Tuatua Clams and Cockles: A Shellfish Cooking Adventure

As in the movie, Forrest Gump, there are many ways to cook shellfish (as in the variety of cooking shrimp):
boil, broil, fry, deep fry, soup (Asian, Continental, American..etc) raw (not recommended) chowder mixed in with other spices and goodies like potatoes, use with noodles or just as a main and ofcourse my favorite cooked up to a point and eaten as pate' mixed with some good ol' sweet chilli sauce.



Accordingly in respect of the biodiversity, Adeline and myself cooly collected....200+ shellfish. A combination of cockles and tuatua clams. We stopped counting at 200 but we know it was less than 300 because hey....how much shellfish can one eat anyways? On an added note, by New Zealand law, your'e only allowed 150 per person and judging from the picture, it is definitely less than 300....so I think we're safe.

Once we collected the shellfish, there was the cleaning and pre-cooking procedures we had to follow because god knows, if one of us falls sick...uh oh! Here's a good website we followed on how to clean shellfish so that one's culinary adventure can be fulfilled: http://www.ehow.com/how_2074892_clean-clams.html


Since last time we caught the shellfish, we have made: oyster omlettes (Malaysian Hokkien hor chien...my fav!), Shellfish curry and last but not least pasta ala shellfish...also not to forget there's the occasional boiled shellfish and eaten with sweet chilli sauce.
Unfortunately, what we should have done was to clean the shellfish in hot water and not leave them too long. So basically, we had a full load of cooked shellfish and it tasted rather....rubbery...tasted good though. The picture above is the cooked shellfish that was boiled and where me and adeline ate with the sweet chilli sauce (rojak sauce) used for asian fruit salads. Unfortunately, what we should have done was taken pictures of the dished we made with the shellfish. Oops!

Yummy! Till next time....theALBERTUS signing off!

Christmas with the Tans

Christmas with the Tans came and went. Lots of eating, drinking, yakkity-yakking, laughing....ahh the whole works. It was awesome! Having close friends spend the holiday with us was a blessing indeed.

We brought the Tans around for the usual sight-seeing trips in Dunedin, we could have brought them to more places but the Tans kept on insisting that they'd rather stay home and chill out instead. Why? Ahhh... I'll leave you to figure this one out. Hint: No strenuous activities for the missus :) *gushes with happiness*

Christmas eve dinner was awesome - I made honey-glazed pork ribs, mashed potatoes + veges, tuna pasta, baked bread, carrot cake while our other guest Damon brought his signature baked lamb + potatoes :) Needless to say, wen overdosed on food that night. But was it worth it? Definitely!

Xmas presents opening time was funny, as Siow Lan and I were amused watching Albertus and Anthony's antics when they opened their gifts.

Anthony was so happy with his present he insisted we officiate it that night itself.....

Which we did....to hillarious results. Albert emptied out our chips...

....and Anthony won 2 Black Jacks in a row!!

We also brought them to Queenstown, where we OD-ed on even more food! We went for the Xmas Day Dinner at the Gondola, which was rather pricey - but worth it! There were unusually a lot of American tourists that day.... so yes, it was a pretty loud party. LOL. We were also treated to some entertainment and an appearance by Santa Claus! :) Oh - and along with the buffet price, we had a few rounds of luge rides, so you bet the boys had plenty of fun!

We also went for wine-tasting in town the next day. I finally got to taste some award-winning NZ wines!

We also went to the AJ Hackett Bungy Jumping site at Kawarau Bridge. Unfortunately, we failed to convince Anthony to jump. According to him, it was 'not thrilling' and he had no fear of heights. Bah - excuses, we say! :-P

Also managed to introduce the Tans to the many special yummy food Dunedin/Queenstown had to offer. I believe the Tans enjoyed this more than the sightseeing bits! :) LOL...ahh food lovers are we ;)

Speights Alehouse


Dunedin's Velvet Burger

Queenstown's Fergburger


Craft Bar's infamous $15 dollar 500gm steak

We had so much fun, the Tans actually extended their holiday to 4 more extra days! Unfortunately, with all these heaty food and barely enough water, it was no wonder that most of us fell sick towards the end of our holiday! LOL....

The Tans and Lims with Dunedin city's sunset as a backdrop. Beautiful, isn't it? :-)

Our '1st' Xmas Tree's Up!

Pretty pleased with myself :) Not great, but it'll do :) So as I've said in a previous entry - we got out tree and Xmas lights FREE from the Dunedin Freecycle network :) We ended up buying the Christmas ornaments ourselves though, as the lady didn't end up calling us - which can only mean she didn't have any extra ornaments to spare :( Boo hoo.

So we bought our Christmas ornaments from Warehouse. Only after attending Albertus's boss's Christmas piss-up later in the day that we discovered he had an extra Christmas tree and possibly some extra Christmas ornaments to spare. Ahhh... oh well, doesn't matter. Albertus and I have started a legacy by buying our own Christmas ornaments - let's see where they go next year! :)

This is how it looks like all lit up at night.

I used to bundle bags of chocs for friends in the last few years as Christmas tokens - this year, thought I'd do something different. Baked tons of choc macadamia cookies and packed them in these bags myself. *pleased*

Dunedin's 2009 Santa Parade

Got to do something fun today. After mass, we visited a friend at the hospital (poor guy's gone through 2 knee surgeries in a week!) and had the chance to watch the Santa Parade along George Street! Ming you, I suspect many prayers must have been said last night, as it was generally a cloudy/drizzly day - but the sun broke out just in time for (and for most of the whole duration of) the parade! :)

The Difference Between Men and Women

These are the classic forwarded emails you would receive once in a while. You know, the usual Men vs Women humour. So, I thought I'd 'immortalize' them on this blog, as I really do enjoy these funnies.

Yup, just feed your man a beer, a steak or some chips. Then watch him drool. Hurr...

I can testify to this. Seriously.