My January 2012 Essex Beekeeper magazine arrived this morning. I looked to see what amusements were in store over the next couple of months, and saw that in January we get a talk by Norman Carreck BSc CBiol FSB FRES NDB on the subject of recent research. I don't even know what some of those initials stand for. Later in the month there's the Colchester divisional AGM, but if I go to that it will be a first. Saffron Walden division are following their AGM with a curry night at the India Villa. They know how to live over in Saffron Walden.
My sub is due by 1st January. The Systems Administrator asked how the local division related to the national association, and I had to confess that I didn't precisely know. The SA looked at the subscription form, and said that it was all set out there, adding cryptically that I was a member of the Soviet. Since the Arab spring began the SA has been reading about the history of the Russian revolution, which turns out to have many parallels with recent events in the Middle East, and now, apparently, the organisational structure of British beekeeping. I am a member of my local Division, the Soviet, while the Essex Beekeepers Association sits above it as the Party. The SA says that the Party has to prevent the Soviets from breaking away. Thurrock division did actually secede from Essex some years ago, so the model holds up quite well, though I don't know how the SA would account for the third layer of the British Beekeepers' Association presiding over the counties. The subscription splits between them with £7.50 going to the Division, a £7.00 capitation fee payable to the County and a £15 capitation charge going to the national association.
On the back page of the magazine were colour photographs of the Gilbert Louvre, a type of hive entrance designed by a local beekeeper called Mr Gilbert. It was in commercial production at one time, and looks quite ingenious. The SA asked whether it was fitted to the hive using the Gilbert Louvre Manoeuvre. Sometimes I think my other half does not take beekeeping entirely seriously.
We are on to the final phase of Christmas entertaining this evening, as my parents are coming to supper. I have made a black currant fool, since by this stage everyone has probably eaten quite a lot of cake and pastry-like things, fruit fool is a pudding that can be made in advance, we all like black currants, and I have some home grown ones in the freezer. My mother does not eat pips, and the first pressing of the cooked currants through a plastic sieve looked distinctly pippy. Here is how you get the last pips out. Wash the sieve, tip the fruit pulp into it, and shake the sieve (over a clean bowl). Juice will start to drip through. As you get down to the last thick bits of pulp, if you press with a spoon you will be back to square one. Instead vibrate the sieve, shaking it as hard as you can (while keeping it over the bowl). Most of the juice does shake through leaving a remarkably dry residue of pips.
Black currants are potentially one of the messiest ingredients I've cooked with, but not as dangerous as beetroot. I was once making borscht, and put too much cooked beet in the liquidiser at once, and did not hold the lid down hard enough. It takes a long time to clean a fountain of beetroot juice off the fronts of cream coloured kitchen wall cupboards.
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