Local bees best?

I've heard several theories regarding bee colony collapse - a fungal infection, bees having an adverse reaction to GMOs, and the common practice of packing up and moving bees between fields and farms for mass pollination of one crop at a time leaving the bees with severely weakened immune systems (because it's natural to take pollen from several types of flowers -- you'd get sick too if all you ever ate for 3 days was asparagus, then candy for 3 days, then bread for another 3, etc.).

Connecting with this last point, they've done a study that says the "wild" bees (as opposed to the bees brought in for the mass pollination described above), actually do a better job of helping the plant reproduce, as "imported" bees tend to result in more plant inbreeding. 


They're now recommending that farms leave more untouched wilderness around their fields for "local" bees and other pollinators to live in, get a balanced diet in, and stay healthy.

Bees are a vital link in the food chain, their importance cannot be overestimated.

We've certainly enjoyed watching the many different type of pollinators, mini and bumble bees and more, since we let our backyard go "natural", it's full of long grasses, bluets and strawberries in the spring, clover and thistle in the summer, and goldenrod in the fall.  


Read more about wild bees and this latest study on the CBC.

Stompin' Tom has passed on...

Reported on the CBC, Canadian music icon Stompin' Tom died today.  He wrote some really awesome, down to earth songs about Canada, and Canadian topics, like hockey, and PEI potatoes.  All catchy, all easy to sing along to.  I think every Canadian knows at least one or two of his songs, if not more.  He will really be missed, as a minstrel of Canadian life.  :)

From the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/03/06/stompin-tom-obit.html

Bud the Spud - about PEI potatoes!  And the Hockey Song - the good ol' hockey game.

Oops...lobsters and crabs CAN feel pain, after all...

There's a growing body of evidence that means the food industry needs to come up with a more humane way to kill shellfish before they are prepared for human consumption.  It turns out that shellfish like lobsters and crabs can not only feel pain, but will seek to avoid it if they can.  We (try, mostly) to humanely kill our other animal food sources -- at the very least we acknowledge they feel pain. One is not allowed to be cruel by tearing the legs off a live animal, for example. But this is a practice that is done every day in the shellfish industry and in the food preparation of shellfish around the world. I wonder what world culinary and fishing reaction will be...considering the complete lack of action on the almost extinction levels of tuna (it's not cuddly, so its hard to get people to care it might go extinct shortly), I'm not very hopeful... :(

Read one of many articles surfacing about this latest study here.

Edit: This is a great post from a while back on Trevor Corson's old blog, discussing humane ways to dispatch lobsters when preparing them in your home. An interesting read!

Amazing World we live in now...

Wow. Technology will continue to allow us to do the most amazing things, improving our lives in ways we can't yet see. This story is incredible, about a little boy who got lost, ended up being adopted out to another continent, and then, miraculously, was able to find his hometown and his family again once he grew up, thanks to Google Maps!

From the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17693816

Happy Easter (dinner)!

Hope everyone has a wonderful, peaceful Easter weekend. I'm working, of course. :) Hotels never close! But I still made a nice meal for us to enjoy, albeit separately.

I tried this recipe for ham, but left out the sauce (I just used a little toupie ham, so the drippings weren't really existent). So basically, it was a steaming, then glazing with Dijon and brown sugar, followed by a packing on of toasted bread crumbs baked on high heat for a few minutes. It looks DIVINE...

For sides, I went with mustard mixed pickles (a jar of Habitant in the fridge is a great memory of childhood, it always goes great with pork and ham dishes), my fave pidpenky (my own recipe, an amalgam of ones I found online) with garlic, wine and beef consomme, candied carrots (with a little butter and brown sugar, although this sounds really good...), possibly vinegared beets (I'll share the recipe if I end up making it - its a symbolic dish for Ukrainians, with the red symbolizing the blood of Christ, and the vinegar and usually horseradish symbolizing the bitterness of the death Jesus faced), and for a starch we'll have Potato bread stuffing - I'll use this recipe as a base - instead of poultry seasoning, I'll likely use a lot of sage and a little summer savory, little minced onion, etc (check out more details on how I've made my dressing in the past). No paska this year though, no time! (Here's the recipe my family's used for decades). And no koubassa either :( you have to hunt in this city for decent stuff, we don't have a large Eastern European community like Montreal or Toronto. Although we are getting more ethnic cuisine from other cultures, slowly over time, which is great!

Just a side note: I love SOAR (which is where the stuffing base recipe came from) - for SO many years in the early days of the Internet, that was THE place for online recipes. They don't show up high in the search engines these days, but there are a TON of great recipes there (and not a lot of repeats of the same ones over and over that you find on ALL the sites, this site was before those days!), be sure to take some time to look around! The ethnic foods section was especially amazing, you just didn't have access to these recipes unless you were brought up with them - it was really inspiring!

So, that'll be Easter supper here in Halifax - hope you have a great Easter supper celebration wherever you are! Christos Voskrese!

Speaking of bees - amazing bee evolution in Japanese bees!

Speaking of bees, bees in another part of the world have come up with an AMAZING defence mechanism against their worst enemy, the very agressive giant Asian Hornet. Their stingers can't pierce its tough exoskeleton, so they devised a "hot defensive bee ball" - they all get together in a swarm around the invader, and beat their wings until they cook the hornet to death inside the ball, while remaining unharmed themselves!!!!

AMAZING... Read more here.

No Bees = No Food

Another link in the chain has been discovered in the mystery surrounding the seemingly world-wide collapse of beehive colonies. A particular type of pesticide that was developed to be less damaging to humans and mammals apparently affects the bees so they are unable to return back to the beehive, reducing populations and making them extra susceptible to stresses that can collapse the whole colony.

CNN has an article discussing the latest studies. Once again it's come to light that pesticides may save crops from one threat, but we are creating new problems in return...

Spring must be coming!

A sign of spring today - I saw evidence of a large bird being at our bird feeder when I took the girls out to play today. About 10 minutes later I heard the unmistakable "gobble gobble" of a ring-necked pheasant in the woods. So they've come out of the deep woods - and visited the feeder, yay! :) I loved seeing their babies a couple of years ago. And later on, a nuthatch showed up, so he's traveling through as well. Spring can't be that far off!

Sunset Tonight

Gorgeous night.  Had to edit out the power lines, but we do get a great view otherwise at the top of our hill... :)

Kotatsu for world peace?

Mainichi has a wonderful opinion piece on how the world might be a better place if the use of the kotatsu was more widespread.  Personally, we can't imagine why on earth use of the kotatsu hasn't caught on more in Canada, and other northern areas. They are just the best!  In brief, it's the way the Japanese stay warm in the winter, with limited central heating. Its a special, small electric heater screwed to the bottom of a square or coffee table, with a large duvet sort of blanket over-top, and a piece of board the same size as the surface of the table put on top.  Its super warm and cozy, there's nothing like the feeling of having your lower half tucked in and warm while watching TV or playing games, reading, surfing on the laptop, etc.

I've written about our family kotatsu before, its become an indispensable part of our winter-time life. We all gather around it come evening, the cats jostling for position on top, little Lila jostling for position underneath, with our legs in there too.  Our old table was quite old and it broke, and the new one we have is smaller, so we all have to squeeze in a little tighter!

We joke about the "peace of the kotatsu" often at our house.  But it really is true, it calms and soothes tempers, even amongst the cats! Cats that normally want to smack at each other, once they get settled down on top, will sleep close together, happy as can be.

For instance, Baby and Peepers:

And Peepers and Kuroi:


No clawing, no fighting, just everyone enjoying the warm cuddly nature of the kotatsu. So maybe that gentleman from Mainichi wasn't too far off after all! :)

Oh no! Seagull Rescue!

This happened in Dartmouth yesterday, and Patrick Helliwell got some great photos of it. Poor bird, he looks so helpless, like he really gave up. Apparently he got in a fight with some crows and ended up in the position you will see when you click the link. Thank God NS Power were able to rescue him, and he didn't get himself fried!

Horses!

About 10 minutes ago THIS happened outside. This has NEVER happened before. At least not since I've lived here!  Not something you see every day in the suburbs of Dartmouth, and as the cop said to me, not usually when it's this cold out either! But I guess the horses must get their exercise no matter the weather, so dutifully the police bundle up and go!

Edit: Coincidence?  The force is looking to disband the horse unit, along with some others (the horse and rider on the left are pictured on the CBC page too!) http://www.cbc.ca/ns/insidethenews/2012/01/horse-sense.html. Hope they get to stay around!  Its a nice touch of tradition, and a great way to get kids involved with the police in a positive way.

Post Holiday Clean Up, Hoarders

Having always had hoarding tendencies myself, I try hard to keep on top of the clutter level in my home. The biggest and easiest thing for me has always been to 'head it off at the pass' by carefully thinking about what I bring into the home in the first place - do I really need it, or will it just end up being garbage?

I love watching A&E's Hoarders, because I find it very inspiring to get up and do a little cleaning. :) Its' back for another season, premiering last Monday. You can watch the latest episodes online (yay!) - look under "top videos".

Matt Paxton, one of the cleaning specialists they have on the show, has a great set of tips for decluttering BEFORE it becomes an untenable situation, check 'em out!  Now's a great time, post-holidays, to reassess your stuff and get some cleaning in, pre-Spring!

Happy 2012!

Hope everyone had a fun New Year's eve! :)  Thought I'd start the new year off here with a cute story from the BBC, how a woman in Sweden found her lost wedding ring 16 years later, in a most peculiar (and gardening-related) way!


Find out here!  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16374283

Happy New Year!

Old Christmas Trees & Just for Fun

If you're not waiting, like me, for "Second Christmas" to roll around (Ukrainians and other ethnic groups still celebrate Christmas on January 7th), you can donate your old Christmas tree (tinsel-free, as always) to Hope for Wildlife. They will use them as habitats and cage buffers for their little and big creatures alike.  If you don't live in the Halifax area, contact your local wildlife refuge and see if they could use this gift as well!  Read more on the CBC.

And also from the CBC today, the top 10 list of ridiculous 9-1-1 calls received from the Chatham-Kent police department in southern Ontario.  Warning: they're pretty ridiculous!  Enjoy!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that 2012 will be a great year for you all!

Hakodate Christmas Tree

Every year, like to Boston, we send a tree to our sister city of Hakodate - SMZ was traveling in the area this year, and did a great blog post on it with lots of pics of our big tree! Check it out!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia...

Well, they said it might be "rain along the coast" but I guess we're not "coast" enough! :)  Crazy weather out today, yesterday was bright and sunny and only a little cool, but today we have been hammered with the first big snowstorm of the season.

It was very fun to let the girls out for the first time into snow this year, telling them "you'll be so surprised!" and they just stand at the door, confused for a second, then take off into the puffy snow and have such a great time! (This snow is very wet, perfect for snowmen btw!)

Glad to be snuggling under the kotatsu right now, and really glad I didn't have to work today, wouldn't want to be on the roads right now!

Christmas Craft Fairs - 'Tis the Season!

Well, almost!  The biggest craft fair in our area, Christmas at the Forum, is next weekend already!  This year has just flown by!!

I do sincerely hope one day to be able to sell my wares at one of these large fairs, but until that time, I eagerly read information about selling at craft fairs, so I can get a good idea in my mind of good display & selling tactics.

Here are some of the things I've noticed made a good booth display over the years:

Do not overstock in plain view: there was a booth I saw that sold small products (I won't mention what kind for anonymity) but they were in small packages that could be hung. Their display probably had 200 items all hung in neat rows and columns, but it was MASSIVELY overwhelming.  I thought about going to look at the booth but it was literally such overload I just didn't want too.

One booth had all the booth attendants wearing fun Christmas themed t-shirts. That immediately put you in the festive spirit!

Lighting is really, really important.  If you have anything that sparkles, be sure to bring extra lighting to show it off!  I saw an herbal vinegar seller whose wares were all sorts of different colours, and they had spot lighting behind the bottles that made them all shine like jewels!  Extremely appealing!!

If you have a URL, be sure to display it prominently! With the busy-ness of some of the fairs, some people may not even be able to get to your booth to grab a business card, etc. but still are interested in what you sell.  If you display your URL prominently, people will be able to check it out later even if they couldn't look at your products as closely as they'd like this time around.

If you do an unusual craft (or even if you don't) photos of the process is always a great way to generate interest.  Often people will become more enthusiastic about your product when they see details of how it is created.

The great people over at the Folksy Blog did a wonderful series on "Craft Fair Advice" - so head on over there to read some of their great ideas for selling at a craft fair: http://blog.folksy.com/category/seller-tips/craft-fair-advice. 

If you're selling this year, best of luck! And if you're like me, have fun at all the fairs out there! :)

Ancient Paint Factory

As an artist and a former student of anthropology, this story captures my interests on many levels! They've discovered a "factory" in this gorgeous looking cave in South Africa (check out the article for a picture - what a view!), where they believe ancient man created pigments using ochre, charcoal and oil from seal bones, mixed and ground together inside shell "containers'. Read more about this fascinating discovery, and why man doing this 100,000 years ago is so important for our understanding of when we became modern humans, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15257259

Thanksgiving 2011

I hope all my fellow Canadians had a nice Thanksgiving weekend! I didn't get my work schedule until Saturday, so unfortunately I was unable to set up plans to make Thanksgiving Dinner for my family this year (as it turned out, my folks went on Sunday to their favorite restaurant which had a set Thanksgiving turkey menu, and I was able to join them along with a dear family friend and a cousin - it was great turkey, and no dishes!)

But for Dave and I, dinner didn't happen until we were both off Monday afternoon. I had found a marinade online that I wanted to try, so we decided to have a Thanksgiving BBQ (Dave's not a huge fan of turkey, so no big loss for him).

There's a place locally that my family has gone to since I was little - it used to be right around the corner, but it moved several years ago, so we don't get there very often any more. It's called the Steak & Stein, and I have tons of fond memories of eating their delightful steak (and their great kids' birthday parties). Their signature steak is the Delmonico, Derby style. There's enough about my love for their steak and my wish for a replica of their amazing recipe to have at home to fill another blog post, but suffice it to say, I found a nice marinade online that is a great start towards that amazing flavour, and that's what I used for my Thanksgiving steak. I cut up a super-sale pot roast for this steak, and it turned out nice and tender after 48 hours (LOL) of marinating. (Here`s the original recipe I started with: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Melt-in-Your-Mouth-Marinade/Detail.aspx).

Aside from that, we had roasted potatoes I had grown from sprouted store-bought potatoes over the winter, and some tomatoes I had picked and saved from my blight-ravaged tomato plants. Its a celebration of the harvest, even if that harvest was lean. We also had some lovely fried fresh mushrooms and onions - no steak is complete without them!

I tried another recipe too, using my mother`s garden garlic and some adorable fresh little italian eggplants I found in the supermarket. However, it turns out that (at least this kind of) eggplant gets very...slimy....when roasted, and we didn`t enjoy the sensation of that at all. The garlic roasted up really nice in them though!

All in all, although not as elaborate as I like, it was a nice Thanksgiving dinner, and it was great to have some homegrown produce to share at the table, to welcome the end of the growing season, and be thankful for all our blessings.