pretty much stay away from fresh herbs for pickling but you can use them if you would like. The sweeter can be sugar but I like to use honey. Adds more flavor and, of course, I am biased! The vegetables you use can be pretty much anything. Some people par cook them and some people don’t. I don;t like to precook my vegetables for pickling espcecially is I jar them up. So, lets take a look at a simple recipe:

Vegetables (carrots, onions, pear onions, asparagus, green beans, etc)

2 cups white wine vineger

spices (I like to use pepper corns, tumeric, red pepper flakes, etc)

Dried Herbs (thyme, rosemary, dill, bay leaf, etc)

Honey (unprocessed and not heated)

2 tablspoons water

Preparation:

1- Clean and cut the vegetables as you would like. this will depend on the vegetables. Remember, they can’t be any longer then the jar!

2- Plase the vinegar, water, herbs, and spices into a pot and bring to a boil to infuse the spices and herbs. Strain out if desired. Add the honey.

3- Prepare your jars. Clean and sanatize them as per the requirments. (for me, I put them in water, bring to a boil and boil for about 5 minutes. Take out and cool)

4- Add the vegatables to the jar and carefully pour in brine so that it comes to about 1/2 inch to the top of the bottle. Place the lid and ring on.

5- Place in a pot of water that has a rack at the bottom of the pot andm ake sure the water covers the top of the pot. Bring to a boil and boil for about 10 minutes. Be careful when you take them out. Place on the counter and let cool. As they cool, the tops will pop.

Chef’s Note: Let sit at room temperature for 7 days. Basically speaking, the longer that it sits, the better the pickling will be. after you open them up, place in the cooler.

Yield: 1 dozen + (depending on size)

Fireweed honey and chocolate….. to die for! Paired with the ingredients to make cookies, this type of cookie is very unique. Utilizing one ingredient that we use for tasting honey which is the pretzel. Yup, thats right, pretzels in cookies. All I can say is…DELICIOUSNESS in your mouth!

(I wanted to say a quick thank you to Fran Janny. When she is not in the kitchen, playing around, you can find her selling honey for us at the markets and also working on our Facebook Page. Thank you Fran for this awesome recipe.)

Ingredients:

1 c (8 ounces) unsalted butter, softened (avoid using salted butter for this recipe!

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup natural cane sugar

1/2 cup fireweed honey (not heated or processed please)

2 ea eggs

3 cups whole wheat flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups crushed pretzel sticks

1 cup chocolate chips (milk chocolate or dark chocolate)

1 cup unsalted peanuts (optional)

Preparation:

1- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2- Creamed butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Once that is reached, scrape down the mixer and turn on to low. Slowly add the honey in and mix well. If needed, scrape down the sides of the bowl.

3- In a small bowl, mix eggs and vanilla together until evenly combined.

4- While the mixer is running on medium speed, slowly add in the eggs making sure they get combined with the butter mixture.

5- In the seperate bowl, mix the dry ingredients together (flour, baking soda, and salt) until combined.

6- While the machine is running, add the dry ingredients, being careful not to make a mess.

7- Add in the peanuts, pretzels and chocolate and mix into the dough.

8- Spoon equal sized drops on a cookie sheet that has been lightly sprayed with veg spray.

9- Bake for 12-14 minutes or until the oursides of the cookie are lightly browned.

10- Take the cooeks out and let cool on the pan. If needed, you can transfer cookied to a cooling rack.

11- Enjoy!

Chef’s Note: I like to put the cookies on parchment paper and bake the cookies that way and when they come out of the oven, simply slide the parchment paper off and put a new piece of parchment paper on the baking sheet and load it up with more cookies.

It’s Simple… No Bees=No Pollination=No Farmers=No Food… Let me Explain!

It amazes me when I hear people say they do not like bees. They usually mean they do not like anything in the wasp family. But that’s beside the point.

Honeybees are truly the backbone of our food supply. There are places in India and around the world that have no bees to pollinate fruits and flowers. The farmer has to go to each flower and brush off the pollen and than brush it back on another flower. What hard work.

It is a simple thing to understand. The primary job of a honeybee is to populate and to pollinate (honey is just a byproduct… a tasty one at that!). Honeybees pollinate one of every three foods we eat. They are reasonable for 90% of pollination. But yet we take that for granted. People say “I hate bees” or “I really do not like honey” and they even will persuade their kids and loved ones to have the same view point.

But if it wasn’t for the honeybees, we wouldn’t enjoy a lot of what we eat. Lets see…. they pollinate kiwi fruit, onions, broccoli, apple trees, almond trees, pears, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, cranberries, and vanilla… just to name a few.

Oh, I almost forgot…. do you like coffee? Or maybe you are a lover of chocolate? Or perhaps cherries? YUP…. all pollinated by the honeybees.

So please continue to support beekeepers in the United States. Stay away from store bought honey…. the majority is now coming from other parts of the world like China, Taiwan, and Argentina.
And for goodness sake…. LOVE the honeybees. But I guess life without coffee and chocolate wouldn’t be so bad. :**(

Yield: 2-4 servings (depending on size)

Summer is a wonderful time at the markets. Fresh berries of all kinds. Pair it with some ice and wonderful raw honey and it is delicious, refreshing and packed full of flavor! You can use whatever berries you would like and whatever kind of honey you would like. Cinnamon creamed honey is my favorite with this smoothie but I also love wild flower honey too.

Side Note: If you are taking bee pollen for your allergies or health, this is a great way to consume your daily intake. Yum!

Ingredients:

2 pints of berries (can be strawberries, blackberries, blueberries or a combination of whatever you would like. I love 1 pint strawberries, 1/2 pint blackberries and 1/2 pint blueberries)

1/2 to 3/4 cup raw local honey (cinnamon creamed is great. So is wild flower. The amount of honey you will need will depend on the sweetness of the berries and how sweet you like the smoothie to be)

1/2 teaspoon citrus juice (lemon, lime, orange)

1 cup ice

1/4 tsp vanilla extract (optional)

1 tablespoon Bee Pollen (optional)

small pinch of black pepper (brings out the fruity taste of the berries)

1/4 cup yogurt of your choice (I love Greek yogurt)

1/2 cup milk (I prefer non fat)

Preparation:

1- Clean the berries well and trim if needed.

2- Place berries, honey, citrus juice, vanilla extract, bee pollen, black pepper, yogurt and milk in a blender and blend well.

3- Add crushed ice and blend well. I will usually hold back a little on the crushed ice and use all of it only if I need it.

4- Taste and adjust sweetness and consistency if needed.

5- Enjoy!

Chef’s Note: You can really add any other fruit too. I love bananas in the winter time when I can’t get anything locally. I enjoy the taste of pluots too.

A pan sauce is made after you have cooked a piece of meat. You can even make a pan sauce for vegetables after you cook the vegetables. For example, if I wanted to saute a chicken breast and make a pan sauce, you would use the same pan that you cooked the chicken breast in. Same thing with, say salmon.

A pan sauce consists of a few different elements. You will have your aromatic ingredients that give the sauce extra flavor and texture like garlic, onions, carrots, celery, mushrooms and the list goes on. Next, you will have some type of liquid to use to deglaze your pan with. For example maybe it is white wine or perhaps red wine or maybe chicken stock, fish stock, or vegetable stock. The point of a liquid to deglaze is to add extra flavor to the sauce. After that, you might have the main liquid. So if I was cooking chicken and want a pan sauce, I might consider using chicken broth or stock or maybe cream. And of course you will have your salt, pepper, and other seasoning.

The ingredients are pretty much up to you and what your cooking. That is the lovely aspect of pan sauces. They lend themselves to many flavor profiles and ideas.

The technique for making the pan sauce is also easy. First, you have to cook your main item. After the item is cooked, you will take it out of the pan, heat the pan up on the burner, add the aromatic ingredients and saute those ingredients. Then you will deglaze the pan with a liquid. Reduce that liquid until it is almost dry and then add your main liquid and reduce until thick. At this point if you would like, you can thicken up the sauce with a cornstarch slurry or roux but I always opt to reduce until the sauce is thick. After the sauce is thick, season to taste and strain if you would love. NOTE: Do not season the sauce before it is thick!

Lets go with a specific examples. Say we want to cook a chicken breast and you want to serve it with a pan sauce. The recipe might look like this:
———–
2 ea chicken breast
1/2 cup mushrooms, slices
3 Tablespoons onions, diced
1 teaspoon garlic, minced
1/4 cup white wine
1 cup chicken stock
salt and black pepper to taste

First thing, we are going to saute our chicken breast in a pan. After you sear the chicken breast, place the chicken breast on a cookie sheet and place in the oven to cook. While that is cooking, take the same pan that you seared the chicken breast in and heat it back up on the stove top. Add the mushrooms and onions. Saute for about 2 minutes, making sure not to burn them. Add the garlic and cook that for about 30 seconds. Deglaze with the wine and reduce the wine until about 1 tablespoon is left in the pan. Add the chicken stock and reduce until the sauce is thick (same consistency of heavy cream). Season to taste. you can strain the sauce if you would like or you can leave is chunky.
———-
Don’t get caught up on recipes. Learn the technique. It is always the same. Sear the protein, take it out and continue cooking the protein if desired in the oven, heat the pan back up, add the aromatics and saute, deglaze with a liquid, reduce until almost dry looking, add the main liquid, reduce or thicken, and finish off with seasoning the sauce.

I hope this helps. Remember it is about technique… not recipes. A pan sauce is a pan sauce.!

Being insulin dependent diabetic for over 20 years now, I have had to make many decisions regarding how I take care of myself. Pretty much anything I do everyday affects my blood sugar control. It is a constant struggle to maintain a stable glucose level and live my life. I have been really concerned the past few years with the amount of artificial sweeteners I use daily, whether in beverages or snacks etc. So in an effort to cut out artificial sweeteners and go natural I discovered honey. I heard about honey’s many beneficial properties for many years now, have used it on wounds with complete success and have enjoyed it on occasion in hot tea when I had a sore throat, but hadn’t given it a chance to be my sweetener on a daily basis until recently. I couldn’t have been more surprised! I find that using raw honey is easier to do than I realized. I have been yearning to completely cut the artificial sweeteners out & I think I finally have the answer – raw honey! In an effort to stay healthy I have added to my diet a tablespoon of raw honey a couple times a day. I was pleasantly surprised when testing my blood sugar before and after that the spikes I always get when I use regular granulated sugar weren’t happening. Instead it looked like my body’s metabolism of the honey was slow and steady providing me with ‘good’ numbers.

In doing research I learned that honey is a good source of fuel due to the way it metabolizes in the human body and that it doesn’t cause wild swings in blood glucose levels – good news for us diabetics I would say. There is a great article online I came across when I Googled “honey AND metabolism” (Buzz here to read it!) It has a lot of information that explains why and how honey is so beneficial. This is only one of many sources out there that can provide detailed scientific information on raw honey’s powerful health benefits.

Back when I was diagnosed, any doctor or clinician I saw always emphasized avoiding sugar & sweets, eliminating simple carbohydrates like cake & cookies, and limiting more complex carbs like rice, pasta and bagels etc.  I remember hearing the words “you can’t have that” from many people, I was duly scared of this new development in my life so I listened. I was 21 when this diagnosis changed my life, so with a true love of food stemming from my grandmas and great grandmother’s kitchens, it was very hard to just cut out some the food I had grown up with that was now considered a huge no-no.  I have always had a sweet tooth so I started experimenting with the sugar free foods that were on the market and a hot trend at the time. I soon discovered that my body did not respond well to the sugar alcohols (some of the common ones I saw were maltitol, sorbitol, mannitol, xylitol) that all these miracles of food science contained. There was a tiny warning on the package that warned against overindulgence, but the joy of being able to eat a few cookies with a glass of milk or have ice cream for dessert outweighed the concern (come on, who really sticks to just the serving size, hmm?). Until…well not to get into detail let’s just say it wasn’t pleasant and I did not feel good shortly after.  My family, meaning well set about providing me, on all those chocolate giving holidays over the next several years all different varieties of sugar free chocolates and sweets (yes, I am a bit of a chocoholic!).  I didn’t have the heart to tell them that their gifts made me unwell. My guilt at throwing away these thoughtful gifts finally made me fess up that I just couldn’t eat any of it, if I crave chocolate I go for the good stuff and make the necessary insulin adjustment.

In a continued effort to listen to my endocrinologist, diabetes educator and nutritionist over the years following my diagnosis I tried pretty much any low-calorie or no calorie sweetener on the market. I tried the famous little pink packet, Sweet n Low, but the aftertaste ruined my beloved morning cup of joe, fouled up my evening tea and then to top it off they were saying it caused cancer in lab mice! Then came NutraSweet, followed by Splenda, with each I thought “Hooray!” but these were no bargain either. While NutraSweet (or any aspartame brand) didn’t cause any side affects that I knew of, Splenda I found out was the cause of my constant headaches. I have tried stevia, and couldn’t ignore the aftertaste (much like Sweet n Low).  With all of these, I can’t help but wonder, a diabetic who listens to their doctor and follows a healthy lifestyle to avoid the many possible health complications diabetes can cause, are they really optimally healthy consuming artificial sweeteners?  When it comes down to it, it is more man made chemicals being consumed. Do we really need to get that far from nature?  Regardless that they say it’s made from or derived from sugar, the amount of chemical processing that’s involved to get it to a retail state, can not possibly be considered healthy.

Please buzz to page 2

Over the years doctors have revised their thinking on what the diet of a diabetic can include, gone are the antiquated ideas of what the diabetic diet had to be. Nowadays the ideal way to eat healthy is “everything in moderation”, many popular diets are toting this idea like it is something brand new, when it simply just makes sense. When I go to see my diabetic team now, no longer do I hear those words “you can’t have..”.  Doctors and other diabetic specialists now embrace the idea that a diet includes the occasional indulgence. If you are willing to make adjustments in your diet or as in my case my dosage of insulin, you can have dessert after dinner or a slice of real birthday cake, but that said these are not every day occurrences for me. The dilemma of how to sweeten beverages and food is though. Armed with this updated diet strategy I easily and confidently added honey to my life.

Raw honey has been a fabulous discovery for me and I now can barely keep enough of it in my pantry.  I feel good about my decision to include raw honey in my daily diet and successfully purge man-made chemical sweeteners out.  I would encourage any other diabetics to try adding it to theirs. Test before and after adding it to a cup of tea or taking a spoonful straight up – I hope you are as pleasantly surprised as I was!    

I am still exploring all the possible ways I can use raw honey on a daily basis. Baking will be the next adventure with it.

Thank you Sweet as can Bee – your Vanilla Honey is awesome!  I may just have to purchase the 3lb. jugs you guys have…

Viva la honey bee!

 Diane M Lee

Diane M Lee is currently a culinary student at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Seattle WA. She lives in Seattle, married and a mom to two miniature dachshunds (brother & sister).  She was diagnosed with Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetes in 1991.

Yield: 2 delicious burgers!

I love to work with vegetables because at the peak of the season, they carry so much flavor in them that it actually takes less work by me to make it flavorful. This dish takes those ingredients, marries them together to make a burger that pops to the mouth. You can change up the vegetables if you would like, add to it or whatever you desire. I hope you enjoy!

Side Note: I would like to thank Dylan for his awareness in letting me know we need to venture outside the box with ideas and recipes. Thanks Dylan!

Ingredients:

2 each hamburger buns (I like sesame buns and whole wheat is my choice. Next best is sourdough!)

4 Tablespoons mayonnaise 

2 Tablespoons dijon mustard

2 teaspoons habenero creamed honey (you can also can use regular creamed honey if you would like)

2 ea pieces of roasted red bell pepper filets (you can simple roast a pepper and take the skin off or you can buy these at the store)

As desired: sliced walla walla sweet onions (or you can use red onions)

1 cup baby spinach

1/2 cup goat cheese

2 tablespoons raw wild flower honey

2 ea portabello mushrooms

Dash of woreshershire sauce

Salt and black pepper to taste

Preparation:

1- First, we need to do some work with the mushrooms. Place in a zip lock bag and add some woreshorshire sauce and let marinate for about 10 minutes. After that, place the mushrooms on a cookie sheet and place in a preheated 350 degree oven until the mushrooms are cooked, about 20 minutes. When they are done, take them out and leave to cool slightly on the counter.

2-Place the mayonnaise, mustard, and habenero honey in a bowl and mix until all combined.

3- Toast the buns and then spread the mayo mixture on the buns.

4- Take the goat cheese, place in a bowl and add wild flower honey. Mix well.

5- Place the goat cheese on each mushroom and place the mushroom back in the oven just until the cheese melts. Take out and place on the bottom part of the buns.

6- Now place the onions on top of the mushrooms and then place the spinach on top. After that, place the red pepper on top of that.

7- Close the burget up and enjoy!

Chef’s Note: Melting the goat cheese is optional. Sometimes I like it melted and sometimes I dont.