Before I received my bees, I had bought organic sugar to make their syrup.  I dutifully made up this syrup the day before the bees were to arrive.  But then I noticed that this liquid was brown in color.  I knew you were not supposed to give molasses or brown sugar to bees so I was concerned.  I dug through my bee books and found a statement that you are not supposed to use organic sugar with bees either because it can cause them to have diarrhea.  Now I certainly did not want bee diarrhea so the morning I picked up my bees I also rushed to the store and bought white sugar and quickly made up new syrup before putting the bees in their new hive.

And then I had to throw away all of the organic sugar syrup I had made.  I hate to throw away food.  There is too much energy invested in its production for me to ever feel OK just throwing it out.  So it made me feel bad to dump it out.

Apparently Tom forgot this whole saga because when I put sugar on the grocery list to make more syrup Tom came home with 10 # of organic sugar.  So I had to go to the store to buy white sugar, but I was left with all this organic sugar taking up valuable kitchen cupboard space.  But I was not going to throw it out.

Then my mother came to visit, and I was trying to foist organic sugar off on her.  We had also been talking about my vacation and how spoiled the chickens got getting all the leftovers.  So she suggested I make cake for the chickens to get rid of all this sugar.  Then I remember I had leftover oil from making fritters I could use and some stale whole wheat flour.  So I thought this was a perfect idea.

My first two cakes did not turn out well.  For the first one I used my bread maker which is supposed to make cake, but I stupidly doubles the recipe and the cake did not get done.  Then I tried a yellow cake recipe but used the oil for greasing the pan, and it stuck badly to it and came out a mess.

But then yesterday I heavily modified an apple cake recipe and used lard (which I still have plenty of) to grease the pan.  For the cake I used only the sugar, flour, oil, a couple of eggs (which we have plenty of), water, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  I skipped the apples, pecans and spices.  The cake did not rise well but otherwise came out great.  And the chickens loved it.

So I made three more cakes for them to give them each day this week.  I used up all the oil, almost all the sugar and made a huge dent in the amount of flour I have.  Plus I have very happy chickens.