Don’t you love it when you clean out the fridge and the resulting food comes together in one dish so beautifully you can’t help but think you ARE WINNING THE KITCHEN WARS?
Well, this happened the other day, and I can’t stop thinking about it and high-fiving myself:
Here’s what happened. I bought a couple marinated salmon skewers at Farm Boy, fired up the grill, and made them for my lunch. There were two in this package (I think there are usually two) but it was too much for me to eat so I put one away in the fridge and promptly forgot about it.
Before too long it was time to clean out the fridge and I rediscovered this lone skewer. What could be done? I picked a few kale leaves from our vegetable garden**, washed, chopped, and tossed ’em with some Farm Boy Apple Cider vinaigrette. Then I added the cold salmon and topped the whole shebang with leftover feta, a few stray snow peas, and some green onion from my windowsill that was leftover from a surprise delivery from Mike’s Garden Harvest. (Thanks Mike!) It all came together so wonderfully that I am going to have to recreate this salad very soon.
** I use this term very loosely.
I really like bees. I don’t know where it comes from, but I think bees are pretty cool and deserve a little bit of love. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at beekeeping but, sadly, that’s not going to happen here in Westboro. We CAN, however, do the next best thing:
1) Plant bee-friendly flowers our flowerbeds.
2) Avoid using insecticides in the garden.
3) Put a source of water out in the yard for bees and butterflies: a shallow dish of water with a layer of pretty rocks or half-submerged marbles will do the trick!
4) Get out the camera and contribute to Bumble Bee Watch. (!)
HELLO NEW FAMILY PROJECT.
What is Bumble Bee Watch? Good question. This is from their website: Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve North America’s bumble bees. This citizen science project allows for individuals to:
- Upload photos of bumble bees to start a virtual bumble bee collection;
- Identify the bumble bees in your photos and have your identifications verified by experts;
- Help researchers determine the status and conservation needs of bumble bees;
- Help locate rare or endangered populations of bumble bees;
- Learn about bumble bees, their ecology, and ongoing conservation efforts; and
- Connect with other citizen scientists.
I snapped a few photos the other day, opened an account on the website and uploaded them to the website. It was a very easy process. What I didn’t expect (but makes total sense) is that users are asked to take a closer look at their bumblebees and try to match them to illustrations on the website as they’re uploading. As it turned out, I’m pretty sure we had a Brown-belted bumble bee in the front garden – Bombus griseocollis. It’s common, but still, pretty exciting to contribute to a project of this scale!
The photos are verified by experts later, but it’s still neat to contribute in this way. And who knows! You may have a rare species in your own backyard!
Tip: The best photos are taken straight on so you can see the colouration of the head and body. (Don’t worry about being stung. Bumblebees will mostly ignore you.) I took a lot of photos and then realized there were only a couple that were clear enough. Next time I’m bringing my zoom lens too. :)
As some of you already know, our place was broken into a few weeks ago. This has left me a little bit paranoid, as you can imagine. There have been a number of B&E’s around our area and I’ve also heard reports of bikes going missing.
Sidebar: have you ever taken a look at the Ottawa Police crime map? It’s actually quite interesting and gives you a good picture of what crimes are happening in your neighbourhood as well as the kinds of crimes are happening. You can access it from this page (then click “launch the Ottawa Crime Mapping Tool” on the right side of the page).
Anyway, I rode my bike to work the other day and got to thinking about my bike and how much it would suck if it got stolen.
It’s pretty old, and it’s not valuable, but it would be a major inconvenience if it was stolen and I would be pretty sad to lose it. And THEN I thought, if it did get stolen, would I be able to describe it to the police? Ha. Not really. If someone asked I would describe it as a red and blue mountain bike but that’s about it. It’s weird, but even though I’ve owned this bike for years it’s a rather unremarkable part of my domestic scenery that I don’t notice anymore – like wallpaper – although the fact that I don’t know if there are any markings on my bike doesn’t make it less valuable to me.
So I decided to take two minutes out of my day to snap a few photos of my bike. If it’s ever stolen, at least now I’ll have something to show the police, the insurance company, and pawn shops. :|
I took a few wide shots, as well as closeups of some distinctive scratches and marks. As far as I could tell, my bike doesn’t have a serial number.
Seriously, it took two minutes. Although it won’t prevent it from getting stolen, at least I feel a little more prepared. I even went so far as to tag the file names in my terribly disorganized photo library so I’ll be able to find them quickly. I just hope I never need to find them!
