Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Wood Bison

Yukon Wood Bison.
Bison bison athabasceae.
Finally i have a picture of Canada's biggest land mammal.
The quality of the photo minimal. It's the farthest reach of my camera, probably the animals are 5 km away from us.

Jane Vincent went skiing with me this morning. I still have a cold and am a little short of breath keeping up with her. On the bottom of a hill, she continued, and i slowly walked up to a bench, in the landscape. The seat i sat on ,was a dead branch.
Most of our trails here, are not round abouts, i would wait till she would come back.
As i sit there googling (can i use this word appropriately in this context?). I see some dark shapes in a far away meadow. The rest of the world more grey, with the snow coverage. Zooming it in with the camera, it looks like something, then like a truck(highly unlikely) and in the third photo i take, it definitely are Bison, it seems like 5 or so adults and 2 calves. My first sighting since March last year!

After we come back, we have some Moose soup (it could have been Bison).
I am not into cooking very much. Last night i took out a bone, with meat and fat on it. This morning I put it in the pressure cooker, and now don't follow this as a recipe, because.... well i just throw things together that are at hand. So there goes the bone, some sea salt, carrots, my own home grown potatoes, celery seeds, pepper, my home grown bay leaves. And then a hand full of dried wild herbs.
In season i pick several herbs, dry them on a rack with white cloth, put it in the sun, in the breeze. (this method works for me, because it is fast.) Store them in jars, with a few grains of rice, just in case some moisture was left in the herbs.
And now beautifully in mid winter i have this collection of herbs. Today i used; nettle, juniper berries, labrador tea and plantain seeds. Fill the pot with water, bring to a boil and put it on the wood stove to simmer. Voila! hot soup aroma greets us when we get back. It's a wonderful life!

5 comments:

Anja said...

Sounds like a great "soup of the day". Does Don hunt bison?

aria said...

How can you have a cold when you eat so very healthy :-) ....? Anyhow, it sounds good, this soup. And hey, beautiful picture of the bisons!

RachelW said...

I'm amazed that you got such a good photo from 5km away! Beautiful creatures.

jozien said...

Yes, Don's a hunter (see post December 5) and so is Aria! Right? Aria.
Well it must be the soup, but i already got over my cold.
Yes it is amazing, these animals are very big, The last time i saw one close up was, indeed, with Aria.

Sue said...

The herbs sound delicious as well as the soup. I want to try to dry herbs for next year, thanks for your instructions. I may comment you in the summer if I have questions!