that's a lot of meat.

Oooh. Ate too much, too rich... We had a very simple tea of crayfish (spiny lobster) salad, fresh lettuce (now growing slightly faster than lighting speed) and half-rye bread.

Even by my picky standards it was bloody good. Australia - or Flinders island in particular, is forcing me into changing my ideas about crayfish. Picking the meat from the bodies and leg bases was one of those 'ought to do that, but it takes a lot of time for very little meat'. We didn't even bother with the legs much, and if anything turned the whole thing into a crayfish bisque.

I went diving this morning with my regular partner, and we went to a nearby little limestone reef. We had the most appalling beach launch with a good third of the ocean ending up in the boat. Wet clothes, Barbs got soaked as I tried to turn the boat around into the waves, with water breaking over the stern and side, before I got it bow in. I only saw 3 crays - 2 on the small side, and one thumper that I caught. Pleased to have at least got something, I went back to the boat and found my mate had also only got one - its twin brother. They both weighed over two and a half kg apiece, so even one cray is a fair amount of eating. It was nice diving, shallow enough for me to feel comfortable - 6-7 metres, and with interesting formations and lots of pretty sponges and some small fish I didn't know (yes, I still love looking at fish) and some very large sting-rays. Pleasant, pretty diving, not washy-scary might get stuck in this weed/crack etc, which is maybe why I saw so few crays. When we got out - the perfect painless extraction to make up for the launch, we went to his place, to cook the crays. I wanted to try my new pot, but he wanted a hand with his brakes, and keeping my dive partner alive won. So we made a fire and cooked the crays, and then he decided he'd ask me just to vacuum pack the tail and keep the legs and feeding claws for his tea, seeing as he'd kinda modified his vacuum packer with a pick-axe. Yes, really. I offered to toss the cray debris out with all of ours at the tip as he didn't want the body.

So after I'd vac-packed ours and his I was left with bodies. Leg bases and gills and the extra little feeding palps etc. I thought well, I ought to be constructive and pick it, like one does to crab...

Well I ought. And will in future. The tail meat weighed 900 grams - 2 pounds, for each cray. The legs and feeding claws, another 300 maybe. And the meat from inside the leg bases - 2 crays admittedly, came to 765 grams. We had roughly half of that for our evening meal, and Barbs and I were both stuffed to the back teeth - it's very rich.

That's a lot meat to chuck away.