Bees

California Poppy Sculpture, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.

Alison's most recent post on Ithaca's Food Web highlights the movie Queen of the Sun, which is a wonderful commentary on the plight of the honeybee and the threat to pollination in the United States. I recommend Alison's post for an excellent summary of the film, and encourage you to think about the origins of your honey - most honey, it seems, contains pesticides (injected into hives to kill mites) and can contain high fructose corn syrup (given to industrial bees to stimulate honey production). If you care about these things, check out this film and think about the origins of your sweet treats.

I have done just a little bit of research into honey and found that Purest Honey Apiaries sells chemical and antibiotic-free honey, but I am overwhelmed by choices. So, I would appreciate any information or suggestions you readers may have!

Kodiak Cuisine

Beautiful girls: Nora and Zoya make salmon cakes

Warning: For those of you who don't like hunting or eating animals, I advise that you stop reading here 'cause this post contains photos of hunting.

Otherwise: For those of you into meat eating, this is a sweet post!

I had the great joy of making a trip to Kodiak, Alaska this past week, where I attended the Kodiak Area Marine Science Symposium and spent the week living with good friends Patrick, Zoya, and their kids (click here to check out their blog about life in Kodiak). They were wonderful and generous hosts, as always. We have an enthusiastic blog follower in Patrick, and he made it his mission to give me as much local Kodiak food as he could - and he delivered! The selections were all protein, since local vegetable material is pretty tough to come by in Kodiak in the summer, let alone in April. In fact, Zoya went to Safeway one afternoon and found there were no vegetables to be had, even in the grocery store.

Patrick enjoying black cod (a.k.a. sable fish or butter fish) - it is sweet, oily, buttery, rich, and delicious.

As I've described in earlier posts, Patrick is a hunter and provides all the meat his family eats. This includes elk, venison, and mountain goat in various forms, as well as canned salmon and other fish. Patrick has completely altered my opinion of hunting and has broadened my vision of what meat-eating can be. I look forward to the spoils of his hunts each time I go to Kodiak, and I am in awe of the amount of work and skill that goes in to pursuing, dressing, and carrying a large animal out of the field. Below are a series of photos showcasing what we ate this week...as with everything else we eat, I think it's important to know where our meat comes from, and it can't get much more real than this. If you're interested in getting more detail, watch Patrick's video of field dressing a deer. It's amazing - and not gory - and was shown in the Kodiak Film Festival this year. I treasure my trips to Alaska, and this was one of the best!

Deer - this made a wonderful roast.

Canning salmon!

Sigh. When I first saw this photo, I thought it was a happy, grazing mountain goat. Nope, he became sausage and roast.

Maine's Maple Syrup Weekend

I think a post about maple syrup is destined to become an annual tradition. As a treat, Andrew recently bought me a ticket to Portland, Maine, where we met for a restful weekend away. I have always had this vision of Maine in my head (pine trees, craggy ocean cliffs, salty people), and it never disappoints. We stayed in downtown Portland, where we intended to wander the streets, eat yummy food, drink Allagash beer, and leave the car in its parking space. However, when we discovered we were in Portland on Maine Maple Sunday, we could not resist visiting some of the nearby sugar shacks. As you have read in other years' posts, Andrew has become obsessed with sugar shacks (yikes!) and all things maple.

During this particular visit, we saw the more touristy display, where they had maple cotton candy, carriage rides, etc. The best part was they demonstrated how maple syrup was made long ago: in cast iron pots over an open fire!

While this was fun, we didn't really feel like we had an authentic Maine maple syrup experience - until we noticed a tiny sign advertising syrup on our way home. We stopped and found a family of 4 who tap trees in their own yard for a small-scale, home production...and, of course, the guy running the show had been a physicist/astronomer at Rutgers in his past life. We spent a good, long time grilling them about their methods, eating ice cream with syrup on top, imagining our own sugar shack, and laughing about the small world of astronomy.

Wedding Local

We in the West/Foster household have weddings on our mind because Susan and Tim are getting married in July! As the Maid of Honor (yes, I know. I am married and should be called "Matron of Honor", but I will not be called matron, thank you very much), I have been keeping my eyes peeled for wedding ideas. This week I noticed this article about a "local" wedding thrown in Somerville. The focus of this wedding was to patronize Somerville businesses for the whole wedding, and it sounded like a great success. They used some of Somerville's favorites, including Bergamot restaurant, which apparently features local produce on the menu. The next step would be to throw a wedding where all the ingredients are produced locally - maybe my new back-up career could be local food wedding coordinator?