Month: June 2018

When we were young, our parents and most people in our community grew their own vegetables. If I remember correctly, all gardens were planted on raised beds with trenches separating them. The fertilizer was manure and capelin.

When we got married, each year, my wife and I would plant our own small vegetable garden. There were the staples, potatoes, carrots and turnips. Some years we tried growing, with little success, tomatoes, cabbage and strawberries. I always found it rewarding and inspiring to see the plants growing and to harvest our small crop.

We are now in our senior years.  From 2008 to 2016. we were living in the Ottawa valley region of Ontario. When we returned home, we looked forward to having our own small vegetable garden.

We now have a twenty by twenty garden, that’s located behind the garage in our daughter and son-in-laws garden. Thus far we have planted a row of carrots, beet and  spinach. We still have two more rows left.

Just showing the grand-children, the eenies clapsies game. I believe it should be easies

easies, clapsies, twirl around tabapsies, right hand, left hand,
high as the sky, low as the sea, touch my knees, touch my toes,
cross my legs and under it goes
Can anybody remember the correct wording??
We played this game with an indian rubber ball

 

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My son and I were watching an Anthony Bourdain episode, from newfoundland Labrador where sea urchins were on the menu. He asked me if I would ever consider eating sea urchin? My response was ,”I might, if I knew they were cooked properly.”

A few days later we were out for a drive, with his two year old son, my grandson and we noticed a number of sea urchins on the parking area where boaters launch their boats. They had been dropped there by sea gulls as a way to break them open. The following is a you tube video showing sea gulls dropping the urchins.

I have picked up sea urchins from tidal pools and from rocky beaches. I wondered what happened to the insides of the ones we picked up on the beaches and road ways.  Most of my sixty something years have been spent near the ocean and fish plants, however; I did not hear of anyone eating the flesh of this crustacean.

Will I eat the roe of an urchin? I have eaten the dried roe from a capelin and the roe from a codfish but a sea urchin!

I’m subject to gout so I have to check to see if sea urchins are one of the foods that I should not be eating.  Lobster, crab and other shellfish as well as other seafoods and trout are foods that are not recommended for gout sufferers.

If I should eat a sea urchin, I will take a photo and place it here.

The Japanese are the biggest consumer of sea urchin roe.