If you want to catch a fish wear flip flops.

That is the secret to fishing. Naturally when I got onto the boat all the other fishermen laughed at me [sniff] but as I was going to be doing a load of activities over the next 3 days I didn't want to deal with socks. With 4 different water sports activities on I was going to be in and out of the water. And then showers and then you need clean socks. So thats a lot of socks. Easiest thing to do is wear flip flops. No sock trouble.

Where was I.... of course the photos of food. Here they are again. (Apologies for the rotated shots. I don't know why they are getting flipped sideways, but they are, its not the way I'm taking photos.)

The boat, sideways. Damn you.

And the view, not that view, but a view

Too many landscape shots. but here are the little nippers. Could have done mackerel sushi if we thought ahead and brought some soy sauce.

I caught mackerel, dogfish and ray. My compadre caught ray, pollock, and mackerel. We caught Coalies (?) as well but the majority of them were thrown back. So I don't know if wearing flip flops helped, especially in the rain. 

Here is my fishing companion. However I don't think its right to throw photos of people up all over the internet without asking for clearance or permission. Anonymity is better anyway. 

When the seagulls follow the trawler it is because they expect fish to be thrown into the sea. And they'd be right. The captain of the ship has a seagull that follows him named George. They all look the same to me. Is that racist?

I don't have any photos of the other types of fish but I promise we caught them.The professionals -in their boots- did the business in gutting and cleaning the fish.

Even though they were excellent and catching and cleaning fish the lads were not interested in eating them. Fishermen don't eat fish. Who knew? 

We thought we were going to cook them but we walked into the restaurant and they did it all for us. I would have gone simple a fried the fillets and finished them with lemon. We got pollock in a beurre blanc sauce and mackerel and gurnard in a stir fry. Gurnard is tasty and cheap although has 1,000 bones.

Here is the final dish. Alway blurrys as my hands shake with giddyness. It tasted better than it looks. I thought I had a photo of the mackerel and gurnard stir fry but I don't. I was too busy eating.

We ate as much as we could and I refused to leave any fish on the platter. After all these fish died by our hands - apart from the Gurnard- so it only seemed right to do the justice. Nom, nom, nom justice.

The rest of the weekend was spent surfing, paddle boarding, sailing, eating, drinking and sleeping. But I don't have any photos of that. The fish are the star of this post. The stars of the sea one could say. Cough, cough.

It was pretty much just photos of the food but here is some photos of the surf. Hippsta photos.

In between we did get some sight seeing in and here is a couple of the Glen. A religious experience going here. I never get tired of it. Although walking here in flip flops was a little tricky. This would have been an occasion to have socks. But that would have required 2 pairs, one for during, one for after. You see, it makes sense. No socks.

Some great meals, quality moule marinere, t-bone steaks and grilled lobster eaten. Also had a burger with fried banana and bacon which was a revelation. Got plenty of inspiration for future blog posts and seeing as I've posted more in June then in the combined history of this blog I don't know whether I'm being super productive or really lazy. Maybe I need to get back to the day job.

Here is the reef and beef

The 3 days felt like 2 weeks and if I could describe it in 1 word it would be satisfied. Sometimes when you go away the surf can be crap or you get dodgy stodgy overpriced food but every meal was out of the park good,. Great ingredients every time. And mix that with lots of water based activities, hot showers, a big bed and I am one satisfied rabbit.

And now I am home. Home listening to this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHEOF_rcND8

DugDog's blog dog travel special

I'm sorting through the photos of the trip but I thought I throw up a couple of this little guy.

He was full of beans and started making poses as soon as he saw me take photos. 

Great break in the west. Feels like I've been run over by a bus today. So much to do and I'm moving slowly.

Cake

Not in a brass eye kind of drug fuelled cake. But addictive none the less. Filled with raspberries and nutella so that they are self saucing. Yes, self saucing. No need to add extra sauce cause its got it built in.

To explain the brass eye cake reference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwylBRucU7w

But here is what your all here for. Here are the photos. The eggs:

 The Cocoa:

 The Mixing:

 The satisfaction of opening up a new jar of nutella. Very satifying.

 Half full with the raspberries and nutella:

 Lets take a closer look:

 Straight out of the oven:

 Mmmmm:

 You see? Self saucing:

 You can add icing sugar for decoration:

And best had with a cup of tea:

This recipe is from whatkatieate.blogspot.That blog is what a real food blog looks like and is one of the best. This one is just a phoney, written by a faker. Me.

That blog homepage is here and the very least I can do is send my followers her way. A true inspiration.
http://www.whatkatieate.blogspot.com/

Next time Dugdog is going on tour. On tour or on holidays. Well I'm going fishing and will take photos of what I catch because I have to cook what I catch. I hope its a tuna. But they are overfished. Mackerel. I'll catch and cook a mackerel. So stay tuned for a travel special.

When god gives you lemons

When God gives you lemons.... Boil the shit out of them and add loads of sugar in the guise of making a healthy drink. A healthy sugary drink.

 I wanted to blog about something other than hats, dogs and meat sandwiches. So lemons it is.

The Juicing:

 

The sugar:

 The elderflower heads:

 The boiling.

This was to make elderflower syrup. 12 heads, 4 lemons, equal parts sugar and boiling water. Leave it for a day, strain and add to fizzy water and you've got homemade lemonade. Its pretty mild, add lots of it to the fizzy water. Really good for a hangover. Speaking of which. Time for bed. Goodnight everybody.

Pork chop sandwiches !

Technically not a pork chop and technically not a sandwich. But I wanted to honor the G.I. Joe pork chop sandwiches bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1BDM1oBRJ8

So this is slow roasted pork shoulder with salad, apple bbq sauce and served in a flatbread.

The pork before

And after:

To keep us all regular I made a coleslaw with red cabbage and a lemon yoghurt dressing. I added roasted hazelnuts to it as well which worked well with the pork and apple bbq sauce.

Oh yeh, the recipe for the meat and sauce are available on the bbc website. The pork requires nothing to be done to it and the sauce takes 5 minutes.

Amazingly I didn't take photos of the sauce but you can see it in the final meal.

The final ingredients.

And finally with the leftovers and a good beer. This was a good time. A 3 in the morning, pass out on the couch, farting good time.

Stay tuned to dugdogs blog. Amazingly I've lost a follower. But for those still following thanks for stopping by.

Dry run

Well the douchebag hat post went down like a lead balloon. Apologies for ruffling any feathers in my followers. Too many metaphors...

So I'm getting ready for bbq season which means cheeseburgers. I did a practice run in advance of a bbq i'm going to in June. Didn't want to bring something and then have everyone there go

" what is this? Is this poison? It tastes like poison."

The buns are from a recipe from the excellent Den Lepard in the guardian. A true king when it comes to baking. I used sesame seeds as I had no poppy. Worked fine.

I didn't go all out in making the burgers and condiments on this run which means there is a chance I may still poison attendees. But its a risk I'm willing to take.

And because I am a hungry hungry hippo I doubled down.

Up close they look bigger than they actually are. Ah who am I kidding. They are massive. I thought I might have been having a heart attack after I finished.

I don't know why my arms shake every time I try to take a photo mid eat. Probably the heart attack.

Next post.... More food.