Crystals

Because we have been to Annecy recently - a beautiful place - I tried a few times to write my reaction to the atrocity, and the stomach-churning politics that has already begun around it. I can't do it. Anything I put down is crass and trite in the face of such horror. There are no words

We spent the day bottling honey. It was a bit like lockdown - barely a foot off the property, except a brief exercise break to post some letters - oh, and a couple of visitors who we did allow inside! We filled exactly one hundred jars - 70 like this: new, pristine, identical, and thirty recycled jars with a random assortment of sizes, heights, lids and various parts of faded labels still attached to them - the latter destined for family consumption. The total yield is just short of 80 pounds - 35kg

You can see that the honey is opaque. There may still be some tiny bubbles in it, but I think it is mainly minute crystals that have squeezed through the filters. This is what happens with oilseed rape honey. Some of it was already so crystalline that it would not extract at all (that has gone back to the bees) but some was on the cusp, so had gone through the extraction process with little crystals suspended in the liquid honey

The crystals will act as a 'seed' and the entire batch will crystallise very rapidly - within a couple of weeks at the most, I would say. This rapid crystallisation produces tiny sugar crystals, only just detectable in your mouth. The honey becomes a soft, fudge-like consistency, so not hard to take out of the jar and spread. I prefer it to the liquid state it is in now

I remember honey on Annecy market, and a lot of honey & almond nougat - artisan made, cut from a large block and wrapped as it is sold. Delicious. A beautiful place