Recipes

If you google the ingredients of a popular brand of decongestant rub, you'll see things like petrolatum and turpentine oil. Not necessarily ingredients you want to be rubbing on the biggest organ of your body!

Instead you can make this all-natural beeswax-based decongestant rub at home.

You'll need:

• 30g grated beeswax
• ¼C of Sweet Almond, Olive or melted Coconut Oil
  (Coconut Oil will produce a slightly firmer balm)
• 10 drops Camphor Essential Oil
• 10 drops Peppermint Essential Oil
• 7 drops Eucalyptus Essential Oil
• 5 drops Clove Essential Oil
• 5 drops Cinnamon Essential Oil

You could also use the equivalent of a pre-mixed decongestant/cold & flu oil blend like this or this.

1. Pour the oil into a glass jar and add the grated beeswax.
2. Fill a pot with about 5cm of water over a medium/low heat.
3. Place jar in pot and allow the beeswax to melt into the oils. Stir to combine.
4. Once combined, allow to cool slightly and add in the essential oils.
5. Pour mixture into containers and allow to set.

Derrick and I were lucky enough to travel to Tahiti for our honeymoon, thanks to the generosity of our family and friends who contributed to our honeymoon fund as a wedding gift.

While there we visited Le Vallee de la Vanille on Tahaa Island, a small family-run vanilla plantation producing the most divine vanilla you've ever tasted! We brought back some whole vanilla pods, which I turned into homemade Vanilla Extract for Christmas presents (6 large split vanilla pods to 250ml vodka/rum/whiskey).

I had a leftover vanilla bean so after hearing good things about vanilla honey, I decided to infuse some to see what it tastes like. 

Here's what you'll need and how you make it:

• 100g of honey, I think a sweet mild honey is best, I used our Native Flora and Manuka Blend
• 1 large plump vanilla pod

Cut your vanilla pod in half scrape the seeds and add them to a clean jar. Then cut your vanilla pod into small sections and add. Pour over your honey.

Leave to infuse for at least a week, turning occasionally to help the flavour infuse.

Angela
The Beekeepers Wife

I love the combination of citrus & honey, and my English roots means that Marmalade has always been a breakfast staple in our household. This honey marmalade is a little time-consuming to prepare, but the resulting flavour is incredible. With no refined sugar or added pectin, all you need is two ingredients; your citrus of choice and honey!

The most affordable honey will do, this is not the recipe for your most expensive Manuka! You will be cooking this marmalade so any antibacterial properties will be lost anyway.

This will work with just about any citrus, my faves are tangelo, lime, and grapefruit. But you could use a mixture of whatever you can get your hands on. Because you're going to be using the rind, it's important to source organic (or at least spray-free) and try to buy local if at all possible. We're lucky that Derrick's mum Judy grows the most amazing oranges, limes and lemons - all spray-free.

Check your local Facebook community groups, you can often snap up amazing citrus going free, if you're happy to pick it yourself, or barter/swap for it (like I do with our honey). The grapefruit in my latest batch came from a lovely customer who was happy to swap a big bag for a 1kg jar of our Native Flora honey (which just so happens to work perfectly in this marmalade recipe).

So here's what you'll need for your 2-ingredient honey marmalade:

• 1.5kg citrus
• 750g honey

And that's it!

But here's my least favourite part of this recipe. To start with you'll need to use a sharp vege peeler to remove the outer layer of rind leaving most of the pith behind. Once you've peeled the citrus, chop the rind up finely and blanch it 3 times in boiling water for ten minutes each time, changing the water in between.

Use a sharp knife to remove the rest of the outer pith and put in the compost. Then use your knife to remove the fruit segments from the membrane, discard any seeds and chop roughly.

Add the fruit to a large pot and simmer for around 10 minutes. You can then add the softened rind and your honey.

Cover your pot and cook over a med-low heat until it reaches a jam-like consistency, ensuring you stir it regularly (be careful not to forget about it and let it overcook like I did - you'll have candy rather than marmalade!).

Pour into sterilised jars and voila, yummy 2-ingredient honey marmalade!

Angela
The Beekeeper's Wife