Zeke Freeman's The Buzz

Presidentially
Perfect

"Swimming in Honey." Because the Washingtons had so many dinner guests, the kitchen bustled with activity day and night. Baking, roasting, broiling, frying and stewing were all accomplished here, both in the fireplace and over piles of hot coals burning at several locations on the hearth.

At least three generous meals were served daily at Mount Vernon. Breakfast was served promptly at 7:00 a.m.; dinner at 3:00 p.m.; and tea at 6:00 p.m. Sometimes a light supper was served at 9:00 p.m. As you can imagine, this schedule meant a long and exhausting day for the team of enslaved workers, including Nathan and Lucy, who did the cooking. Lucy lived in an apartment above the kitchen with her husband Frank, the butler. Assistants or scullions, who lived elsewhere on the grounds, hauled water and wood, washed dishes and cooking utensils, and helped with food preparation.

The recipe below was one of Washington's well known favorites—and the one he accompanied with plenty of raw honey. It was called the Hoe Cake and has been well documented as The President's favorite daily breakfast of choice.

It was Washington's step-granddaughter, Nelly Custis Lewis, whose Hoe Cake recipe was favored. Said Lewis, "He rose before sunrise, always wrote or read until 7 in summer or half past seven in winter. His breakfast was then ready—he ate three cakes swimming in butter and honey, and drank three cups of tea without cream." She later described the recipe in a letter as: "The bread business is as follows if you wish to make 2 1/2 quarts of flour up-take at night one quart of flour, five table spoonfuls of yeast & as much lukewoarm water as will make it the consistency of pancake batter, mix it in a large stone pot & set it near a warm hearth (or a moderate fire) make it at candlelight & let it remain until the next morning then add the remaining quart & a half by degrees with a spoon when well mixed let it stand 15 or 20 minutes & then bake it – of this dough in the morning, beat up a white & half of the yilk of an egg—add as much lukewarm water as will make it like pancake batter, drop a spoonful at a time on a hoe or griddle (as we say in the south). When done on one side turn the other—the griddle must be rubbed in the first instance with a piece of beef suet or the fat of cold corned beef..."

Washington's Hoe Cake Recipe

8 3/4 cups white cornmeal
1/4 teaspoons dry yeast
1 egg
Warm water
Shortening or other cooking grease
Raw honey & Butter (we suggest something mild, like our delicate Basswood or our Star Thistle honey)

1. In large container, mix together 4 cups white cornmeal, 1 1/4 teaspoons dry yeast, and enough warm water to give the mixture the consistency of pancake batter (probably 3-4 cups). Cover and set on the stove or counter overnight.In the morning, gradually add remaining cornmeal, egg and enough warm water to give the mixture the consistency of pancake batter (3-4 cups). Cover and set aside for 15 to 20 minutes.

2. Add cooking grease to a griddle or skillet and heat until water sprinkled onto it will bead up.Pour batter, by the spoonful, onto the hot griddle. (Note: since the batter has a tendency to separate, you will need to stir it well before pouring each batch.) When the hoecake is brown on one side, turn it over and brown the other.

Serve warm with butter and lots of delicious raw honey.—The Buzz

Buying Bee Raw Honey > Basswood Honey > Star Thistle Honey

Waggle
Dancing

So-called "lower" organisms often show sophisticated learning abilities when it aids their survival and reproduction. Bees and their relatives are especially good at learning the location and appearance of flowers. What is the waggle dance of the bee? Bees communicate location information to their fellows with the famous waggle dance first described by Von Frisch in 1974.

A bee returning to its hive, if it has found flowers, makes a distinctive wiggle of the abdomen and dances up the side of the honeycomb. The bee's angle from the vertical indicates the angle of the flower away from the sun. A dance 100 degrees to the left of the 12 o'clock position indicates flowers can be found 100 degrees to the left of the sun, as seen from the hive. If the food is found by flying away from the sun, the bee dances downward rather than upward. The duration of the dance tells other bees the distance of the pollen source—a fast dance indicates food close by.

Von Frisch also identified other factors that aid bee navigation, such as odor particles borne by the foraging bee that returns to the hive. Von Frisch won a Nobel Prize for his work, but many scientists challenged it in various ways. Some suggested that bees responded to sounds rather than the dance, although other researchers believed bees were deaf. Some suggested that bees used odor alone to direct their hive mates, and the waggle dance was irrelevant. These controversies were seemingly put to rest by detailed research carried out by the team of Wolfgang H. Kirchner, of the University of Wurzburg in Germany, and William F. Towne, of the Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. They devised robot bees that delivered messages using waggle dances, or by delivering samples of pollen, or by producing a vibrating sound similar to the beating of wings. Among other things, Kirchner and Towne discovered the following:

1. Bees can indeed hear, "and their ears are well suited for detecting the sounds associated with the dances."
2. "Both sound and dance are needed to communicate information about the location and the food." A bee with clipped wings, which raised the frequency of the sound produced by the dancer, could not recruit other bees.
3. Bees in the audience of the hive may rub their thoraxes against the comb, producing a squeak that vibrates the comb. This causes the dancing bee to stop the dance and dole out samples of food, "so that her audience knows not only the direction and distance to the feeding site but how the food smells and tastes as well."
4. A robot bee, dabbed with a faint floral fragrance and "waggled" by a step motor, successfully guides bees to a sugar solution placed in a distant field.

In 1986 it was discovered that bees form detailed cognitive maps. They optimize their routes to flower locations, taking the shortest route when visiting multiple sites. Bees refuse to respond to a waggle dance that points to the middle of a lake. However, they respond to a waggle dance that points to the opposite shore of a lake.

Does it sound unrealistic to suggest that pictures and maps could be preserved in the tiny heads of insects? The bee brain is tiny compared to a human brain, but it is nevertheless a complex system with over 200,000 different nerve cells.

No wonder they can carry out some complex information processing.—The Buzz

Buying Bee Raw Honey > Single Varietal Honey > Rare Single Varietal Honey