first trout and first lobster of the year - woooohoooo! and a bunch of other stuff!

jambaloney went to get the mail yesterday, and as this is big garbage pick-up month in our area (you can only throw out certain garbage at certain times of the year), he found this beautiful harvesting basket for me. in perfect condition!

kids - this year i purchased a package of sacred water lotus.



we have our pond out front of our yard and i have been wanting to do something special with it but we just haven't gotten around to it yet. every year the spring peepers lay their egg sacs in our pond, but sometimes the water level gets low and we have to refill it with water from the hose. jambaloney doesn't want to have to bother with that this year and so is moving the egg sacs down to the swampy area of our river. and then maybe this fall we can make the pond into a constantly running, moving water feature.

but i wanted a water feature of some sort for this year ( i know - i have a pond, a river, an ocean, a kiddie pool and a hottub. you'd think i'd be satisfied!) but i want something watery to look at and enjoy. so i got the water lotuses.

there are 2 mind sets on how to get water lotuses to sprout - one set thinks you have to scarify them, the other group says that you do not need to do that as in nature, the seeds just fall from the plant and do fine without any scarification.

i am doing a test. the below seeds have not been scarified - just put in a bowl of warm water.

jambaloney got out his wicked-awesome dremel tool and scarified 2 seeds. they went in a separate bowl. you have to put the seeds in warm water. i'll keep you posted. (fun fact: once the leaves are floating on the water, if you play music they will dance and intertwine. once you turn the music off, they will disentangle from each other. i can't wait to try this and i'll keep you posted on that, too!)

a delicious dinner that i can eat all of - lebanese herbed rice with our own parsley - woohoo! our parsley is coming up gangbusters as are a bunch of our herbs.

served with a slice of lemon, hearts of palm, pickled artichokes and olives - yummeh!

kids - it wasn't exactly a river day. in fact - it was windy as oh heck! but we decided to go down anyway.

it's a quarter mile to the river and then back - so a half mile walk all around. not bad exercise! the man always has his fishing bag packed and so off we went. (he's lookin' pretty stylin' no?)

my canning lid that i nailed to our towel-hanging tree in memorium of my friend SciFiChick has rusted and the words that i wrote to her are long faded.

i considered getting a new canning lid and re-writing to her but then i thought "Sci knows what that lid means". and she also knows that we say HI to her everytime we pass that tree.

here's a pic looking across the river that i always take for my friend C.

and here is looking down the river.

the river was extremely low - normally that big rock you see is buried underwater.

my favourite thing in the world to see.

when i look back from my sitting rock, i look at all of these trees, both dead and alive, and i feel a sense of peace that they belong to us. we are stewards of those trees. and we just leave them be.

a windy day - but beautiful none the less. you can see my sitting rock in this pic as i was wandering around looking at different things.

and although jambaloney had no plans for catching any trout - he caught these 2 beauties in about 15 mins!!!! he caught the first one and i said "babe - go get us another for breakfast!". he went back out and got us another!!! woohoo!!! first trout of the season - the big one is for Sweet Sandy and the smaller one is for PioneerPreppy.

next time he is out fishing, the big one will got to PP. but have a good look at those trout - these are sea run trout, meaning that they spend some of the year in the ocean and some of the year in the river. they always come back to the river to spawn but sometimes they come back to the river for food. you can tell that they are sea-run because of how silver they are.  regular river trout who never go to the ocean have very brightly-mixed colouring.

here we are heading back home and of course, i try to always be as stylin' as jambaloney.

look at these beautiful trout all gutted and cleaned. jambaloney puts all of the innards in the compost - we have some nutrient-rich compost!

check out the colour of these trout - there isn't a salmon on the planet that can touch these for colour and/or freshness!

these babies were caught, cleaned and cooked in less than an hour - you can't get fresher than that unless you eat them cooked over a fire at the river which is another great way to enjoy your fish!



a totally free meal kids! trout from the river, sorrel and beet greens from the greenhouse and our own peppers that we somehow grew over the winter. check out the colour of the cooked flesh and look how flaky it is!



jambaloney went to work yesterday and got us some of the freshest lobster known to man. the lobster guys started going out on april 20, and all of that lobster was sold commercially. only this week has the lobster been available for personal sale - jambaloney got us 4, cooked to perfection by the lobster cooking guy at work - woohoo! more on that later.

as you all know tuesday is THE FISH GUY DAY! when jambaloney finished work and went over to the fish truck, THE FISH GUY, who had a buddy with him said "that's THE TUNA GUY!" pointing at jambaloney - bahahahah! that's because jambaloney buys him out of fresh tuna every tuesday. and we vaccuum-seal and freeze that tuna to have all year round - woohoo! he also got a ton of newfoundland scallops - oh be still my beating heart!

jambaloney called me when he left our nearest small town and i got everything ready for a lobster feast.

kids there are a variety of tools and utensils required for proper lobster enjoyment. and i know i have said this before - but make sure to eat lobster naked! it makes for quick and easy cleanup and you don't have any stinky clothes.

what more can i say than this -



i only showed you my lobster - jambaloney's was bigger and i didn't want to break any hearts!

remember the other day i did my first small harvest of oregano? it has been drying in a basket in the sun for the past several days. here it is now and ready to be processed.

as we are still using our dried oregano from last year...this oregano goes into food stores.

it isn't full and it isn't pressed down...i will be getting at least 5 more cuttings for drying over the season and then it will all be vaccum-sealed and stored for when we run out of our current oregano. growing and drying your own herbs is not only healthier...it makes you happy!

and last but not least - get ready for it - the dishwasher is back on the porch!

not a big deal for some but it's a great big deal to us!!! poor jambaloney having to lug big bins of dirty dishes down to the basement during winter months, sucks! just ask him. it took him a little under an hour to move it from the basement and set it up on the porch. he came in with a very-well deserved grin on his face, we high-fived and got in the hottub! i put the new harvesting basket on top of the dishwasher but i didn't put anything in it. once Frankie Blue-Eyes wakes up and sees it - it will become HIS basket!!!

jambaloney is working now and i am doing this post. he'll be working for a while so i will hit up your blogs. then it's off to make a lobster sandwich....and supper tonight? you guessed it - SCALLOPS!!!! yuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmeh! bahahahahah!