Cheese and honey

Parmigiano-Reggiano and Tasmanian leatherwood honey. 

Hummingbirds instead of bees. That's weird. Probably regurgitated through their tiny thin elongate beaks. I feel sorry for those hummingbirds. They need all the sugar they can get. Did I ever mention that I went up to Conifer for the specific purpose of photographing hummingbirds? Took me awhile but I finally discovered a large stone B&B tucked away in a lovely secluded mountain valley with two feeders on the back porch which could be seen from the tiny parking lot. So I parked and marched right up there. People came in and out of the back door right past me and nobody ever challenged my presence. I took hundreds of shots. Still plenty of battery life but my arms got tired of holding up the 18-200mm lens. So I left. I still feel a little bit bad about being so rude. Uploaded to Flickr a bunch of really super neato-o photos of hummingbirds in all aspects of flight. Slideshow. The photos were so huge the birds were 10X larger than life-size. As usual they had to be scaled down drastically just so they would be manageable online. But I could easily make a billboard out of them. Well maybe not easily, but it could be done. 

Check out the bokeh on the gold-colored doorknob.  

Salmon with honey and ginger sauce

It's actually a lime sauce, but it's heavily flavored with honey and ginger and mustard. The oil is unsalted butter in which the salmon was gently sautéd. The salmon was cut into strips and lightly dusted with seasoned floured. Flour that was seasoned with S/P and some kind of Spice Boys proprietary hot mixture of powders. At least it says HOT on the little can. The pan retains some of the seasoning from having fried the salmon. The butter never got hot enough to burn so it was still in good shape to serve as the basis for the dressing. The same seasoned flour mixture that dusted the salmon is used for thin roux to form a sauce, or a gravy if you prefer, which is sufficiently interesting to also serve as a dressing for salad. It has everything it needs and more: oil (butter), acid (lime), sweetener (honey), umami (ginger and mustard), seasonings (S/P some kind of mysterious hot combination powder), in this case, it also has thickener (flour) which could easily have been corn starch or some such.

I didn't pour the sauce over everything, I just kept dipping the vegetables and salmon sticks into it to varying degrees of thoroughness so each forkful was a little bit different in sweetness, mustardy heat, and KAPOW!, ginger.

Salad
* orange bell pepper
* cucumber
* tomato
* half a Romaine heart
* slice of purple onion.

Fish
* Pacific salmon sliced into stick shapes
* dusted with flour, S/P, hot powder
* fried in unsalted butter that doesn't burn on moderate heat

Dressing for both salmon and salad
* same seasoned flour that dusted the salmon
* grated fresh ginger
* teaspoon mustard
* 1 whole big juicy lime, or possibly two discouraging scrawny not so juicy limes.

Blueberry pancakes

Pour le dîner.

les ingrédients

avec des noix de pécan↓                               sucre brun↓, miel↓