General Chat

We had our very first crayfish over the week-end.

Our daughter called round on Saturday afternoon and brought two large ones for us.

They were part of a catch made by her partner in the morning.

We've never had them before as most of the commercially caught ones are exported to China, which at the moment is playing silly buggers with Australian exports, and all the smaller ones in the supermarkets selling at exorbitant prices to reflect the export prices.

Nor were these frozen, but freshly cooked.

They were delicious and we've had a couple of meals out of them, with some left for me today as OH is going out to lunch with the ladies of her crat group :-D

The crays were delicious :-D :-D

I am very envious Alan

How wonderful! I envy you.

I used to love going to NS in the summer, there are several places where they keep live lobsters in a pound (netted area), you can choose your own lobster and they then cook it for you.

At our favourite place, you sit outside at long wood tables, and eat lobster dipped into melted butter or just with lemon.

Delicious!!

It's a good job they also serve hamburgers otherwise my son-i-l would have starved, he doesn't like "fish" which includes lobster to him. He does like breaded prawns and shrimps though :-D


China's playing silly buggers with us also.

We've been over here for 38 years now, all of that time in West Oz which has a big rock lobster industry, and this was our very first taste.

We've had prawns by the ton and hundreds of blue manna crabs as well as plenty of freshwater shellfish, but there's a first time for everything :-D :-D

Our lobster industry is off the east coast, the cold waters of the Atlantic, so we only get fresh lobster when we go over there.

As you say, there is a first time for everything :-D

First time I had lobster (with melted butter to dip) was in Rockport USA. Loved it.

Ann, rock lobster is not to be confused with what I call 'real' lobster

Rock Lobster:

http://www.fish.wa.gov.au/Species/Rock-Lobster/Pages/default.aspx

My 'real' Lobster:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster


Both species are delicious :-D

No Allan, I did realise, I was more replying to Sylvia, I know you are talking about large crayfish, I wasn't clear, not properly awake, did you see what time I posted>

That's late for me, Ann :-D

I'm usually up around 4.00-4.30 UK time to catch the night shift. I then take a break (and a nap) before lurking around again ;-)

It's just that many people think of the one type of lobster, so my apologies to you :-)

no problem Allan :-D

So that you know ..... I also knew we were talking about different "lobsters"

We have a giant lobster claw here .............. we went to Nova Scotia back around 1971/2 for a meeting. One of OH's lab mates when doing his PhD lived there, and a third (out of 4) lived in Ontario and also attended the meeting, with his wife. So the Nova Scotian arranged to have us all for dinner, plus another couple.

He had caught a HUGE lobster just off his dock, legally I hasten to add. It weighed about 40 lbs. Nova Scotian's wife, who had been in my year at university, cleaned up the large claw and gave it to me, much to her husband's disgust!

She was actually working on some research that hoped to determine whether the small 1 -2 lb lobsters usually caught in traps were a different species from the much larger ones known to exist. It did eventually show that they were identical, the big ones were little ones that had managed to escape being trapped.


I have to say, it was delicious!!!

They just spread newspaper over their wood floor, put bowls of melted butter around, piled the lobster on big plates in the centre, and we just went to it :-D


Many years later, about 2004, we went to another meeting in Nova Scotia as did the couple from Ontario, and they invited us to dinner again along with our daughter and son-i-l. Of course the talk got around to university, and eventually to life as mad students. The wife of the guy from Ontario was the only one who had not been to the same university, but she had visited (high school romance), our daughter ahad heard quite a few stories from us, so s-i-l was the only person who had never heard any of the stories.

He sat in a corner just listening to all this with amazement at what his parents-in-law had got up to all those years ago. His face was a picture! Meanwhile, daughter and I were watching him and almost going into hysterics!