We brought Andi ki Kari which is whole
eggs in tomato sauce, Ugali a corn meal staple, boiled rice fresh
cucumber salad and fresh tomato salad and a couple of chutneys. Some
of the other dishes served included Spiced potatoes, peas and
paneer, prawn curry, naan bread, cucumber and mint lassi. And as
usual we finished the evening with a DVD on Tanzania.
I've become a bit of a lover of these
fresh salads. Pretty much made identically. Thinly sliced onion has
just a smidgen of vinegar and some fish sauce drizzled over it then
scrunched well with your hands to loosen the rings and let the
liquids penetrate. Then the tomato or cucumber is sliced but not too
thin and mixed with the onion. A little salt is then sprinkled over
it and stirred through. The salt just lifts the flavours.
During the day although we didn't seem
to be flat out busy a lot got done. Jean focused on getting the Andi
ki Karj and Ugali done and spending time with the the Ferdis aka
Indian Runner ducklings. While I ticked off the remainder of items
on my current short list i.e. cleaning up two paddocks of cow pats.
Not that there many pats. It seems that rain accelerated the
breakdown of the pats and so I was struggling to get many bags. Still
any that is collected goes to good use.
Inspected the bee hive which is very
active. They are approaching the time for a robbing. The four middle
frames are capped and the next two outer frames capped on one side.
I'll monitor their progress but expect to rob before Christmas.
Having perfected the art of creaming honey the entire batch will go
towards that.
A recent article in ABK (Australasian
Bee Keeper) was on feeding bees. An excellent research article and
informative. It covered using different blends of sugar i.e. 2 parts
sugar 1 part water, 1 part each and just dry sugar and also something
I hadn't considered that is not leaving the mixture too long as it
can ferment to the detriment of the bees.
When we collected our nuc in August we
started feeding them to make sure they liked their new home. The
details of feeding we gathered from A.I. Root The ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture (a free digital copy is also available) first published in 1877. I'm very impressed with this
book. Although it is not written as a research document it covered
all areas of feeding and why. Things like: dry sugar is easy but the
bees need to make a lot of flights to collect water to dissolve it.
Not feeding excessively and over stimulating the hive. Not over
feeding during inclement weather as the bees get excited and go
outside only to die. It spoke about quantities to feed and ensuring
the feeder fed out gradually so as not to have spikes in the feed
routine. There was so much information of great value.
The book is a reminder of our first hive collected from a farmer on the upper Manning River. He not only sold us a hive but also gave us the book "You'll fine this handy - keep it".
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