liver pate

I was getting a little burned out on working. I tried to have a day off on Sunday and I managed to not work for about two hours. So today again by afternoon I was really dragging, so I decided to cook that liver pate recipe I mailed out to customers a couple of weeks ago. I had a few extra livers from some necks that mysteriously disappeared and 2 from the dinner we had Sunday for Mary's Dad & Stepmom being in town, and one from the chicken we are having later this week. (Mysteriously we eat a lot of chicken) From the LA Times:
http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-sos-20100311,0,5055248.story

Anyway, I went to whole foods for the pancetta and a baguette. Came home and patted the livers down and removed the connective tissues and patted the livers down and salted and peppered them no problem. These tasks were apparently well within my culinary abilities. Since I only had 1/2 lb of liver I substituted the "large saucepan" for the non-stick frying pan I use to cook eggs because I am comfortable with it and its non-stickness. I threw in the 1/4 cup oil when the pan was hot, and then started putting the livers in, and the fun began. Little firecracker sounds and explosions of oil started hitting me as I tried to sneak more livers into the pan. Mary was attracted to the commotion and wandered over only to be splattered. She yelped and I wouldn't say "yelled" "you can't deep fry in that pan, get the big one" so I pulled out the huge red Le Crueset but she screamed "not that one, on the lower left! aughhh" she got hit again. I pull out the pan and I'm like "what do I do now?" and Mary, calmer now, "just dump it in and keep going, you'll be fine"

Feeling sorry for me, Mary helped me by chopping the garlic and zesting and juicing the lemon while I fried livers and chopped scallions. Also she told me when the pancetta fat was rendered and what it meant to shake the pan to deglaze. The rest of the preparation was straightforward but all things considered cooking is pretty stressful. I couldn't believe how yummy it was though and ate crostini after crostini of the stuff, heaping it on with a spoon. Delicious. Washed down with a certified organic amber ale from Eel River Brewery. Now I was really feeling lethargic. But my goats and pregnant ewes needed some daily grain, and the mutt roosters I plan on selling to Western were outta food, and the thanksgiving turkeys needed their droppings pan dumped and re-bedded. back to the grind.

As I was out there I remembered another topic I have completely forgotten to blog about: my 2 new beehives. I had read this book by Novella Carpenter a while back called "Farm City" and it made me want bees, and one day early in spring I couldn't resist the "Order bees now" sign in front of beekind. I now have 2 hives of Italian bees.

I picked them up with Jeremy on Saturday April 17. I talked to Doug about his video online where he defies most of the videos you'll see and just places the package inside the hive instead of shaking the bees out. He offered to show me one that he had placed just a few hours earlier, sure enough, almost all of the bees were out. I brought the bees home, tractor'd the 2 hives out to the middle of the "lower field" that is in the middle of the orchard, and commenced, Jeremy in tow, to remove the can of syrup and pull out the queen cage. I think in Doug's video he does it all without protective gear so I, being a fully macho man, intended to do the same. I hadn't noticed the subtle nuance however of shaking most of the bees off the queen cage before you brush the last 1 or 2 off with the wad of grass, so I went at this mass of bees on the queen cage with my wad of grass and immediately got stung on the finger. OUCH! and reflexively tossed the queen cage on the ground. Oops, left the gloves back in the barn. With gloves on I recovered the queen cage and was able to remove the cork, plug the hole with a marshmallow, and put the package in the hive for both hives. The next day though it seemed like most of the bees were still inside the package, so I ended up shaking them out. I also noticed one of my queens had already been released, I think I didn't jam the marshmallow in tight enough. I didn't even check the other queen cage, just filled up the feeders and closed it up.

Yesterday I finally checked on the bees again. Feeders were totally empty. Lots of larvae so it looks like both queens were accepted. But in both hives I had major beespace violations and they had built their own triangle shaped combs in the open space in the middle where the queen cage was. I removed these, thinking they were bad and also empty, but when I got them up to the house I saw in one of them each cell had a tiny egg in it or a tiny larva. Oops. I probably should have just left all that since it was their brood super anyway. Well, hopefully they just get over it and with the frames pressed closer together they don't build another one of those unframed combs. I should seek out an online forum of beekeepers to whom I can ask questions before I go undoing all the wonderful work the bees are doing. They really are a miraculous animal though. I love all sorts of creatures. I just wish I had a few more of me to go around...