Processing the Harvest

They look scrumptious Colne. A fiddly job but well worth that initial effort. So nice to dip into the freezer come Autumn/Winter when times are leaner. I love good old fashioned Marie Rose sauce mixed in them and a goodly Avocado pear and a slice of yummy brown bread - a perfect supper,
Jenny

 

Must look into the sauce you mentioned - these shrimp are bland unfortunately. I find shrimp vary in taste by their diet then I suppose and these are eating some Mc-algae. But shrimp are culinary tabula rasa to a degree anyway. I knocked off another 6 pounds last evening when we were headed to visit a friend who is back in town - and I took the net and paused at the bridge on the way back.

My old mushroom partner is back in town for the weekend. He is the guy we lived with back in the bush for those 4 years as commercial mushroom pickers - and was the guy who helped me build this house (him and us built every bit of it except for driving the pilings - and we built a half dozen other houses) And he lived in his tent behind this house here for 3 1/2 years, and in other places, and we lived in some crack apartments for a wile (The locals very much left us alone - he is psycho when harassed) weasel and Lexie dog are his but he moved off leaving them with me. (why I have 4 dogs)

Here he is with my wife and our rig in some mountains in Yukon - scary driving in the wet snow with that overloaded rig and 4 drum brakes and no trailer brakes or posi-traction. I have taken trucks and busses to places that vehicles like them have no business going.



This is him and I at a semi mansion I bought - falling down as everything I bought was. 75 doors and windows, 12 foot tall ceilings, 115 foot of porches, 7 exterior doors, 8 large fireplaces, 6 big bedrooms, big staircase........I put it back together and sold it. (see the upper porch is held by poles - the columns rotted out.)



So that was kind of nostalgic, talking about old days - 30 years we have been mixed up - a long time. We used to do dangerous work and went armed - and that is one absolute, we knew we could depend on the other if things went really bad. Not many people have worked with someone for that time, and where ones life was dependent on things - and the other was up to it. We have shot a lot of deer and all kinds of stuff - caught loads of fish and stuff - and lived off the forests of the far North for years. He is the guy I mentioned when we found that dead bear in the woods on the Canada/Montana border and ate a bunch of it. He once killed a 1300 pound moose with a 20 gage shotgun! We have processed some harvest!

Morel mushroom drying in Alaska at a fly in camp. (Him and my wife on the right)


Him doing chainsaw carpentry building this house on those pilings - the bus my wife and I lived in 6 years.

 

Your life has been an adventure Colne, no wonder you found it difficult to settle.

 

Thanks owl, I hope to soon get back to writing about custard making and drying beans but......

just for fun here is a picture in the very far North (I have driven, in this rig on both roads that go to the Arctic Ocean; past the Arctic Circle, and here is one of the side roads - see the bridge at the end? The road and bridge are under water from ice out so he is walking ahead to make sure the depth is not too much, or holes washed out, and is marking the left edge of the causeway because it is invisible under the water. Floating off is very bad. One place had a VW in the torrent where it had been swept off the road, no idea what came of that.

His feet were frozen - that is flowing ice water



And from way back - my wife and I lived about 6 months out of a canoe on one trip, half in the North, then on a huge river, and the last couple months in the Florida Marine areas. This is the 'Wilderness waterway' where her and I and a Swiss man in a kayak were the only ones who the searchers failed to find back in the coastal swamps as a hurricane hit. That was a wild one - no land except for beaches and mangrove swamps and tiny bits of shell mounds - and platforms one camps on, like a piece of dock out in the water. I did not think we were going to survive that one and I heard they later found the kayak guy alive too. (this is the bit called 'the nightmare' great fun if you are immune to biting bugs like I am, I had to get out and haul the canoe in a couple places so was like Africa Queen in waste deep mud - I have done this in several places and it can be pretty wild) (google the nightmare, canoeing if you care to see other pictures - I love those places and we spent lots of time in less populated swamps.)



But back from reminiscing - no wait, one more - way, way, back bumming around in Morocco, down near The Spanish Sahara - no electricity at this place and it was lovely - I fished for a type of sea bream in the surf. There is nowhere I have gone without micro fishing tackle - tiny reel on a telescoping rod at least, and have caught very big fish on it. Gosh, this is from 30 years ago! And triggered by my friends visit - he was our friend back then - a drop out agronomist (does have a university degree in it - but instead did carpentry and was in a local Grateful Dead type band) What a silly past we have had - could have been so much more but dropped out instead, it was the 70's when I took off - left school early, moved to America, backpacked solo for 5 years and did some college - one whole year at college I lived in a 4 foot by 7 foot tent in the woods - hitched 50,000 map miles in distance so who knows what the total is. Became a self employed tradesman except for 6 years throwing steel which has totally used up my shoulders but gave me good money. I should have worked in the City as one school friend did, and became very rich - he never would deal with me afterwards.



Our bus in the Northwest Territories with a friend (Canada) My favorite place on the planet.



Back here: the neighbor's dog killed another chicken and I have perfected my custard recipe and I will learn to make gumbo - the local dish with old chicken or squirrel, and shrimp.

 

Can't stop because I have a job to do and do not want to go....Bus in Canada Winter (it has a wood burning cook stove in it)

 

what a fascinating life you have led Colne, love the pics and stories x

 

Deleted my last post because it made me sign on again from being off doing something.......


But last evening I threw my net at a new spot just to see how it was and caught a couple dozen shrimp. When I got home I thought why not go to the harbor and fish with them - and caught these white trout. A very nice fish, small, but so easy to fillet, takes about 1 minute each. The flavor is good and the white trout are plentyfull if you go for them. We were there about an hour and a half. A guy down from me fishing for big fish (people use whole mullet heads for shark or big redfish at night - with a good chance of getting one) got a 30 pound redfish.

 

Hi Sue, hi Lomac

A gratuitous picture, the 'National Rainbow Gathering' July 4th, prayer for peace



my wife in the back right in the Moroccan widow's dress - amazing how 5000 to 10,000 people are all fed for a week from the various free kitchens a couple miles back in the woods. Jesus Camp is my favorite, but we like the Krishna kitchen and camp a lot - one of the most popular kitchens - 'loven Ovens' is the most popular though - they make ovens from clay there and bake of thousands pizzas, cookies, pastries a day using wood to fire them. A whole city builds in the woods for a week and then is dismantled. Sanitary water is there from miles of water lines run - toilet pits everywhere with lime dust to sprinkle to keep flies down - lots of music and drumming - and the dreaded 'A' camp gate for the crazy (we like it - but be cool or it can go very bad fast) and a theatre, many free kitchens with cooked food......it is a lark.

 

As you can guess I am working at my desk - but it is time to go. Wile running about I stopped to vacuum pack some excess stuff so it will be long term shelf stable.

I dried masses of green spring onions, and a full load of my mild cayenne peppers - and I have a full load back on the bushes, they are red with long scarlet peppers. It takes no time to vacuum pack so after washing 3 dozen eggs for customers (3 of my huge orphington hens killed by the neighbors dog so production will be way down now) I packed 1 1/2 quarts of onions and peppers to a bag - the vacuum shrinks them down. These will last a long time - I use the onions a lot, I think I dried 20 pounds of them - or more, and had 7 quarts of them in jars. I do like my vacuum packer - but you must re-use thee bags, they are expensive. (they have a tiny crosshatching of grooves on the inside so the air can be sucked out.) This is from 10 minutes ago.




The bags are sucked tight like a soft brick

 

Well, a in and out sort of day - and I did a quick spot of filming my fishing place - sorry about the legs - 4 minutes, a weak film but there it is - it took no time because no editing. I am putting the motor on the boat, getting the life jackets, oars, getting ready for tomorrow boat shrimping.



It starts with the chicken's morning snack of fresh netted pogies and a couple shrimp.

I am making my current obsessive dessert as I type, the caramelized sugar in the dishes is cooling so I can add the cold custard without shattering the glass - pressure cooker creme-caramel. So many eggs so this uses them up. 4 cups milk, 4 eggs to make 4 ramekins of custard, I make a batch daily because my wife has one for breakfast. I caramelize the sugar for the sauce to form and then cut back on the sugar inside the custard. We love them and it takes just a couple minutes to prepare, 7 minutes in the cooker, hour cooling off time, and done. And better yet - I am filming it!

Should be cool by now so off to mix the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and milk. I always have had a pressure cooker and love them. When I was very poor and had started living in a proper house I saved up and bought one and have used them ever since. My parents used them - so I learned from them.

 

Do not watch this video - it is to much posting.

But as I said above I was using hone grown eggs wile I typed - processing the harvest as it were. Eggs just keep coming and we use a fair number.

So I thought of Tennyson and the line 'Matched with aged wife' as I looked back at my silly postings - and although I am the opposite of the king from the poem as I am reconciled to being settled and do not long for the road (this is Tennyson's Ulysses) - I still had it keep popping up in my head as I dallied here


By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me


But the pressure cooker custard:

 

Hi Colne,
my "recipe" for a Marie Rose sauce to stir the cooked prawns in. I l like it with Avacado pear:

2 tbsp. Hellmans Mayo, 1 tbsp. Heinz salad cream, 1 teaspoon Tomato paste, 1 Tomato ketchup, 1 teaspoon honey and 1 teaspoon Chilli jam ( hot as you like!). Mix it all together and stir in the prawns,
simples,
Jenny

 

Any bananas ripening this year Colne?
Jenny

 

there is a famous dish 'crab loiue' from Seattle Washing using the very plump and fat meat from the local Dungeness crab legs. I have always spent time in Seattle and if financially frivolous will spring for one at Pikes Market, the landmark market overlooking the Puget Sound - (they are famous for throwing their fish) and have lots of places to get fantastic food and coffee and home brewed beer (the good coffee thing came from Seattle as did USA micro brewing)



The crab Louis is very similar to your sauce and I have always made variations on it - horseradish being a variant I sometimes add

Crab Louis from Seattle (web pictures - I have similar somewhere - )



I am off to catch the morning pogies and load the boat