Stock, Crayfish, the freezer and gadgets

For those of you thinking of visiting my place today, you might want to think twice. It smells of crayfish. Roast crayfish in fact, as I'm making some crayfish stock using the shells I'd kept in the freezer for this very purpose. Recipe can be found here.

So coffee is on, Active's jazz show is tinkling away in the background, shells are roasting and I'm about to deglaze the vege's...well that's done. A short simmer, then the shells are dumped in for 3 hours. Go my life!!

I should make some muffins now, I'm on a mission to clean up my freezer which is why the 2kg of cray shells are going, and why I've been baking lots of banana muffins - as there's lots of frozen bananas in there. I have found some plums too, and alcohol (now that was exciting!).

I had a fun conversation with someone called Catherine (I think, I *may* have been drinking) about the stupidity of people who can't write. As much as arguments are fun, it is occasionally nice to have a discussion with someone who agrees with you. The brunette bit was sighing a bit apparently some of my criticisms on the use of semi-colons may have struck home :-) tee hee hee hell we even ended up talking about Lynn Truss. Ahhhh nice.

Second batch of muffins in now, and the stock smells great. Admittedly the whole house smells of the stock, but eh...

And one of my not so secret shames is back on TV, 'the Steel Mill' where lots of more 'extreme' metal vids are played - woohoo!

I've just sieved the stock, which reminded me that for some reason the thought of a guy in the kitchen always seems to imply he's a gadget freak. I'm so not. To prove this my two favourite kitchen gadgets are: an electric wok (aside from its general usefulness, its also marvellous for making jams and marmalades in), and a microplane.
I've taken a couple of pictures of a) the stock pre-sieving and b) the sieve arrangement (bowl: the warehouse; chux cloth: under my sink; pegs: from the washing basket).



me xxx