At the insect fair I bought some honey.
Really good honey, thats hard to get.
So I got a lot when I had the chance.
12+ pounds of it.
Turnes out to be hard to handle.

I tried to pour it into some smaller containers and the first drip was about 2 inches across.
It was hard to tame even with a funnel.

I also have a lot of mint, so tried to combine forces.
I picked as much as I could until it got ridiculous, and cleaned it all.
Put it in jars with the honey, (and one jar with everclear, for good mesure).
Hope I didn’t just ruin an bunch of good honey and mint!

I was at the house of friend Rosanna Albertini and found a nice layout typical of her kitchen.

She is from Italy. Her table looks different. I asked her about everything on the table, where it came from, etc. The most peculiar to me was the dry pasta. How had it come to be there? She told me that its wonderful fried dry, then thrown into a soup to cook. That doesn’t explain why its there, but the idea was so strange I forgot the question.

I liked the look of this sponge/glass combo by the sink as well. Its got a little bit of everything in it- glamour, grit, youth, old age, clean, dirty. One thing you put to your mouth, one thing you keep out. They both hold water.

Canning/pickling with heat is too much trouble for me. Same goes for fragrance distillation. It all requires a lot of cleaning and care. So, I just wash old jars and put whatever I have in there with high proof alcohol and let the elbow grease of time pull out the flavor. I also give it a heaving helping of sugar. Unfortunately, its usually pretty gross and, I dont really like the taste of anything with alcohol in it very much anyway. Still, when I find myself with a lot of ripe or exotic ingredients, or just a lot of optimism, I pour everclear on whatever I think might become magic.

recent and past jars

fresh

Green tea? Probably a bad idea.

I tasted some of this sugar after 10 minutes in the jar- it was delicious!

Camomile, for the sick and infirmed and weak-of-nerve.

Made from some incredible tasting and exotic guavas I found in a tiny quantity at a farmers market. Its the foulest tasting stuff I have ever made, absolutely awful! But, maybe it suits someone else’s mixer. After all, quinine and dry vermouth find their way into drinks all the time.