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Archive for the ‘food’ Category

God Save the Queen!

Posted in food, honeybees on October 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

The queen must die, we decided this weekend.

Hive #1 has been our best hive for a couple of years. This year, our first year to harvest honey, we took 5 supers off that single hive, a little more than 10 gallons. It’s the towering “beescraper” on the left, below. By mid-July when we harvested, we added yet another deep body to the stack so that the bees wouldn’t swarm for lack of space. We named the queen  Imelda because we imagined that the queen of such a massive bee city would have a lot of shoes in her bee closet. It has been a mega-city, a bee-tropolis. But today, we planned to kill the queen.

Imelda's hive

We’ve been going through the hives lately to make sure they’re adequately prepared for winter, and we found that hive #1 had no eggs or small brood, a sign that the queen had failed. (Eventually, she just runs out of eggs.) Usually, the bees take care of succession themselves, starting a new queen when the old one begins to falter, but it’s too late this season for them to manage, so we planned to pick up a new queen Monday. First, though, we’d have to assassinate Imelda so that her workers would be ready to transfer their allegiance.

I was reluctant to re-queen the hive–I’d much rather let the bees raise one of her daughters since she clearly has good genetics. So we were very pleased to find two frames full of Imelda’s eggs and small brood this afternoon–and Imelda herself, still fat and glowing.

Guess she just got back from summer vacation. No sign of her shoes, though.

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Hymn Sing

Posted in food, Mennonites, music on August 30, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Instead of celebrating the start of a new semester of teaching with my traditional box of Breyer’s cookie dough ice cream, I celebrated with a community hymn sing at Park View Mennonite church tonight. On the whole, I think it’s a healthier approach. An hour and a half of deep breathing, wrapped in intricate harmonies, with a song leader who wasn’t afraid to keep the tempo fast.

We were near the front, so I didn’t get  a great look at the crowd, but I think Jason and I were among the youngest participants. Which is a pity. There’s nothing like four-part harmony, Mennonite style. (Though, to be fair, the Brethren, Methodists, and others made a showing for the hymn sing.)

So what if the theology doesn’t always sync perfectly with my postmodern faith? I sang these songs standing on a pew as a kid, belting out “Old Mother Brown is Sleeping Sound” (that would be “All Other Ground is Sinking Sand”), caught up in the joy of the people around me and the beauty of the music. It still works. And, I confess, it works best when I don’t bother to update all those male pronouns for God, and just sing it like I first learned it.

The old hymns combine darn good music and sweet, old-fashioned poetry. I really don’t care much for “praise” music, though I do like the multicultural music in the newer Mennonite hymn collections.
Compare:

You, You love, love….dribble, dribble…

move me, move me…dribble, dribble….

yeah, Baby! Jesus!

With:

Could we with ink the ocean fill,
And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade;
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.

And sorry, dear reader, if you prefer the dribbly music. I’m past thirty now. I’m allowed to curmudge.

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Backyard Economies

Posted in ducks, food, honeybees, livestock on August 29, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Tonight I cooked pork chops for the first time in my life. And they were good.

I’m not usually a big fan of meat. Until I married Jason, I was practically a vegetarian, but he’s a farm boy and likes to sink his teeth into once-living flesh now and then. Since we started butchering our own poultry, we’ve had a decent supply of chicken and duck, and I’ve learned to enjoy meat with a history.

A couple of weeks ago, we visited family in southern Indiana and stopped to see old friends at Brambleberry Farm. We took them honey from our bees and five young Muscovy ducks. In turn, they gave us several nut trees from their nursery, some seed garlic, and a selection of cuts from some of their American Guinea Hogs. Thus, tonight’s pork chops.

I dredged the chops in flour, salt, and pepper, and did a simple saute in butter and olive oil. The meat had more body than the pork chops I’ve encountered before, almost like steak and, as Jason said, “It has flavor.” An incredibly rewarding flavor. In the end, I picked up the remains of the chop and gnawed at the bone like a barbarian, unwilling to let a morsel go to waste.

I wonder if they’ll want more honey next year?

*Insert reality check here: as all of us who care about global warming know, it’s wisest to shun meat. Meat remains a once-a-week treat for us, but what a treat when it comes with a history!

*Reality check B: the five Muscovy ducks were still young, small enough to all fit into a large cardboard box. I don’t recommend traveling with full-grown ducks. Though some do.

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