Senior Sea Kayaker

You're right. I saw this as a cobbled together piece of old labware. I can only blame it on the perspective. And thanks to @liamsaunt for the virtual tour.

I'm looking at this as a separate apparatus that was used for any task that needed magnification. A stand alone fly tying clamp would also be necessary.

The 'clamp thing' appears to be part of a standard old school lab apparatus used when conducting dissections of small objects (such as lab mice, examining petri dish cultures....etc...) as evidenced by the magnifying lens and the retort base. As an aside this apparatus is the ideal tool for tying flies. Maybe it's 'cool' but if I was served a drink in a lab beaker I'd be about as happy if they started serving drinks in urine sample bottles.

Breakfast wrap of eggs, zucchini, green onion, pepper jack and herbed and blood sausage. The amounts of sausage used, appr. 20 gm. of blood and 40 gm. of herbed, resulted in the sausage acting more as flavouring. Worked out well. Served with a tomato and an orange.

Dreary rainy day. Sunny side eggs with chives and sriracha, tomatoes with basil and the last peach of the season. Multigrain baguette and coffee.

Never tried nettles although they can be foraged locally.

If you prefer chard have it with chard. You're the one eating it. I've made it with collards, kale, spinach and arugula and a slew of mixed greens from the garden. Growing up my mother always make it with cabbage.

Most of yesterday's haul: purple long beans, thinned green onions, chard, dried Italian parsley seed heads, radish and beet greens, a few rogue radishes that were hiding under the chard, some dill, tomatoes and cucumber.

Air dried oregano and summer savoury.

This is something I've been making for many years. It was originally celery pickled with fish sauce, soy sauce, rice vinegar and lime juice. At the time I was looking for a way to utilize chard and beet stems and used this recipe. My only addition is a finely julienned green Thai chili. The red colour is from red chard and beet stems bleeding into the liquid. It's a nice pickle to accompany rice.

I should have added this earlier. Colcannon made with long braised kale, optional bacon, and onions. I would go with a 1 part braised kale to 2 parts mash with butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Dinner yesterday after a longish day of gardening and other chores, dog sitting and working with harvest from the garden. The discussion on dark leafy greens resulted in making a spanakopita filling from onion, chard leaves, radish greens, beet greens, dill, garlic and feta. Omelet with the above filling, tomato and cucumber salad and peaches with a dollop of habanero applesauce. Glass of Pinot Grigio to accompany.

@blue_dolphin You're killing me with those duck eggs but please continue 😇

A lot of great suggestions. The only thing I'll add is if you don't want to deal with making spanakopita with filo the filling (which I will use spinach, arugula, beet greens, chard and escarole) makes an excellent filling for an omelet.

Dinner yesterday evening for a few guests. Some of the photos were too blurred hover I made a chicken and shrimp soup with long beans, red and yellow peppers, chard stalks and greens, edamame, garlic, ginger...etc... All the components were prepared ahead of time so when we got back from an event it'd be quickly on the table. Made some wontons with ground pork, shitakes, garlic chives...etc... Sauteed some shrimp with herbs, ginger.... Blanched and shocked shrimp roe noodles. My bowl: (since not everyone appreciates hot chili everyone could doctor their serving with chili oil. soya sauce, hot sauce....etc....) Soup base laced with chili oil, wontons, shrimp, noodles and a final squirt of sriracha and chives.

'Hagar the Horrible'. One of my favorite strips back in the day.

Toasted dark rye and hummus, tomatoes, pickled herring, a small wedge of Oka, a peach, V8 and coffee.

Great looking burger but eating it would necessitate washing my beard 😋

Apple habanero jelly trial 2: I made the same recipe using the crab apples I foraged a few days ago. The crab apples worked much better. I still had to boil the sieved apples for about 50 minutes to reach the gel stage. Ended up with 500 ml. of jelly (4 125 ml. jars) with a much more vibrant red colour and as a bonus when I filtered the finished jelly through cheesecloth I saved the 'habanero applesauce', about 300 ml., filtered out.

Breakfast this morning: shashuka: tomatoes, baby zucchini, sweet and hot peppers, onion, garlic, eggs and finished with zucchini flowers and chives. With toasted multigrain Ace baguette, a peach and coffee. The rain is tapering off after a full day yesterday and overnight so off to check the garden.

Those old crab apple trees hold a lot of apples. It took about 5 minutes to collect that pail full (as I do check for wormholes and rot). My BIL made a large batch of applesauce from apples, crab apples, sour cherries from the old tree and peaches. Sent me over a sample and it was pretty good. Good apple flavour with good acidity and barely sweet. We've been debating having a go at making a test batch of cider. I'd have to drop into a local cidery and sweet talk them into selling me some yeast.

I'm not meaning to be too critical however I will comment. Correlation does not equal causation. That is an important axiom to remember with anecdotes like this. They focus on one aspect and tend to ignore other salient factors such, as @dcarch has pointed out, increased rainfall....etc....

I went for a long walk yesterday and managed to return with about a L. of blueberries. This is not shaping up to be a good year for those berries. They're bloated with water and squish when touched I also picked a pail of crab apples from one of the trees in the back pasture. They're small, very sour and very tannic. I'll be making another batch of the apple habanero jelly soon.

Egg scrambled with a fish pepper and chives, smoked salmon and tomato on a toasted croissant. With V8, a peach and coffee.

Nice looking breakfast. Duck eggs are another one of the grocery items that are not available to me locally. Miss them.