It's Crayfish season!

Feeling a bit adventurous today, we walked by the aisles in Auchan supermarket this afternoon and passed by a bucketload of chinese crayfish on the fish section - apparently in season now. I have never cooked them before but their appearance is quite intriguing, surely challenging to cook. I wondered if the green curry sauce which I had in Auckland served with green lipped mussels can do. I decided to buy a handful to try. Upon a closer look, I noticed that these things didn't swim in water, instead they sort of walked on one another's back, had really really dark shells with tiny scorpion-like claws. Eeeekks!!! That put me off for a moment.....

All the 15 crawlers arrived safely at home. Mike helped to clean their guts simply by pulling their middle tail off - alive. Oef! Please, enough of this 'cruelty' - just dump them in the boiling water, will ya? After 5 minutes of steaming they looked almost edible enough ......

Freshly steamed chinese crayfish

Jiangsu province, where we live now, is quite famous for crayfish - which are also known as 'mini lobster' because of they're only as big as a thumb, with 3/4 of its length is the head. When in season, all local restaurants served them as a special offer - we just had the Hairy Crab season in last winter. Locals usually cooked them in light chili curry sauce.

It turned out that the green curry of our choice was a perfect one. I added a dash of coconut milk for the taste and sprinkled thinly sliced kaffir lime leaves. It tasted and smelled beautiful.

View Recipe Here

Toasting away by the lake side

Got up late that morning, like always :D, feeling completely refreshed. Since we needed to get internet access in late afternoon, we decided to hang around in the city center. There're rows of cafes right across the lake, but it seemed that the crowd were attracted to something else. Large billboards bearing colorful photographs from around the world with a little description below were lined up along the park. Wait, there's something else..... a few local artists placed blocks of tiles in the park, some sort of "walk of history", dating back from 1800 up to 2007..... Quite an interesting touch.

It was still 3 more hours to midday. Got plenty of time in our hands and we decided to spread our blanket on a carpet of fresh lime green grass by the lake. What a great spot! Chilled white wine in a glass, a plate of sliced cheese & smoked salmon. Perfect! We're all set for the afternoon. I've never realized how much I miss the sun. How warm it felt brushing against my skin. Hmm, toasty!

Lazying under the afternoon sky, giggling, sprawling, breathing in the breeze coming in from the lake. Aaaahhhh..... Luv spending days like this with you, babe.

Day 6 ~ Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu

That afternoon, we rushed down to Queenstown to watch a rugby match; Highlanders vs Chiefs. I thought it would be an interesting thing to do, at first, never seen a live match before. Once I went to the Bronco's in Denver Colorado, but that was a long time ago, and I barely remembered anything of the game.

It was pretty small in comparison to other live sports I'd seen. Ha, that only one game, of course. In short, I lasted only about 10 minutes. It was too cold, too uncomfortable and I was too grumpy to enjoy the game. I'd rather stay inside the van having wine and cheese. There's this great brie cheese we got the other day. Yummie.

Trying to get out of the park after the game was a bit ridiculous, almost an hour and half we were stuck there. Finally when we got out, we headed directly downtown Queenstown. Streets and alleys were totally full of people that afternoon. It was very touristic though, there were a couple of Indonesian student groups went shopping in the same souvenir store we were in. Babe was in a rugby craze mode - so it was REALLY important for us to find the nearest sports bar to catch the next rugby game on TV.

Let's just say he got his rugby and I got my nice dinner. Too bad no photos. It was almost 11pm by the time we're done. Too late to get a spot in holiday park. We drove around finding nothing. Luckily babe decided to go by a lake side in Frankton. It was a great choice!

It was tucked away from the crowd, great view of the lake and the next morning we woke up to the family of ducks swimming nearby. They joined us for breakfast, sort of, fighting for bread crumbs leftover. At one point, the ducks got too friendly and started to follow Mike around, begging for more crumbs. I thought I'd join them for a swim, although Mike tried to convince me that the water was still freezing cold at this time of the year.

I made a bet with him, I said I'd swim. It wasn't a bluff. He called the bet and said he'd put his money on it. Hehehhe, and guess who lost? I did jumped into the lake. It was like an instant brain freeze, only this went throughout my whole body. It was FREEZING COLD!! The coldness numbed my mind and the rest of my system, I just automatically swam quickly across and back, while the other campers on the other side obviously saw me jumped in. I heard them laughing. The best thing after the swim, was sitting in the sun with a warm coffee in my hand. Mike made it for me....