A Late Night Stretch and Fold

It happens only rarely but, on occasion, Ian and I undertake a project that requires mutual support and encouragement to complete.  In an effort to put the honey water (a by-product of beeswax rendering) to good use, I decided to make honey taffy.  Unfortunately, I made the decision to begin this project after putting the kids to bed.  Even more unfortunately, I decided to double (triple? quadruple?) the recipe.  When the only ingredient is honey - who's counting? In hindsight, I should have.  And the ultimate kicker:  I knew I would have to be up at 5 am the next day to harvest for my CSA baskets.  But nonetheless, we proceeded.

We started at 9 pm with this.

We were still boiling at 11:30 pm.  At midnight we had finally reached the required temperature of 280 F.  We poured the molten candy out on to greased, parchment papered cookie sheets and waited (and waited, and waited...) for it to cool.

Rorschach test anyone?

What do you see? Raccoon ears?

At 12:30 am we were stretching and folding the taffy.

Thankfully Sean stuck around to share his martial arts conditioned arm muscles for this part of the project.

Thanks to our reciprocal moral support (misery loves company), Ian and I managed to finish up the shaping and cutting.  We did not get to bed until after 2 am.

When I got up at 5 am, our counter looked like a Dalí painting.

I was too exhausted to care and got down to the business of basket preparation.

This week's CSA basket included: green and red leaf lettuce, chard, carrots, jalapeños, yellow wax peppers, yellow zucchinis, strawberry spinach berries, a red cabbage, snow and snap peas, yellow beans, daikon radishes, sweet basil, kale, red onions and scallions, a sweet walla walla onion, chocolate mint, apple mint, oregano, sage, pineapple sage, summer savory, curly parsley, rosemary, lavender, raspberries and a dozen farm fresh eggs.

The bonus item was cut comb honey from our hives.

Later in the day, after swimming lessons (after nine tries at Salamadar, we are thrilled to report Seamus is now in Sunfish!), some taffy taste testing, and longish afternoon naps (for me and the kids), Ian and I reconvened to wrap pieces of honey taffy in parchment paper.

They look and taste good but honestly, after smelling them for five hours last night I have absolutely no desire to eat any.  Looks like Christmas gift preparations have begun early this year!