Beyond Words

A friend of mine recently posted this photo of Winnie the Pooh’s 100^th birthday and it got me thinking…a lot of my favorite entertainment likings celebrated some big anniversaries and commemorations in recent months. Winnie the Pooh turning 100 is just the start of it, and boy do I love Winnie the Pooh!

That has always been one of my favorite quotes and I love that Pooh’s wisdom, Tigger’s energy, Eeyore’s doubtfulness, Piglet’s shyness, Rabbit’s bossiness, along with wise ole’ Owl and sweet Kanga and Roo have entertained and influenced generations for so many years. Don’t we all have a little of each one of them in us? Raising my hand for sure.

Another entity I love and that has entertained so many for so many years is the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” starring Audrey Hepburn. The movie, based on a Truman Copote novella, was released 65 years ago but continues to engage viewers with its naïve and eccentric socialite Holly Golightly who meets a struggling New York writer played by George Peppard.

Who can forget Hepburn’s beloved and stylish character staring into the Tiffany’s window and its classic “Moon River” song?  The dress! The pearls! The updo! The sunglasses! The film was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Hepburn, and put Hepburn permanently on the fashion icon map thanks in part to the Givenchy little black dress she wore and that made the LBD a classic closet staple.

A few years later in 964, Hepburn would be cast as the equally-iconic Eliza Doolittle in one of my all-time favorite films, “My Fair Lady.” That very same year, Julie Andrews was cast in “Mary Poppins” and the gossip mills had a field day with it all. It all started when Hepburn was cast as Doolittle despite Andrews originating the role on Broadway.

At the 1965 Academy Awards, Hepburn wasn’t even nominated even though “My Fair Lady” won Best Picture and her co-star Rex Harrison won Best Actor for his role as Professor Henry Higgins. And guess what? Andrews won Best Actress for her role as the beloved Banks family nanny. I actually love both films equally and my dream room is the library with mahogany shelves and rolling ladders in “My Fair Lady” but Poppins was “practically perfect in every way,” and this quote stands right up there with Pooh’s on my list of favorite quotes:

She’s not wrong!

A year later and 60 years ago this year, another Julie Andrews film would win Best Picture. “The Sound of Music” soared into the 1966 Oscars with 10 nominations and left with five wins, cementing its place in Hollywood history. I never tire of watching that movie, admire its political boldness for the times, laugh at the drapery clothing, kinda feel bad for the Baroness, and can sing every song.

All these films have beloved soundtracks that our family had in album form (see pics below) and to this day, when any song comes on, I’m singing right along. I might be at the horse race at Ascot, scaling a fountain in Austria, or jumping London rooftops as my phone’s music downloads scroll effortlessly through these favorite showtunes right before and after country, rock, and pop favorites:

“My Fair Lady.” My absolute favorite is probably “I Could Have Danced All Night” and I also cherish “On the Street Where You Live,” which was my dad’s favorite. I always think of him when I hear it. I also love “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “The Rain in Spain,” and “Get Me to the Church on Time.”

“Mary Poppins.” I love the empowering “Sister Suffragette” and march right along to “Step in Time.” One cannot even think about the movie without singing “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” or “A Spoonful of Sugar” but it was “Chim Chim Cher-ee” that won the Oscar for Best Original Song. Personally, I cannot help but tear up every time I hear “Feed the Birds” and especially “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.”

“Sound of Music.” The hills definitely came alive with this one but my favorite thing from it was probably “My Favorite Things” as well as “Sixteen Going on Seventeen,” “Do-Re-Mi,” and “So Long, Farewell.” I can picture the Von Trapp kids doing their little wave on stage before secretly exiting stage left while singing it. IYKYK.

About the time we were laughing, crying, and singing to all these classic films, we were also singing along with and glued to our TVs, watching two gems: “The Brady Bunch” and “The Partridge Family,” which debuted in 1969 and 1970 respectively. Now granted, Keith and Shirley Patridge’s “I Think I Love You” and “Come On Get Happy” run circles around the Brady’s “It’s a Sunshine Day,” but simply mention “It’s the story…” and you’ll have many singing one of the most famous theme songs around.

I personally adored Laurie Partridge and even cut my hair like her’s. When you think about it, what’s amazing is that the Partridges were a single mom family while the Bradys were one of the first blended families. The Partridges bus was perhaps as famous and popular as them and we can all close our eyes and envision the Brady house, right.

So famous is the actual house in L.A.’s Studio City neighborhood that it was just this year named an official historic landmark. As it should be!

So, did you enjoy this little trip back in time? Do you remember them? Do you have favorites? Did I leave anything out? I’m sure I did as the pickings from back then are anything but slim but I tried to limit mentions to those celebrating something big this year. Stay tuned. 2027 is right around the corner and I’m sure there will be plenty of commemorations then and they might actually be some more of my favorite things!

Honey I’m home! We’ve all heard that announcement and have probably hollered it more than a few times at our honies. It’s sometimes fun and so was a recent talk I attended on bees and honey. It was actually fascinating and thanks to guest speaker Konrad Bouffard of Round Rock Honey, I’m officially fascinated with all things honey and all things bees.

Round Rock Honey

A few fun facts:

• Some bumble bees sting, some don’t, and they generally only sting once.
• The different stripes on a bee signify different dads.
• Females rule the beehives! You go girls!
• Bees are the only insects that produce a substance man can eat without any side effects.
• Other insects besides bees produce honey, including ants and the Mexican honey wasp but the honey they produce is likely poisonous due to the types of flowers they visit for nectar.
• Honey is the only food made by an insect and eaten by both humans and insects.
• 10 bee stings can be equal to one rattlesnake bite.
• Honey contains a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, proteins, antioxidants, and antibacterial qualities as well as every single nutrient needed to keep man alive: water, vitamins, minerals,
• and enzymes.
• All species of bees don’t produce honey, with only honeybees and stingless bees making enough honey to really matter from the human consumption perspective.
• Bees need honey to survive and without it, they would not be able to perform their daily activities.
• To produce a pound of honey, more than 2 million nectar producing flowers must be visited. An average bee produces just one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime, which may last a mere six weeks in a busy season.
• One colony of honeybees may produce 60-100 pounds a year.
• Foraging bees have to fly about 55,000 miles to produce one pound of honey; visiting 2 million flowers. They not only collect pollen to make honey; they inadvertently pollinate crops and nearby flowers that produce almost one-third of food eaten in America. They also move from flower to flower pollinating as they go. If pollinating bees were removed, the U.S. economy would be greatly affected as pollination plays a vital role in our country’s agricultural development.
• Honey never goes bad as long as it’s tightly covered to keep out humidity, no liquid is added to it, and it’s stored at room temperature. It may thicken or crystallize over time, but that’s not a sign of spoilage. When storing honey, do so in non-metallic containers as it can corrode metals.
• Honey is mostly a combination of glucose and fructose as well as other liquid sweeteners from natural sources, much like both agave and maple syrup are.
• Compared with granulated sugar, honey is sweeter and higher in calories, carbs, and total sugars. But it’s as nature made it!
• Honey is said to have been in existence for thousands of years, with some estimating that beekeeping has been practiced since 700 B.C. with the earliest reference to the use of honey is said to be around 5500 BC in Egypt.
• Ancient Greek civilizations regarded honey as a symbol of blessings and happiness and used it in funerals.
• Honey is also Biblical. You might be familiar with the phrase “land flowing with milk and honey,” which is actually found in numerous books in the Bible. It’s all part of God’s word to deliver His chosen people to the Promised Land and the idea of milk and honey reflects the promise of richness and liveliness that God pledges to provide as we enjoy His bountiful blessings.

So, there’s the fun facts, but what about some fun details? Bee patient honey and read on…

From Bouffard we learned there are four types of pollinators: wasps, which are what he called the bad guys; flies, which are annoying but critical; butterflies, which are warm and fuzzy; and honeybees, which are a combination of all of these. Oh, and BTW, those “dirt daubers” you see that make mud nests are essentially stingless wasps. Good to know! Managing these habitats so they…and we…can all coexist is crucial. Let’s look at wasps and bees…

Wasps are essentially agents of disease control, sting repeatedly, and die in winter. Bees on the other hand, generally only sting once, are “furry,” have three-pronged feet, and some varieties produce honey. As for where the two flying critters live, Bouffard had great description of this too.

Wasps live in nests and bees live in hives. My favorite description he gave was calling wasps nests “frat houses” as they are sloppy, messy, and residents tend to no work together as a team. Sigma No! On the other hand, bees take care of each other in their hives, which are made of wax. Like I mentioned earlier, female bees rule the hive. Their male hive-mates male are called drones and these daddy bees don’t have a stinger, don’t gather nectar or pollen, cannot feed themselves, are larger than worker bees but smaller than queens, and they’re the ones with big eyes. Their main role is to mate with a new queen and afterwards, they lose part of their reproductive system and die shortly afterward.

As for those worker bees, they are aptly named as they do all the work. They have stingers but don’t lay eggs unless the queen dies. That queen boasts a big tail and mates with up to 50 drones. Yikes! Those queens are royally busy little bees!

One popular myth about honeybees is that when one stings, it leaves behind its stinger, called a barb, and dies after. Sometimes this happens; sometimes it doesn’t. When a honeybee stings, which is rarely BTW, the stinger lodges in the victim’s skin, tearing the bee’s abdomen from its body, causing the bee to die. Sometimes however, the stinger doesn’t get stuck and the bee survives.

Show Me the Honey

Now for the honey. As mentioned earlier, honey is nature’s only perfect food. We eat it and so do the bees themselves and it also serves as insulation in hives. According to everydayhealth.com, the sweet stuff we put in tea and create hotty toddys with is actually a nutritious and concentrated energy source that is also an ancient folk remedy for health and healing as well as a current active ingredient in beauty and skin care products. And you thought the sweet, syrupy substance was only yummy!

But how do honey bees actually make honey? They do so from flower nectar that they gather as they travel around and then bring it all back to the hive. From there, the nectar is transferred from the collector bee to the worker bees who process it into a thick syrup and store it in the honeycomb, which is made of wax produced by younger bees and molded into hexagonal-shaped cells. While doing so, they fan it with their wings to help evaporate moisture so it becomes even thicker, stickier, and more resistant to spoilage. It really is an amazing process!

Honey in general is the subject of ongoing research as a potential ingredient in supplements and medications that can be used to treat of variety of health issues like asthma, gum disease, allergies, swelling, viruses, diabetes, and inflammation as well as helping facilitate the production of immune cells in the body. Bouffard even suggested taking two tablespoons of honey daily to flight inflammation, with local honeys being a double win due to their local pollens.

Some practices also have uses for honey as a home remedy, including gargling it for sore throats and combining it with ginger juice as a natural cough syrup while others use it as a topical remedy for burns, cuts, and skin disorders. And here’s a sweet tip: stir in two teaspoons of honey and ½ cup plain yogurt into ½ cup orange drink for a hangover remedy. Cheers!

NOTE: As with anything however, always consult your doctor before doing anything, which is especially important when it comes to honey if you have high blood sugar, diabetes, or are watching your carb intake and keep in mind that though rare, there have been isolated reports of allergic reactions to honey so take extra care if you are allergic to bees or pollen.

The healing components of honey are also used in many cosmetic skin and hair products, not only for their antiseptic and antioxidant potential, but for their softening, soothing, and conditioning effects. Honey lubricates the skin and holds onto moisture, making it an ideal ingredient in beauty products ranging from lip balms to lotions to shampoos. Some even recommend applying honey directly on pimples and dry lips for quick relief.

Everydayhealth.com also reports that scientists have found that raw unprocessed honey provides protection for teeth and against tooth decay as well as helping fight periodontal disease and gingivitis.

All this isn’t entirely breaking news, as long ago, wealthy men bought gallons of honey to bathe in and some were even buried in it. Alexander the Great was said to have valued it so much he was embalmed with honey since it was so expensive and scarce.

Okay, so you want to give this honey magic a try but where to start? For one, it’s always best to buy from a local beekeeper as it means the honey is harvested pretty much straight from the hive. To be sure you’re getting the real deal, buy raw honey from a locally known and respected beekeeper. Not only will you get a good product, local honeys may help alleviate local allergies and you’ll be supporting a local business. If store bought is your go to, be sure to check the labels before buying anything.

And although you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, you might want to judge a honey by its color. In general, the color of honey is dependent on what flower the bees suck the nectar from and the taste and scent of honey depends on the flower as well. It can all also be affected by weather conditions. Dark honey is usually the result of a dryer year during which bees work harder for nectar, while a light honey was likely harvested in a wet season. Those lighter-colored honeys like clover and tupelo (yes, that’s a real honey not just a Van Morrison song!) are generally milder in flavor while amber-colored honeys like orange blossom and eucalyptus are more moderately flavored. The more deeply colored honeys like buckwheat have the most intense flavor. In addition, like with any harvested product, soil, climate, and region also determine the color, flavor, and scent of honey.

I’ll wrap things up with one of my favorite characters, Winnie the Pooh, who as we all know loved honey. Bee sweet my friends!

Happy October…the official month of Halloween…and Candy Corn!

So what say you? Love it or hate it? It is often amazing how passionate people are either way. They either love it or hate it. You would almost think the sweet treat was running for office! What about you? Do you love or hate Candy Corn? What is your favorite Halloween treat?

I personally LOVE Candy Corn. It’s hands down my favorite traditional Halloween treat and I even have candy corn-themed tapers on our table. Amazingly I don’t like Halloween with all its ghoulish and ghostly things and it doesn’t help that I don’t like having to dress up in a costume. But, give me Candy Corn and I’m a happy trick-or-treating camper.

Out loud and proud right now on every store shelf are the traditional triangular-shaped treats with their iconic white, orange, and yellow pattern as well as variations on the original gems. Candy Corn has become synonymous with Halloween but that wasn’t always the case.

Candy Corn’s history dates back to the 1880s when George Renninger, an employee of the Wunderle Candy Company in Philadelphia, came up with the idea of molding butter cream into the shape of a corn kernel. The exact recipe is unknown, although it’s suspected the main ingredients were butter cream, sugar, and corn syrup, meaning Candy Corn does indeed contain “corn” in at least some form! At the time corn was an American food staple with both families and livestock and its target market was agricultural and rural families. In fact, the treat’s original name was “chicken feed!”

Renninger’s creation could be molded into any shape, with chestnuts, turnips, and peapods being some of the first options before today’s shape took hold. Candy Corn’s chewy substance is generally made from sugar, egg whites, and ground almonds and being that it had limited availability due to the amount of labor it took to make, it became forever linked as a coveted harvest and fall-time treat. It was only natural that its association with Halloween would result.

Jelly Belly, then known as the Goelitz Confectionary Company, is credited with popularizing Candy Corn more than a century ago. It all started more than a century ago when the company began making the candy in its Cincinnati factory in 1898 using the original recipe to create the tri-color candy. How its made has changed dramatically however.

The confection took off but being that its three distinct stripes were painstakingly poured by hand, demand was hard to keep up with. Originally, workers had to carry 45 pounds of sugar and corn syrup down a conveyor belt laden with candy trays. They then had to pass the streamers over the trays so the liquid could drip into the molds, repeating the process with each color to make a single piece of candy consisting of its signature signature white tip, orange middle, and yellow tip. Not only did this require strength and endurance, it was very time-consuming.

Thankfully, America’s factory economy took off and today equipment does most of the work. An estimated 17,000 tons or 35 million pounds of the seasonal staple are produced annually using a recipe that hasn’t changed much over the years. Jelly Belly alone makes 9 billion kernels every year! Today it’s estimated that 35 billion pounds of Candy Corn is sold annually!

So, what does Candy Corn taste like and what is it supposed to taste like?That’s a matter of personal palate but according to Jelly Belly, the main flavors are rich marshmallow and warm vanilla. Another fun fact about Candy Corn is the fact that you can teach young kids the concept of The Holy Trinity with it in that even though it’s made up of three parts, it’s one candy. Love it.

As with anything, Candy Corn has morphed into red and green “Reindeer Corn” and pink and red “Cupid Corn.” Yes, I would probably eat those, but being the traditionalist that I am, I pretty much stick to the white, orange, and yellow fall favorites and originals. I don’t even like the ones that have a chocolate-flavored brown portion. I do, however, love the pumpkin shaped candies.

Who knew those little white, orange, and yellow candies had such a long and storied history. I for one will be buying some and invite you to join me as we celebrate National Candy Corn Day on October 30. Woohoo!

In the meantime, here are some fun (and corny!) ways to celebrate Candy Corn.