Halfway Over The Hill: Tuna!

This is what I look at out my bedroom window when I wake up in the morning, it's the tops of the small trees in my fenced garden down in front of the house. The white flowering tree is a jarrah, absolutely stuffed full of bees at present. The smaller tree in front with the red new foliage is my precious red flowering gum. It hasn't flowered yet, having struggled to grow over the three years it's been in the ground. It tries very hard to rip itself out of the ground with every windstorm, and then tries equally hard to ringbark itself with the ties we have staked it with. This year however, we have changed its stake to an enormous star picket, and tied it with soft, thick rope and slowly it is settling down and putting on some growth. I always had this vision in my head, of us being able to see the flowering tops of those trees from the house, and I have my fingers crossed that maybe the red flowering gum with give us a few flowers this year.

We have lots of broad beans growing at present and I've been experimenting with trying to reproduce some dry, slow roasted broad beans I found at the shops recently. They are delicious, like a crunchy snack food alongside peanuts and crisps. You wouldn't know they were broad beans just by eating them. Anyway, I am trying to do my own. It's a laborious process. First pick the beans. Then shell the beans. Then steam the beans. Then skin the beans. The first recipe I found suggested I make a mix of flour, oil and spices and stir the beans into that, then spread on baking sheets and put in the oven for 40 minutes. Meh, they weren't crunchy and the floury stuff coating them wasn't that special. Second try the other day and after the prep, I tossed them in oil, salt and garlic then popped them in the oven.

Hmmm. Well, they were certainly crunchy!! They were also charcoaled, darn it. We nibbled the odd non-black one, they tasted fine, but the whole lot was chucked out. What a waste of two hours! However, I live and learn, and the next batch I will roast at a much lower oven temperature, despite what the recipe said. Third time lucky maybe! :-)

After a hiatus, work continues with the retaining walls along the back of the house. Steve is pleased the end is in sight, it's been a big job. The plants I put in a few weeks ago are starting to show signs of healthy growth so that's a relief. I'm looking forward to planting the second, higher level, directly behind the back of the wooden planks, it will fill it out and eventually, in my head anyway, look brilliant and be a wonderful playground for small birds and lizards. It's also great not to have masses of sand blowing around and heaping up outside the back door.

The big news of the week is on the piscatorial front. Steve and his mate Laurie went out in Laurie's boat for a fish in Two People's Bay, and Steve had the pleasure of crossing something off his fish bucket list. A tuna! No, TWO tuna! This is the prize catch, this one weighs about five kilos. He can hardly wipe the smile off his face, Steve that is, the fish looks less than impressed. :-)

Here he is with both his tuna. They also caught a nice load of Orange Wrass, a Pike and a Breaksea Cod, all lovely to eat. Neo is beside himself with joy, he loves fresh fish!