Bee Stings and Strawberry Harvests

Strawberries and brown sugar in fresh
squeezed orange juice.

Last night, I was able to harvest just enough strawberries to make what my Grandma used to call a 'pudding cake'. Of course, Grandma used canned cherries--the kind in heavy syrup (not the tangy, jelly-like pie filling, which, in my humble opinion, should only be used for mountain pies made over an open fire). No, the kind Grandma used were sweet, dark cherries floating in liquid the color of garnets.

Her pudding cake was one of my favorite meals. Of course, to a kid, it seemed more like having dessert for dinner, which was almost like I getting away with something bad (especially since Mum would regularly explain to me all the complex nutritional reasons why I should be eating my vegetables). I have to admit that, even to an adult, having pudding cake still seems like dessert for dinner. Yet, in our case, it was dessert for breakfast.


So, um, what's the receipe, you ask? Well, I only remember Grandma's cake, its soft and slightly gooey consistency, its sweetness. However, I can't replicate it on my own, and I never really had a receipe for it. But, because of the wonders of the web (and the awesomeness of wireless in our house--a novelty I still can't get over) I take my laptop into the kitchen and find amazing things online. For example, check out The Pioneer Woman's receipe. Of course, I made a few substitutions.



Brown sugar, Smart Balance,
and an egg.

Instead of white sugar, Granola-girl here (um, that's me) has to use brown sugar. In this case, I can't use honey because it upsets the receipe's balance of fluid, and believe me, I have royally screwed up cakes by monkeying with the ingredients, like swapping Canola oil for butter. Girl, you cannot do stuff like that and expect it to bake. *clicking tongue and shaking head*

One improvement I have made is that instead of white flour, I use a mixture of unbleached and whole wheat, so there's at least some complex carbs in the mix. I've found if I use all unbleached white flour, I'm hungry within an hour or so of eating. The whole wheat makes it stay in the system a little longer.

 

The pudding cake in the oven.
It will be ready
for breakfast!


 So, there she is, baking away in the oven. I originally took pictures of the cake after it came out of the oven (with a slice cut out of it because, who can wait until morning to taste it? Heck, not me. And not Bun either.) Long story short, I had some technical difficulties with my phone email after I changed my yahoo password. And since I take pics with my phone and send them...well, you know. They never arrived at the appropriate destination.

So, I mentioned in my previous post that Michael was stung during the beekeeper-supported coup on Saturday (we replaced a weak colony with a strong nuc, evicting the old population from their hive). Through his sock, Michael believed he was stung twice. Later, he was stung in the head, when he had his veil off.


My Baby's bee stings. These actually look
somewhat better than they did the night before!



By the time we got down to the house, his eyelids had begun to swell, and the area beneath his nose started to turn an angry red-purple.  He took Benedryl, and we went inside to rest and see how he responded. We then realized the stinger was not yet out of his scalp, so we removed it. Eventually, the swelling around his eye and beneath his nose went down, to our relief. Still, his ankle became filled with fluid, although we didn't realize this until after he'd been on it several hours later (he'd been putting fence around the blackberries and blueberries and filling buckets for watering). We started applying ice packs to minimize the swelling and itching. He now believes he was very likely stung more than just twice on the ankle, although we're not sure how many times exactly.

The picture here was taken on Sunday night, about 36 hours after the stings. This is actually an improvement from what my poor Baby looked like on Saturday night, when his foot was swollen to an unnatural size. We read this is a normal localized response, but it's incredibly scary to see how the body deals with it. Regular doses of Benedryl seem to be working, thank goodness.