First Stealth Coastal Bivvy and Seashore Forage

[Matthew]

Again raging I missed this but the grief for missing valentines weekend would have been too much to take.

Matthew

[Dowser]

Brilliant!!! Wud you recommend the gas to cook with or wud u ever use the hobo
Regards
Kenbo

I definately intend to start using the hobo for cooking outdoors more often, but the downside is soot build-up on the bottom of your pots.  If you are beside a good water source, and you don't mind a bit of scrubbing it's fine, but if your travelling with limited water supplies the soot gets everywhere.

Gas is so much cleaner with little or no soot given out.  The heat is also a lot more controllable so you don't end up burning everything.

Personally I use the Primus Multifuel stove with Primus Power fuel.  Works exactly like gas but you can see exactly how much fuel you have left, instead of building up a collection of half full gas cannisters in my shed  

[suspectmonkey]

Nice one fellas!  Great effort with the seafood grub, although must say that I'm not a huge fan of shellfish and I prefer the look of the fry

Good to see Sal is doing her job of guard dog well!

[Scribble]

Nice write up and the food looked scrummy , those two with the torches have you any idea what they where up to  I'd of crapped myself if I was there on my own

I've been thinking of doing a bivvy somewhere near mulough plenty of fire wood and no one about at night . Parking the car in Newcastle and walking along beach

[kenbocbr]

Thanks for that, just getting started myself and cant wait to do some bivvy stuff only thing is I work weekends only off Mon-Wed!!
Kenbo

[sjh1]

Great report. I love seafood, your meal looked munch.

Edit: meant to say, are those shore crabs edible? or is a stock the only real option?

[Dowser]

Great report. I love seafood, your meal looked munch.

Edit: meant to say, are those shore crabs edible? or is a stock the only real option?

These shore crabs are perfectly edible but actually spend most of their summer being dragged out of the sea by children and kept in a brightly coloured bucket for a few minutes before being chucked back in.  That is, until they end up in my bucket!!!

There's not a great deal of meat on them.  There are some very tasty pieces in each leg segment and a little more in the claws, but that is all.  Unless your prepared to take the time and extract the tiny morsels then your better off using them whole to make a soup or stock.

To make a soup/bisque you would boil them whole for about two minutes.  The humane way to prepare shorecrab is to put them in a plastic bag in the freezer for an hour before-hand to knock them out first, but obviously if your in the great outdoors you don't always have a freezer to hand 

You would then make a regular type of seafood bisque with white wine, cream, onion, garlic, pepper, salt etc etc then cut the pre-boiled crabs up coursely and add them to the other ingredients and boil the whole lot for a further 10-15mins. After this you would give it a bit of a blitz with a blender and pass it through a fine sieve and viola... a big bowl of tasty shore crab soup ready to be served with some top notch bread!!!

[sjh1]

Great report. I love seafood, your meal looked munch.

Edit: meant to say, are those shore crabs edible? or is a stock the only real option?

These shore crabs are perfectly edible but actually spend most of their summer being dragged out of the sea by children and kept in a brightly coloured bucket for a few minutes before being chucked back in.  That is, until they end up in my bucket!!!

There's not a great deal of meat on them.  There are some very tasty pieces in each leg segment and a little more in the claws, but that is all.  Unless your prepared to take the time and extract the tiny morsels then your better off using them whole to make a soup or stock.

To make a soup/bisque you would boil them whole for about two minutes.  The humane way to prepare shorecrab is to put them in a plastic bag in the freezer for an hour before-hand to knock them out first, but obviously if your in the great outdoors you don't always have a freezer to hand 

You would then make a regular type of seafood bisque with white wine, cream, onion, garlic, pepper, salt etc etc then cut the pre-boiled crabs up coursely and add them to the other ingredients and boil the whole lot for a further 10-15mins. After this you would give it a bit of a blitz with a blender and pass it through a fine sieve and viola... a big bowl of tasty shore crab soup ready to be served with some top notch bread!!!

Frozen alive or boiled alive...  suppose frozen is the lesser evil!  

I've eaten edible crabs caught in off-shore lobster pots (these guys I think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_pagurus) by simply boiling then cracking open the claws, legs etc. but these small shore crabs must be even more footery (footerier?).

Didn't kno you could eat the shore ones at all but will have to try, if only to compare. Your recipe sounds great, but I'm not much of a cook, might give it a go sometime.

[Mourneman]

first class trip indeed,quite a while ago but a great camp

[whoRya]

Love all the cammo jackets and tarps.....then a big bright pink plate thrown in for good measure