The bees have been in the hive more than a week now.
On Friday I had a bit of a gala to welcome them. It was an excellent time. Thanks for coming and thanks for bringing excellent food and drinks.
Saturday I inspected the hive to see how they’re building comb so far.
This is what the bees looked like when I opened the hive:
It was a bit rough, because the queen cage had caused the bees to build comb across a few of the bars instead of lined up with them nicely. First a shot of the empty queen cage.
Then on to the carnage. Here the sixth bar has been cut free from the diagonal combs, which are still connected to bars 4 & 5:
The top bars have a channel of wax running down the center of them so that the bees build the comb along the bars. When something causes the bees to build comb that doesn’t line up with the bars, the comb can normally be cut from the bar a little at the edges and straightened. I’m sure this works fine with comb that’s just curved due to being farther from the entrance, but the method (or my finesse) was not up to handling this soft new comb in this configuration.
Here’s the most hopeful point, with bars 4 & 5 separated from each other:
Unfortunately, neither of these bars had strong enough comb or connection left to survive straightening. I tied the biggest comb to the 4th bar and left the 5th bar’s comb on the bottom of the hive. I wasn’t confident that tying the comb back on was worth the time to find another piece of string. The bees should just chew it up and make new comb. Straighter hopefully.
Here’s the aftermath:
Comb images (mostly covered in bees) from the entrance back:
| 1 entrance |
|
| 2 entrance |
|
| 2 back |
 |
| 3 entrance |
 |
| 3 back |
 |
| 4 entrance |
 |
| 4 back |
 |
| 6 back |
 |
At great personal and communal expense, I have pickled a feral relish.
After harvesting the cheeses from the weedy mallows of my garden, I had extensive help from Adam and Cameron in removing their outer coverings.
This relish is pickled in tribute to the coastal first people gatherers who toiled long and hard digging roots and rhizomes, picking berries, and preparing and preserving these wild foods. They were taught that the berry spirits disapproved of those who ate while they picked, and scarcity would strike the berry patches of women whose berry-laden hands strayed to their mouths.
I am planning to serve this relish not with the Grease of the Eulachon, but with grilled cylindrical protein.
The relish is pickled with cider and rice vinegar, fennel seed heads, serrano peppers and garlic.
Photo credit for this first one goes to Evelyn. I might also mention that I just got a new digital camera, so perhaps I’ll be better about including my own photographic work in blog entries of the future.
Last night I made a soup with two plants that I had been meaning to eat for a while. Cleavers and Mallow.
Galium aparine and Malva neglecta
Mallow is from the same family as okra (Malvaceae) and probably the same subfamily, etc. Wikipedia gets foggy at this level of phylogeny. The important part is that mallows have a similar slimy (mucilaginous) texture to that of okra, so they can thicken a gumbo just like okra can. When I had the big pile of mallows on the cutting board, I thought it would be more than enough to thicken the gumbo, particularly when I picked up the gummy mass and tossed it into the pot, but once the leaves and shoots were cooked they got a lot smaller and I decided that I could probably have used 2-3 times as much mallow as I did. The texture was good, but definitely could have been thicker.
The cleavers I added very near the end, at the same time as some fresh oregano. I could have used a lot more cleavers too. I thought there were more of those growing in my garden. I will have to wait a week or two and make another weedy gumbo. Perhaps next time I’ll use the caribou stew meat that’s in my freezer. I think that would make a good wild gumbo.
Ingredients I remember putting in the gumbo, in rough order of addition: butter, onions, garlic, celery, potato, carrot, lots of capsicum flakes, veg. bouillon, filé, mallow, mixed cajun seasoning, asparagus, cleavers, oregano.
Breakfast
- cappuccino
- fried egg over easy
- fried leftover baked polenta w/ romano
- fried tofu chorizo
- two small old bananas
- later… honeydew melon (I think. It was green.)
I probably forgot some of the
Snax
- trader joes trail mix w/ seeds and/or nuts, white raisins, dried cranberries, milk and white chocolate chips
- chocolate from Theo, dumpstered by Alexis
- a bitter bolted beet
- the last mushy piece of cherry pie
- Kona “Wailua” beer. wheat ale brewed w/ passion fruit
- a handful of pine nuts
- who knows how much ice cream
Lunch
- hot spring day of pollen tea
- raspberry shoots
- fennel seds
- green tea
- mallow shoots
- ginger root
- feverfew shoot
- chamomile
- leftover grilled turnip
- ” ” butternut squash
- hummus
- a couple strawberries
dinner
- vegetable soup
- asparagus broth with a hint of fennel
- leeks
- celery
- a couple discs of sweet potato
- fingerling potatoes
- cauliflower
- kale
- beet greens
- chardonnay
- ice cream
J’ai deux rhubarbe grandissant dans mon jardin. Les poireaux et d’autres tiges font soupe mieux pour le déjeuner.
Last night I cut the flower stalks off of the sorrel (Rumex acetosa) so that it might focus on leaves for sorrel soup and such. I used the leaves from the flower stalks in a salad. Once the leaves were removed, the flower stalks looked similar to little rhubarb stems. I thought a sour stem crisp for dessert sounded really good, so I chopped up the flower stalks, but them in a ceramic bowl topped them with some sugar and oats, and baked this in the toaster oven.
img: Dag Kvammen (Jan Mayen 2002)
I was impressed by how good it was, though perhaps anything sour would be good prepared in this fashion.
Last Saturday I made spelt pancakes and fried smelt for breakfast.
The pancakes were vegan at Evelyn’s request. I filled the dry ingredients bowl and Alexis filled the wet ingredients bowl. I made the pancakes with about 4/5 c. spelt flour, 3/5 c. flax flour and maybe 1/5 c. pumpkin seed flour. I ground each of these flours from whole seeds with an old coffee grinder. Almond milk was used for the majority of the liquid. The pancakes were sweetened with brown sugar. We used a mixture of ground psyllium and water to replace the eggs. When making pancakes, I usually add the egg yolks to the liquid half of the batter and fold the whipped whites into the combined batter for added fluffiness and structure. Alexis ground the psyllium and mixed it with warm water to form a gel. I did not whip the psyllium gel.
I fried the smelt in butter. I ate four smelt without convincing anyone else(Evelyn, Janice and Matt) to try them. When Carla and Adam #2 got out of bed, they said they would eat some smelt. I fried them 4 smelt. They ate their smelt with eggs or something, because the spelt cakes were gone by then. Janice ate the final large cake. She ate it with cashew butter and syrup.
The cakes were thin compared to the type of pancakes where I whip the egg whites. These pancakes had a rough, hearty texture. The inside of the cakes was moister and softer than that of the egg cakes. The first couple spelt cakes were hard to cook due to their fragility, but after frying a few pans of them the batter began to cohere more and they were flippable. I was satisfied with the spelt cakes, and the smelt was just how I remembered it.
The heads of the fried smelt made good handles. I held each smelt’s spine in place by holding onto the smelt’s head with my left hand and pulling off a fillet with my right. I pulled the fillets off one side at a time and I popped them into my mouth one at a time. I ate 3 out of 4 fish without disturbing the guts and ribs when I removed the fillets. After eating a couple of smelt I tried eating them with the fins pulled off. I am not sure whether I preferred the added crunchiness of the fins.
This day was the FHR. I got up at about 7.
Breakfast:
3 pieces of toast
- one with peanut butter
- one with marmelade
- one with a fried egg
coffee
waiting for the ferry to Bainbridge Island:
orange juice and vodka
post-race food:
meaty chili
kiwi
banana
coffee (w/ whiskey)
bread
back on the mainland at the Owl & Thistle:
fish & chips
beer
after riding home:
shrimp-flavored noodles
fried together and then added to the noodles
- onions
- green beans
- asparagus
emergen-C & licorice kombucha
a slice of pizza
ice cream & coconut sorbet w/ blueberry syrup
When I get to the end of one of these I always feel like there must have been other stuff I ate and forgot about.
I’ve been looking for something with these functions in this kind of a compact keychain form for months. I finally found it at a vineyard on Bainbridge Island while visiting for wine tasting with out of town Minneapolitans Mike and Laura.
It was a bargain at $10. yay!
Nifty Bottle Opener/Corkscrew
Breakfast:
blueberry pancakes
coffee
grapefruit
lunch:
Bridgeport ESB
chorizo chevre cotija quesadillas
Labrador Red Ale
on the drive home to seattle:
lots of dried mango
some honey-roasted peanuts
damnit I forgot the cheese again
later:
some chocolate eggs
cheese and crackers
dinner:
pasta
sauce w/ tomatoes, asparagus & red peppers
hard boiled egg
grated feta
later:
two cookies
