Peaceful Bend Winery menu including Bluebird Gardens honey. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Bluebird Gardens Honey Dinner

What a delicious way to start the new year, having the honey from my garden featured in a four-course meal at Peaceful Bend Winery!

The winery has a monthly supper club where local produce is featured in their wonderful meals. I have been attending the super clubs as part of my retirement “training” by my bee buddy David, who continues to claim I am not doing retirement proper justice.

As a thank you to Katie and Clyde Nott, Peaceful Bend Winery owners, I gave them a couple jars of honey for Christmas. A couple of weeks later, Katie called and said August Rolufs, their chef, was interested in featuring Bluebird Gardens honey at their January 26, 2019 supper club dinner.

Bluebird Gardens Honey was featured in this January 26, 2019 Peaceful Bend Winery Supper Club dinner. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

When August addressed the group, he said the dinner was inspired by his visits to Mexico, so appropriate since I was raised in South America including Mexico City. Mere coincidence but I thought of it as a cosmic nod to the whole evening.

Turnip taco shells were a lot of fun, and delicious. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Every course had Bluebird Gardens honey on the plate. This course was crisp and fresh with turnip taco shells, my first time eating those.

The main meat course was wild and domestic rabbits from Meusch Farms, one of my favorite spring and summer Farmer’s Market sources for lettuce, spinach and other local greens. We loved the roasted vegetables seasoned with honey, and the little sprig of peas was fun - it really tasted like peas!

The appetizer course featured rabbit with roasted vegetables. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

The main course was locally-sourced lamb with a light sauce that included honey. The braised cabbage was my favorite of this dish, light and tangy, a nice contrast to the sweetness of the lamb.

This sauce with honey was scrumptious. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Desert is always a favorite and this one was another winner. The flan cheesecake reflected the traditional flavors of the classic Mexican flan with more body, and we had to double-check that the spun sugar topper did indeed include Bluebird Gardens honey.

Desert included honey in the spun sugar. (Photo by Charlotte Ekker Wiggins)

Every Peaceful Bend Super Club gives the featured product a few minutes to discuss their business. I took a few minutes to talk about the role of pollinators in our food chain and how the dinners can help keep pollinators by planting more flowers.

Did you know it takes 40,000 flowers to make one teaspoon of honey?

Talking about one of my favorite subjects, bees! (Photo by David Draker)

So there’s talking and there’s showing and for those who were interested in seeing my bee garden, Begonia Bee sat next to some photos and product samples, such as our honey sampler gift set.