By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Bacon, tomato, and warm, gooey Carmody, from Bellwether Farms in Sonoma, CA. Photograph by Iain Bagwell; styling by Randy Mon

We love local cheese (including our own). To celebrate local Western cheesemakers, we're going to publish a Great Grilled Cheese Sandwich story in our July issue. Who will create these crunchy, melting beauties?

You, our readers!

Yes, this an open invitation to all of you to send us your favorite grilled cheese sandwich recipes, preferably using Western cheese(s).  If we choose your concoction, you'll get a cheese-filled gift basket. And the glory of getting published in Sunset, of course.

To enter, send your original recipe to sunset.com/submitrecipe OR Grilled Cheese Contest, Sunset magazine, 80 Willow Rd., Menlo Park, CA 94025.

Deadline: April 13. 

We're standing by, waiting to try your killer grilled cheese sandwich.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

We've been working on the May issue of the magazine, so I didn't have time to blog about the rest of the high drama in the beeyard that began when Betty swarmed last week. She first swarmed on a Tuesday, then on Wednesday, another swarm left the hive, puddled on the ground, and then crawled back, ending up underneath the hive. By that evening I only saw a few bees sniffing around the stack of clay pots near the hives. It looked sad, like they'd lost all their girlfriends and were trying to figure out what to do. I thought we'd lost another bit of Betty.

But the next morning we found a small swarm on one of the clay pot stacks!

Bee Team member Brianne, who belongs to the Santa Clara Valley Beekeepers Guild, had just attended a lecture about how to capture a swarm. She calmly and surely scooped the bees into the box we'd prepared as a trap box (we cut a hole into the side and put some wax inside—it's supposed to be enticing to bees on the prowl for a new hive).

Yes, it's a xerox box. Yes, we've heard the jokes about the bees replicating.

The bees tumbled right in, with a little help from a bee brush. They were so docile. Like little kittens (with stingers). They were huddled and sweet, and seemed a little dazed. They never once tried to sting us, although if we had somehow hurt the queen or threatened them, they would have. But slow, steady, and careful handling keeps bees calm.

We figured we'd gotten the queen that was in the middle of the swarm, because after we put the lid on the box, bees ringed the hole in the box, bottoms out, and fanned for all they were worth, spreading pheremones that told the other bees "hey, Her Majesty's in here!" The bees we hadn't caught poured up to the box and into the hole, just like they are supposed to do.

The box of bees went to Tom Vercoutere, of the Beekeepers Guild Of San Mateo County. He's been so generous with his help as we stumble through our first year of beekeeping, we thought we'd give him the swarm as thanks.

This week has been calm in the beeyard, although Betty (or what's left of her hive) sometimes clumps up at the entrance of her box. We're not sure what's going on in that hive. We hope that the bees planned well and prepared some queen cells so they'd have a new queen after they swarmed. There have been plenty of drones, so she shouldn't have any trouble getting mated. Hopefully she'll start laying eggs soon.

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher. Photo by E. Spencer Toy.

What are you looking at? I hope it's not the lack of rear feathers of our own Ruby, which I wrote about last week.

Because, seriously, Ruby's feeling fine. And I was heartened by the commenters who piped up on the issue. The consensus seems to be this: If she's acting fine, she's probably fine. A bald behind just happens to some chickens.

Still, it's not polite to stare.

Excuse us while we do a little crowing.

We've been nominated for a James Beard Foundation Award! Yes, this very blog.

The category is: Blog Focusing on Food, Beverage, Restaurants, or Nutrition. (Yep, that sounds like us.) The winner will be announced at a ceremony in New York City on May 3.

And this is right on the heels of the news that our One-Block Feast story from August '08 was nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals award.

Spring is feeling very springy indeed.

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We've still got quite a ways to go, but everything in the spring plan has been planted, and all but two crops (tarragon and chervil) have germinated.

Here's the difference 11 days makes:

I broadcast the tarragon, dill, parsley, and chervil, while I sowed the beets, carrots, scallions, radishes and mesclun mix in rows. I am sort of wishing that I had broadcast everything, as I think that would grow to be a fuller, bushier look. But we'll see. Learn the difference between broadcasting and rows here. 

In other news, I sowed chick peas in a nearby bed. The team tried growing them way back when and had little luck. I'm hoping that soaking the seeds in water for 12 hours before planting them will do the trick. I will let you know!

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

We hinted of it here and here, and now it seems there will actually be an organic veggie garden at the White House.

The White House has even released the planting plan. Looks great!

I'm disappointed Obama confessed to disliking beets. Who dislikes beets?! Then again, it seems like an easy out for a disliked vegetable. Can you imagine the uproar from mothers across the country had he chosen broccoli?

by Elizabeth Jardina, Sunset researcher. Photos by E. Spencer Toy. (Not the indelicate one at the bottom. That one is by Margo True, the intrepid.)

This is Ruby. I mean, she's the chicken. The person is me.

You remember her. She's our perky Rhode Island red, one of the boldest girls, originally our little runt.

Well, Ruby's got an issue. (How to put this politely?)

She's got a weird bald spot on her butt.

It's soft; it's bald; it doesn't seem to be causing her any distress. When I saw it initially, I panicked and thought she was eggbound. (Eggbound is a very bad, very scary condition. It happens when an egg gets stuck inside a chicken; you have to soak the chicken in warm water and try to coax the egg out with "personal lubricant" or oil, and pray that it doesn't break. If it does, the shards of eggshell will likely kill your bird. If she doesn't deliver the egg she'll die. A lot of eggbound situations end up with your chicken dying.)

But eggbound birds seem really sick. Lethargic, straining to get the egg out. And Ruby seemed fine. Perky, even. Continued to lay eggs. Just with a squishy, tennis ball–size bald spot on her backside.

Our Ameraucanas and buff Orpingtons both molted in early January; Ruby and her fellow Rhode Island red did not. Might this be a very specific kind of late molting? On her rear?

I've found other, similar stories on the Internet, but no satisfying answers about what it might be. Some people theorize mites, but our other chickens don't have mites. And Ruby's not at the bottom of our pecking order (that would be Honey), so I find it unlikely that any of the other girls would be pecking away at her nether-feathers.

As long as she keeps laying, I suppose she's okay, but it's disconcerting to get a glimpse of her pink, er, altogether when she turns around.

Readers? Ideas?

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

Good news! Our print story last August about our summer one-block feast, We Had a Dream, has been nominated for an International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) journalism award.

To read our story, click here.

We're thrilled about the nomination, since the IACP has thousands of members—and other nominees include such food-magazine luminaries as Gourmet, Saveur, and Food & Wine. The winners of the awards will be announced at a gala ceremony in Denver on April 4.

We'll let you know how we do!

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

Holy moly! The bees have swarmed again! This afternoon they started roaring, and a cloud of bees zoomed up and down the creekbed next to the beeyard (that's Kimberley, looking at the madness of bees in the creek). There were bees crawling all over the ground.

Then they boiled out of Betty’s hive, bearded across the front, and poured out onto the ground to make a big puddle of bees.

Bees filled the air around the hive. The puddle on the ground grew larger.

But they didn’t fly away. After about 15 minutes, the puddle of bees crawled up the leg of the hive, forming chains to cross the waterfilled tupperware.

They clustered on the bottom of the hive. That’s where we left them (we had to get back to working on the magazine).

We also found a queen wandering around on the ground. She was attended by a retinue of about 15 bees. Then she was gone. We're not sure if she flew away or crawled under a leaf.

We have no idea what’s going on. But it’s dramatic. It’s exciting.

And terribly exhilarating to be in the middle of a cloud of swarming bees.

By Kimberley Burch, Sunset imaging specialist

I was out in the Sunset gardens this morning shooting some flowers and plants for the magazine.  I got a frantic call on my cell phone from Margaret.

“Where ARE you!? One of our hives is swarming!!!”

I grabbed the camera, ran as fast as I could (with the huge camera and tripod slowing me down) to the bee yard.  Sure enough, bees were everywhere!  Most in the oak tree just above the hives.  We could see a ball of bees, just barely, through the branches, about 30 feet up. Too obstructed to get a good photograph.

There was a smaller cluster at Betty’s entrance that makes us think it was Betty who abandoned the hive.

We watched them in awe, doing their little bee thing. Thousands of bees flying all around our unprotected heads (there was no time to grab veils!), pooing on our clean shirts (we don't mind). It was all over within 45 minutes. Amazing.

We think we still have bees left in Betty’s old hive— With a new queen? We want to inspect as soon as we can, but have been advised to leave the new queen (or whoever is in there) alone for a few weeks.  Sigh...

More from Margaret to come later this week.  Exciting stuff around the bee yard!

By Johanna Silver, Sunset test garden coordinator

Margo spoke with me a few weeks ago about some (relatively) quick growers that she wanted sown for a spring feast. Her vision was to have them planted in a cohesive little garden, much like the winter crops.

I thought I'd share my garden plan, incomplete as it may be. Some seeds have already been sown, others are in the mail, and I'm still trying to track down a few.

Each section is 2'3" x 24". The whole garden is planted in a bed that's 4'6" x 10'. There will be a few more crops (shelling peas, chick peas, strawberries, and mint) scattered in other parts of the test garden.

Here's how it looks so far:

Not very impressive, but it'll be neat to post pictures as it all comes together.

Lastly, I never tire of taking pictures of baby seedlings:

Beets (just breaking out of their seeds!)

Baby lettuce

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

We began with salad, wheatberry ciabatta, and homemade butter.

Our winter feast started with a happy accident.

Back in September, Team Kitchen and Team Garden drew up a list of cool-season crops that would do well in our area, and planned a menu around it. First we'd have a salad of Belgian endive and escarole, with a fresh poached egg on top and croutons from extremely homemade wheat bread (as in, we grew the wheat and ground it).

Well, the endive never sprouted. And we couldn't find escarole seeds. Who knew there'd be a run on escarole seeds?

Moral: Be flexible. Johanna, our test garden coordinator, had also planted some red butterhead lettuce and arugula, so Team Kitchen adapted.

It was easy; the lettuces were beautiful. We hardcooked the egg instead of poaching it, because a liquidy poached yolk, great on crisp endive and escarole, would've turned the tender lettuces into a sticky clump. We added small chunks of sweet, juicy tangerines from our tree, garlic-rubbed croutons, and a vinaigrette made with tangerine juice, our olive oil, and sea salt.

Red butterhead lettuce and arugula salad with tangerines and hard-cooked eggs.

We had plenty of wine to go with the food. The Syrah was in bottle at last and had recovered from its bottle-shock; it was back to its original blackberry suaveness. The Chardonnay still tasted fine—like a crisp green apple.

Sunset Chardonnay and Syrah, left; right, wine editor Sara Schneider sips the white as managing editor Alan Phinney tears off a chunk of ciabatta. (By the way, that construction site you see through the windows here will be a big outdoor kitchen, to be completed by June.
Come to our Celebration Weekend and see it for yourself.)

The stunning brassicas from the garden—cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, Savoy cabbage, kale, broccoli rabe, mustard greens—gave us our main courses: a winter vegetable chowder and spicy braised greens with preserved lemon.

Our chowder was packed with cauliflower, broccoli romanesco, and broccoli rabe,
plus a few potatoes saved from fall. On top: broccoli rabe flowers and purple rosemary blooms.

Braised Savoy cabbage, mustard greens, and
Tuscan kale with preserved lemon and chile.

The broccoli romanesco was so beautiful and strange that we used it as decor, too.

We ended not with our original dessert—olive oil tangerine cake, which turned out to be a total clunker given we were destroying the original recipe—but with something that arose naturally from our short list of available ingredients, which included honey, eggs, "imported" cream, and tangerines.

Tangerine honey crème caramel.

We had a very nice afternoon.

Recipe editor Amy Machnak and researcher Elizabeth Jardina.

Test garden coordinator Johanna Silver in the middle of
what must've been a vivid story.

Me (at left) and copy chief Erika Ehmsen.

SO WHERE ARE THE RECIPES?

They and the story of how we raised the ingredients for this winter menu will be showing up in larger form at some point in the months ahead—I promise.

For now, please have some salad. It's hearty enough to eat when it's cold, but bright and lively, too—which suits our California March, the month when winter slides into spring.

Red Butterhead Lettuce and Arugula Salad with Tangerines and Hard-Cooked Eggs

MAKES 6 to 8 servings TIME About 1 hour

We used our own chickens’ eggs, but we let them sit in the fridge for at least a week to let the air pocket inside each shell expand and make the eggs easier to peel.

6 to 8 eggs (not super-fresh)
2 tsp. fresh tangerine juice
1/2 tsp. each finely grated tangerine zest and sea salt
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
3 to 4 thin slices wheatberry ciabatta or other whole wheat bread,
     cut into 1/2-in. dice (about 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves garlic, mashed to a paste with 1/4 tsp. sea salt
5 loosely packed cups arugula leaves
6 loosely packed cups red butterhead lettuce leaves
     (about 1/2 small head)
2 large or 4 small tangerines

1. Preheat oven to 400°. Put eggs in a small pot and cover with about 1 in. of water. Bring to a boil; immediately lower heat to a simmer and cook 10 minutes. When eggs are finished, transfer to ice water; let cool 1 minute. Crack eggs all over on counter and return to ice water for 5 minutes. Peel under cold water. Set aside.
2. Meanwhile, whisk tangerine juice, zest, and salt together in a small bowl. Whisk in 1/4 cup olive oil. Set aside.
3. In a heatproof cup, microwave remaining 1/4 cup olive oil with mashed garlic for 10 seconds. Put bread cubes on a baking pan and drizzle with garlic oil, tossing to coat. Spread in a single layer and bake about 15 minutes, or until crisp, stirring once or twice. Set aside.
4. Rinse greens and dry twice in a salad spinner. Peel tangerines and remove thready white pith; then cut fruit crosswise into chunks, removing any seeds.
5. In a large bowl, toss greens gently but thoroughly with only enough dressing to coat. Add tangerines and croutons and toss just to mix. Divide salad among plates. Add a quartered egg to each plate and drizzle eggs with a little more dressing. Or pile it all on a platter if you like, so people can help themselves.

By Margaret Sloan, Sunset production coordinator

In a break between welcome storms (I hope this rain eases California’s third year of drought) we ran out to the hives to give the bees some more real estate.

The bees in Betty were bursting the seams of her single box, and Veronica has drawn out comb in both brood boxes (although she’s filled most of her top box with honey). And, as we found last week in the great drone/mite massacre, her queen is clearly laying eggs.

The sun shone across Betty’s hive as we lifted her lid; we had to admire how beautiful and golden the mass of bees looked.

Betty’s bees are so laid back they didn’t even seem to notice us peering in. We added a second brood box; we’re hoping this spring she’ll be able to fill it out and even support a honey super.

Veronica was not so calm. We pulled off the lid to add her super and soon bees started buzzing up and warning us to go away (it’s a funny feeling when they get up against your veil and yell at you in their buzzy voices). The bees weren't crazy mad like the Africanized bees in this video, and our bees didn't sting us, but they were firm as they let us know they didn’t like being bothered. Sometimes bees will get really cranky if they’re no longer queen-right (queen-right means they have a queen); I hope that’s not the case.

Reader Tina K (friend of Nugget) has commented that she already has put honey supers on her hives, and they are pretty full. Wonder how long it will take our girls to make enough honey to share with us? Seems like there’s a nectar flow going on. The neighborhood is full of blooming fruit trees, eucalyptus, and acacia. Rosemary bushes are full of blue flowers, bulb blossoms are starting to crack open, and spring blooms are budded up ready to go.  Good time to be a bee.

Note from Kimberley: I am happy to report that Betty has already moved up into her new space-- she must have been eager for it!  There are five frames of bees happily building comb on the new brood frames. We still hope she won't be like rebel Veronica and will put brood where brood should be (instead of honey)!

By Margo True, Sunset food editor

As we were planning the menu for our one-block winter feast, we remembered a wonderful recipe, developed a while back by Editorial Services Coordinator Stephanie Dean, for a tangerine olive oil cake with roussane, a lovely floral wine, as an ingredient. All-purpose white flour and baking powder gave it lightness, and vanilla rounded out its sweet appeal.

Stephanie's tangerine olive oil cake.

The recipe had been hanging around in inventory, awaiting its moment in the sun. Now, in the cold season, our garden was giving us wonderful tangerines. We still had olive oil. And we were grinding our own flour for bread anyway. We had what we needed for Stephanie's cake! It would be a fancy sweet ending to our winter feast.

Then Stephanie made the recipe. She couldn't use sugar, because we didn't grow sugar cane. Honey went into the cake instead. No white flour, just rough whole wheat, ground from wheat berries. No baking powder (though she tried her best to argue for it). No vanilla for sure. And instead of Roussane, our homemade Chardonnay.

The one-block diet version: heavy, heavy, heavy.

I don't have a photo of Stephanie's expression when she took a taste, but let's just say it was not the face of a happy cook.

So she's created a honey tangerine creme caramel instead. And it's delicious!

We realize that we were so steeped in our everyday access-to-everything attitude that we weren't paying attention to what the garden wanted to give us. Now we are, and our food tastes better.

Coming soon: Our winter feast.

By Rick LaFrentz, Beerless Leader

Here's what went into our beer: Hops (the green flowers in front); yeast (in the vial); and bags of malted (i.e. sprouted) wheat and barley. The dark bag in the center is Irish moss, a seaweed, to help cleanse the brew of cloudy proteins; the white powder in the right foreground is food-grade gypsum, to harden the water.

WILL A YEAR'S WORTH OF EFFORT PAY OFF?

Last weekend, Team Beer (Editorial Services Coordinator Stephanie Dean, Managing Editor Alan Phinney, brewing genius Chuck Schwalbach—husband of our Manufacturing Associate Manager, Diane Schwalbach—and yours truly) finally brewed the beer we have been formulating for the past year for our one-block feasts. Oh, and one innocent bystander, Food Editor Margo True.

From planting wheat, barley, and hops last spring to harvesting the grains, threshing and malting them, and then, several days ago, to boiling them with the hops, we are almost home.

The part of this process that brought the most procrastination was the threshing (loosening the seed from the scaly chaff) and winnowing (removing the seed from the chaff). We actually ended up with only 3 pounds of grain, but any more than that and we would have been on disability with eye strain and hand cramps.

Chuck, unlike the rest of the team, had experience in making beer from grain (rather than from extracts sold as part of a beer-making kit), so he was our savior with his knowledge and all of his equipment (two converted Gatorade coolers, a large stockpot with a spigot, and a chilling unit, purchased from San Francisco BrewCraft and MoreBeer.com.

The total amount of grain we malted: about 9.5 pounds of barley and 6 pounds of wheat. We decided to use Belgium Abbey yeast because it tends to be more tolerant of high alcohol, and not knowing how effective we’d been with the malting process, we wanted to be prepared. (If the grains had fully malted, they'd yield lots of sugars--the food for fermentation.)

Chuck, a mechanical engineer for Apple, brought his laptop and used a program designed for brewing with grain, so everything was down to a science.

Left: Chuck with his gear (one of the stockpots is mine; the rest is his). Right: Chuck's cool calculations.

HOW WE MADE BEER FROM GRAIN

1. Mashing. We heated up a big metal stockpot filled with water (1 quart for each pound of grain) and then poured it into one of Chuck’s converted Gatorade coolers, the one fitted with a mesh bottom to keep the grains from clogging the spigot. Once we got it to the specific temperature needed (172° F), we added our grain and mixed well.

Stirring the grains.

At this point the mash temperature decreased to 152 degrees. This is the ideal temperature for grain to convert its starches to sugar for fermentation. A series of chemical changes take place at this time, and if I could fully understand them, my head would explode.

We held the mash for 90 minutes, which was enough time for the conversion to take place.

2. Sparging. Toward the end of the mashing, Chuck heated up another giant stockpot of water, added some food-grade gypsum (which hardens the water and forces proteins to drop out, so they don’t cloud the beer), and hoisted it up on top of a tall stove so it would be elevated. He attached tubing to its spigot and let the water (also 172° F) flow down into a sparger—a water-dispenser—set over the mash pot. The point of sparging, as this process is called, is to rinse off the residual sugar that adheres to the grain during the mash. We sparged the grain for about 20 minutes.

Left: Hot water flows into the sparger, the space-station lookalike set over the mash pot. Right: The sparger dispenses water through its central tube very evenly and slowly, keeping the water level constant.

At the same time, we attached tubing to the mash pot’s spigot and let the wort—the sweet brown liquid now full of grain extract—flow into the first, now empty stockpot.

Left: Hot water on top, sparger and mash in the middle, and wort below. Above: Fresh wort.

3. Boiling.
The wort now had to boil for 90 minutes. During the boil, we added whole hops at various stages to impart flavor and aroma. (This particular hop is known for its woody fragrance).We used a variety called Fuggle, which we had to buy because our own Nugget hops, being weak as is typical in the first year of growth, got attacked by fungus and bugs.

Fuggle hops boiling with the wort.

4. Chilling and flowing into the primary fermenter.

After the required boiling period, Chuck brought out the Porsche of all cooling devices: a wort plate chiller.

We attached a hose carrying regular tap water to the water inlet side of the chiller and put the outlet hose in the kitchen sink to drain. Then we attached a second hose to the boiling pot to carry the hot wort to the chiller; from the chiller, the cooled wort flowed through a second outlet hose into a 5-gallon plastic pail (the primary fermenter). We put the yeast in when the pail was halfway full.

Left: The boiling pot, elevated so that the wort will flow easily downward into the chiller and then the fermenting vessel at Chuck's feet. Right: the fermenting vessel (3 seconds ago, it filled up with cooled wort from the chiller; Chuck just disconnected the hose).

It absolutely amazed me that the wort went in at boiling temperature and exited at 70 degrees within seconds. This device saves so much time in the cooling process. With an immersion chiller, it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour. With this thing, you can pitch yeast (i.e. add it to the wort) immediately, which helps expedite the fermentation process.

5. The verdict.
With the wort and yeast now in the fermentation vessel, Chuck took out a sample of it and a hydrometer and measured the specific gravity of the mix (its density relative to the density of water; in brewing, it indicates the amount of sugar) to see what kind of potential we had for it to turn into beer. It looked light in color so we wondered about it. Wort made from malt extract (rather than malted grain) is usually darker. “It’s probably about 7%,” said Chuck. Looks like our malting worked!

Chuck measures the wort's specific gravity.

Of course we had to all have a taste (I'm on the left).

The wort had a grainy, sweet flavor, with a little bit of bitterness and some wood on the nose (probably coming from the hops that we used).

Now all we had to do was let the microbes do their work. We put an airlock on the fermentation vessel, covered it with a tablecloth, and put it in a quiet corner.

Fermentation didn't take place right away. But then, last Monday afternoon, the airlock started foaming wildly. Fermentation! It is such a sweet and victorious smell when you stick your nose over the airlock and realize that finally all of your labor has reaped a reward.

This first aggressive fermentation, called the primary, will dissipate within a few days and settle into a slow methodical rhythm. I will rack (move the beer from one container to another) several times before we bottle. The racking helps to clear the beer through gravity and also frees it from all of the trub (sediment that accumulates at the bottom of the fermenter).

We’ll keep you updated.