Learning to be a beekeeper is a constant struggle. I keep reading books and asking for advice but I think it is true that you learn best from your mistakes. Or do you …
This is not a bee story but it is a story of learning and it makes me laugh every time I recall it.
Neither Heidi and I are very good cooks … but we do own a lot of recipe books and one day Heidi decided to learn some “signature dishes”. She chose to make a lemon cheese cake but when I got home even I was surprised at what I found. Heidi evidently did not know what lemon zest was. She had unpeeled the lemon and painstakingly picked out the white pith on the inside of the lemon skin and added that to the ingredients. It was too late. The cheesecake was in the oven. Despite my concerns, she proudly served up the cake to my unsuspecting parents insisting the pith was softer than the outerskin of the lemons so surely it must be better. To be fair even stringy cheese cake is surprisingly edible.
Anyway, I thought Heidi had learnt from this and she now knew her zest from her pith. But when she made fish cakes last week I realised she still did not fully appreciate where the zest ended and the pith started. Yes, the fishcakes contained the zest of lemon but the lemon was now bald and the fishcakes also contained all the pith on the lemon.
So maybe we don’t always learn from our mistakes but I find these cooking episodes rather endearing.
On a similar note, this is a carrot cake she made recently:
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We all have these moments… as a student I remember making a meal so awful that my boyfriend refused to eat it, and he would eat anything… I once made a tart for my current partner – I had blind-baked the pastry with baking beans but had forgotten to put the beans on baking paper and managed to leave one in the tart hidden under a fold of pasty. He bit into the tart and nearly cracked a tooth chomping down on this ceramic baking bean. Ever since then he’s very wary when eating anything involving pastry!
Wonder what went wrong with the carrot cake, it looks like the outside was well cooked. Next time perhaps it would be best to test by sliding a knife in and seeing if it comes out dry. If not foil on top will stop the top burning while the inside bakes.
Roger are you taking the Pith ? :0)
Well done for trying Heidi I,m sure it tasted wonderful.
Love the site keep the posts coming ……..
Don’t pick on her too much. Learning to cook takes messing up sometimes… 🙂
I do think you learn the MOST from mistakes. At least I do. Sometimes i decide, “i don’t know what to try next, BUT I WILL NEVER DO THAT AGAIN. Beekeeping is the same as cooking and gardening. As long as you are observing cause and effect and always working towards the good outcomes you will get better at it.
Keep working… After 20 or 30 years you will swear by her cooking and you will be a bee keeping wizard.