We had the quarterly market at the showgrounds this morning -- A bit thinly supplied I thought. Maybe people are holding back for the show. (October IIRC) I popped in for 10 minutes or so, as Barbs was working on one of the stalls, and optimistically bought some tomato seedlings.
This afternoon I gave work a pass and we went off to collect oysters and clams and to try out the new bait-seine, and the waders (garage-sale wins) The net is the legal 6 meters long - which is tiny, but I hope will work for little fish for the catching of bigger fish)to see if we could get a little flounder for my friend Bill's seawater tank. As an Ichthyologist at heart still I love seeing just what there is there - most of which we were able to return unhurt. It's a nice soft net. Alas, no little flounder forthcoming, although we took him some gobies and several varieties of little schooling bait-fish and a few shrimp and crabs. The shrimps did not survive long, and neither did several of the bait-fish, as he has voracious blennies and other little predators. Some of the baitfish however are too big for most of them so we'll have to see how they do.
I fried the Tassie oysters (they're a flat balon-type oyster very tasty, quite strongly flavored, if you are used to pacific oysters) in butter with a generous helping of garlic and some Italian parsley and dribbled the garlicy sauce and oysters over fresh salad leaves and chopped spring onion. That and some home made pizza from yesterday was supper, so it was quite a lazy cooking evening.
I love pulling a seine net. The neat things you find and the tasty things you catch. As we wait for my mother to pass away Chris and I have been contemplating moving back to the East Coast. She's favoring North Carolina but I can't get the Tidewater area (Norfolk)of Virginia out of my head.
ReplyDeleteMy Grandmother lived on the south side near the James River, my aunt on the North side near Yorktown where the river meets the Chesapeake. In either place a day didn't go by when we couldn't go to the water and catch something to eat. Particularly my aunt's house where off the dock she always had a crab pot down and it always had some number of blue crabs in it. (Callinectes sapidus)
I was making the boast that we could always catch something one Thanksgiving...it was cold and blustery...and was challenged by a family member to prove it. Went out to the end of the dock and with a few casts got some bait, grabbed a pole and floated the 10' down to the mouth of the inlet. Soon I had some nice stripped bass. Just before the chill froze me!
Quilly I never stop being amazed at just how fecund the East coast of the US seems to be, even with all those people there. I have to wonder what it must have been like once. Or is it (as is often the case, even here on the island! that the skills have been lost by most of the population? My sympathies with the situation with your mother. What are the prospects employment wise on the coast? Wish we could have you guys here :-)
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