Mixed fry

The pic is sunset on the tidal flats where we go to collect clams.
Ok so it's very late and I'm too tired. But I caught my first Australian salmon - in a a throw net. Today was Policeman Pat's farewell at 2pm, and we had visitors from 11.30-1pm, and I wrote from about 4 AM, and picked mushroooms at 11 AM, then after the farewell tea, cut a ute-load of firewood, collected some nice clams, caught mullet and australian salmon in the throw-net, collected a few oysters, speared flounder, scoop netted swimming prawns. I also fitted in baking a fruitcake, making rolls, and I've gutted and cooked the fish. And now I am going to bath and go to bed. Tomorrow I'll try and be entertaining :-)

stuffed squid

I can recommend this for serious gastromomic impact and actually very little hassle. And it was good for disposing of leftover squid and rice and stale bread. A win all round.
Soften one small fennel bulb, large spring onion, 1/4 of a jalepeno, and some green bell pepper in a little olive oil. Low temp, lid on. Meanwhile crumb a large slice of stale bread, add an egg, some leftover rice, and salt pepper and thyme. Add in the softened veggies - put the sausage-meat-like mix into the squid tubes with a teaspoon (do NOT try this with really tiny squid that a teaspoon doesn't fit. I have been this stupid... once) close them off with a toothpick - or if like me tonight you can't FIND a toothpick until dinner is finished, with a piece of dried spaghetti. It worked very well - and could be eaten. Put the stuffed squid into a small pot, add some chopped tomato and a little thickening, season - but remember it will reduce so not too much. Put to simmer on the slowburner, and then get on with writing for the next 20 minutes. Any leftover stuffing can be fried in little patties as a side dish. And then serve.

Now I shall return to my battle of the wills with the new label on the tall green olive bottle. Every five minutes I stick it down. Go back to the Hellespont in the book... Then the other side comes off. Soon there will be superglue!

Dangerous stuff

... in very small quantities. My friend Pete Hawkes who is an Entomologist who works on ants has sent me a bunch of sample bottles with preserving alcohol (do not drink this). Ant size of course. From South Africa. It got opened by Australian customs, before being sent on (there is a sticker on the envelope). So I am now probably listed as highly suspicious and dubious person, if I wasn't before. Pete didn't even put a note in the envelope, to explain why he was sending 10 little jars - like 3 ml in each, and a bunch of sealing plastic envelopes. Must have puzzled the customs officer no end. I think I might try a note in the ant-return (they're for specimens of the various local ants - particularly big (maybe 3/4") solitary seeming things.) Of course it has turned icy - wind off the snow on Tassie I reckon so not an ant to be seen. Or maybe it was me sneezing at them. The snot will not GO AWAY.

On the garden front - I finally gave up and pulled out the cucumber plants - we got 4 cucumbers (accidents) and a couple of jars of gerkins (what I had hoped to get off them). Not bad for planting in mid-January though. Tomatoes should be dead... but I got 3 more little coctail ones which will be welcome. This year tinned tomato is kind of 'allowed' as really we only got here after the season. But we're being sparing on it. Reality allows the Zucchini a few more days tops and they too will go to the compost - one of them just flowered and 3 of 5 have little Zucchini. And hold thumbs - 4 jalapeno chilis FINALLY going red. Veg is slowing down though. I still have sliverbeet (swiss chard), carrots, fennel, beetroot, leeks, spring onions, a little lettuce, very very peppery chinese cabbage, some parsnips, snow peas, feeble spinach (curses) and broccoli. And potatoes and broad beans -- the last two not looking anything like ready yet. I think I'd better harvest some thyme and parsley (the parsley just LOVES this place - thyme - which I use a lot of less so. We will politely avoid mentioning mint as it has all DIED. What kind of gardner can't grow mint? And I have a severe lack of rosemary, a situation only forgivable by the price of lamb here.

Tim Tam goo...

Hmm well B got to write about catching her battlemother squid last night, but she left out the glorious scene where she got down onto the big truck tyre (a fender, I guess) to net one of mine. It squirted black, gukky ink as she lifted it, in a beautiful arc... over her head to splash my boots. Talk about a lucky night - that and a 1.85kg squid.

Today the predawn was saw me getting up to the sound of drumming rain. I did not dance to the beat, as I'd hoped for a few Trevally this morning. Time and tide are
right once every 2 weeks... and really this morning would have been the best. Oh well. The Island skies were flashing their winter petticoats, with lacy flounces of white edges against the rainful dark clouds. It rained. And now it is cold. So the fire/heater is at work, warming us and incidentally drying mushrooms. Maybe the rain will bring more out.


I've bottled in herbed brine the first two bottles of 'green' olives, complete with a little wreath of fennel to keep them under. I am not terribly enthusiastic about the taste of the rest! Still very bitter.

I pulled up my tiny bait-trap in the dark last night, when we finished squidding, and fished the token shrimp out of it - and left it on the veranda to wash, with the zips open... and lo and behold today the little suberb fairy wrens (AKA Tinks) were cheerfully climbing into it and eating the little amphipods off it. Quite happy... I guess a trap is only trap when you can't walk out at will.

And finally we had a new taste experience today - someone brought us some Tim Tams (a very Australian layered chocolate coated buiscuit) and explained that you needed to bite off catercorners (diagonal) and then suck coffee through it like a sort of buscuit straw. Then, very hastily you need to put whole beastie in your face, because it is melting from the inside. A sort of hot chocolate mouth-bomb... try it :-)

The Big One

The tide and the weather combined to make today a good fishing day again. So, having had a week or so off fishing, we hit the wharf with renewed energy. And I caught nothing, did not even have a decent sized take on my bait! Dave caught two little ones that we put back to grow bigger, hopefully really fast!

Then it was the usual day of cut the lawn, do the washing etc.

This evening we went back to the wharf for the sundown squiding. There were already two people fishing when we arrived, and the sunset was really truely magnificent.

Then my rod went mad. Catching a squid is rather like reeling in a wet plastic bag. They drag through the water, and only fight a little as they are actually landed. (The jigs we use for squid have no hooks on them, just a row of spikes, so you can't catch fish on them, at all.) Well, as I said, my rod bent over at an amazing angle, and started jerking. "What you got??" asked the local fisherman. "It's too far out to see!" says me, thinking 'how am I supposed to know, you live here.' Then I started to panic, and asked in a really girlie way what I should do next. Just reel it in slowly, keep the line taught, I think they said. So I reeled and reeled and pulled and got a squid into the net Dave was holding ready at water level, as I reckon it would have broken my line.

Back home it weighed in at 1,850kg, certainly the biggest one we have caught so far. We finally came home with 5 squid, with Dave again catching more than his fair share, but mine was the biggest. So hopefully squid is going to be on the menu often.

Ok so another exciting day at the office. Well, I thought, as it was mother's day I'd tell you about Inge who who is a most redoubtable great grandmother, and probably my favourite islander, whose mixture of broad Australian with the accents of her native Germany always make me grin. She pops in probably once a week for a coffee and a chat and to give my feeble gardening efforts the benefit of her bright eye and sense of humour. She's two bricks and a tickey high but walks with her little dog, and is, as I said a new and very proud great grandmother, but has her garden in terrifyingly pristine order. We had that storm the other night and as the little screen on the top of her gutter blocked, so water was fountaining out her gutter and "Ruining me garden!" So out she runs in the pouring rain and fetches her ladder and climbs up and fixes it, all the time 'thinking the lightning gonna hit me roof, and me mit me nightdress on.' And knowing that it's a metal ladder... She's not one to let anything stop her, and seems in a way representative of the attitude and way of life here. A lot of the islanders are elderly. But they seem as sharp at 90 as a fair number of 50 year-olds I've met. I put it down to muttonbirds, the diet, the excercise. We hope for windless days. "You never escape the wind on Flinders." Which is not strictly true - but Glady (sp?)one of the other redoubtable great grandmothers was explaining that when they were little and living on one of the offshore islands windless days were a problem. They got everywhere by sail. All of them - girls boys -the lot HAD to know how to sail from very young. A different world.

Mushrooms, olives progress

I am feeling a bit like death warmed over, however, unless mushrooms now cause a streaming snotty nose and sneezing, I don't think that eating some of these was the cause. There are rather a lot of them out there - the huge kind that are fleshy and bruise pink down near the creek (which the locals pointed us at, and all the bugs seem to adore), and the ones I tasted the day before yesterday, and we both had some of last night (that's 48 hours since I ate the first, so reasonable to assume they're OK). They are brown gilled, with gills not attached to the stem, with brown spore prints, do not have volvas and they grow in open grassland a long way from any tree so they're not destroying Angels, Death Caps or any Amanita.



some of these are now drying, others were cooked and frozen. They're all from the field next door. The house was so mushroomy as I fried successive small batches in butter - and it was absolutely lovely, earthy, nutty, with hits of aniseed... just overwhelming mushroomy - that we had to open a window. It actually took very little time (and they cook to next to nothing) as they're very light compared to bought mushrooms (the pink-bruising ones are the opposite - huge and dense and meaty.) I think they're both species of Agaricus (the same as the bought mushroom - which also bruises pink but doesn't get quite as big!)

Olives - in theory they should be due to stop the water-change sequence on Monday and be brined. In practice, the green ones (which should be more bitter) are nearly ready and will be fine by Monday. The black -- eugh. Still very bitter. I conclude that the porcupine was less than effective, as all the greens got a slit cut in them instead. So I cut a slit in the contents one large bowl of blacks (about 1/4 of the total) and we'll have to taste. The woodash lye still have 10 days of water change to go and are still vile. The very ripe in salt... mixed bag - some wrinkled and quite edible, some plump, juicy and... vile. Not salted, not leached bitterness. I pricked them all and put them back in salt. It may not work, but the alternative was a bit like playing olive roulette.

And now I must contrive something for supper. Not containing Olives (we don't have any) or mushrooms (tested pink bruising ones. One slice only, despite being told they were fine by both David and Inge. Advice from mushroom guide - don't mix mushrooms.)