Nice but nubbly

'He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really twirly-whirly eel. All the fishes he could find in all the sea he ate..." (How the whale got his throat, Just So Stories, Rudyard Kipling)

I'm beginning to think we'd better carefully avoid catching any shipwrecked mariners, because they might interfere with our slowly expanding fishy diet (besides any other considerations like morality or the fact that we are not whales). The garfish were good eating (I can see myself venturing on sea-cucumber which is somewhat related to starfish - but that as close as I'm going to rhyming our diet.) with a flavour like but more delicate than fresh sardine. I can see why they're good bait and I can see why they are listed as medium priced (and flathead is listed as low-medium priced, and flounder high priced BTW). They'd be very good on a charcoal barbeque, and probably brilliant in in the Venetian Sarde in saor (a mild vinegar marianaded pickled fish dish). I was saying to B last night that we now have an increasing range of 'like very much' fish (Silver Trevally, Flounder, flathead, garfish) we catch ourselves, which are all quite unlike each other (as different as pork,lamb, and beef are IMO). There are also the wrasse and Leatherjackets which come under the heading of 'edible if disguised' and pike which is edible if smoked and disguised. We haven't yet been severly affected by seasonality (except we havén't had sea-pike for a while. I can't say that upsets me much) and the spiny lobster season will close soon (and I haven't yet found them in a place I can dive from the shore without tanks/ hookah). Our diet is actually very varied - OK long on certain things like spinach and potatoes, but it is probably 10 days before we eat the same principal protein twice, let alone cooked in the same way. I am trying to see we eat some form of red meat at least every 10 days. It's bound to change with the seasons - I really need to get some crayfish (spiny lobster) before it is too late and also catch more shrimps, some prawns and some crab that isn't just fit for soup. I've also heard there are razor-fish (a kind of shellfish) and we haven't got any octopus or cuttlefish yet. I'm hoping there is a seasonality to these and that's why we haven't. We're gradually moving (except wheat, sugar and vegetable oil products) - on a diet that almost all comes from the island... except milk (and the little cheese we eat) which of course is shipped in! Well, I am not prepared to make life too miserable so wheat, oil, sugar, coffee, tea chocolate and milk and cheese will just have to wait.

I like eating locally and seasonally - but I think I like coffee more. I'm going to stick with pragmatism on this. Pragmatism and coffee. And chocolate. Life without that would be very nubbly :-(.