Bitter is Better?

I'm incredibly lazy. I originally wanted to title this blog 'The Missing Ingredient', not to imply that my take on food was something unique, but that if an ingredient is on a high shelf sometimes I'll just leave it out of a recipe. Laziness is often synonymous with gluttony and, well, I can't exactly deny that. I guess that's why I was amazed and charmed by the life a honeybee leads.

1. Birth. Baby bees are fed with royal jelly, then honey and pollen.
2. Work - mainly consists of eating pollen and honey.
3. Learn to Fly.
4. Learn the "bee dance" or "waggle dance"
5. Die - get this. When we extracted the honey from the combs, we let it drain into a huge green pot. I left for a few minutes to come back and find numerous bees wallowing in the honey, clearly drowning, and yet....their tongues were out. As the bees struggled not to get sucked deeper and deeper, they were simultaneously trying to eat as much honey as possible. Two bees had flown directly under the honey stream and were getting pushed lower and lower into the vat, but their mouths were wide open.

Bitter is Better?
I disagree. There is a common misconception among 'gourmands' that if you take the sugar out of something it will taste better. I suppose the idea is similar to that of dark chocolate versus milk chocolate. WRONG. Bitterness is acceptable in small quantities, when there is an actual flavor present. Unless the food is catering to a burn victim with no taste buds, the bitterness ruins the food by drowning out other flavors, thereby losing its complexity. I had some olive oil the other day from a fairly prestigious local farm which may as well have come from uncured olives.
Please, please, please don't tell yourself that you like dark chocolate to feel better about yourself. A lot of it tastes like dirt. Actually, burnt dirt. And this is coming from someone who loves dark chocolate. If you like milk chocolate, stick with it. Long's cashiers are in no position to judge you, anyway.

Foods That Do Not Require Teeth

Happy Independence Day. For me, it was. Really.
1. I went to the county fair with my parents and discovered that not only do you have to wait in line for rides, you have to wait in line for the bathroom. Which is more exciting?
2. I didn't get drunk.
3. I very soberly observed a toothless woman try to wrap her gums around a frozen banana.
This led me to a very interesting question. What do you eat when you don't have teeth?

My first thought was applesauce. Very simple to get past the main part of your mouth, no real chewing involved, but can a person really subsist on mashed apples? How exciting could your life be?
That led me to the fairly obvious realization that really anything mash-able is a candidate for a toothless person. Is it fair that they have to mash all their food before eating it? Is there no justice in this world?
Things That Do Not Require Mashing:
1. Peanut butter.
2. Butter.
3. Most things past their expiration date.
4. HONEY (which brings me to my next point...)

I learned how to beekeep. As in, I learned how to lift teeming piles of vicious insects out of a box and steal their sustenance. It's really kind of amazing. You have this bodysuit (read: forcefield) and no matter how angry the bees get, they can't get in and sting you. But they DON'T get mad...because you put smoke in their hive and they get really tired and then you take their honey. Also, bees are really adorable and they're actually fuzzy and they look like kittens but you can't pet them because you're wearing gloves. When they fall asleep they all cuddle together and ...then you take their honey.
Homemade (haha, as if I made it) honey is so much better than you can get in a store. I know, I know, this is true about anything, blah blah blah, but it really is better, because there is no danger or excitement when you get it from a store. Stores could make it more thrilling by releasing hornets or letting a bear lumber through the aisles every time you bought a jar of honey, but so far I can't find a supermarket like that. Oh, also it tastes better because it isn't boiled down. And it kind of tastes like flowers. Also, honeycombs are really intricate; when bees build outside of the racks you provide for them they create these little labyrinthine tunnels winding in and out of the wax. Super exciting!