Ok, so this post may be alittle late… as everyone knows Australia day is on the 26th of January. Australia day of course celebrates our Federation as a separate nation. While some see Australia Day as a reminder of white settlement, and its horrible cost to the native peoples of this land, I like to celebrate Australia day as celebration of all good things Australian, including the paying of respect for the traditional landowners and their right to the land.

So how did we celebrate? Well Casey and I plus 3 of our friends went away for a long weekend of camping, fishing surfing, bbqing and beer drinking. In other words a very Aussie weekend .

Casey was very excited as it meant that he would get a whole weekend of surfing, with little competition from other surfers ,sueeto (sweet) . Which by the way is the inscription on the bottom of his surf board.

Here are the waves, which are nice but not that good. But they were perfect for me! As I am just learning and I will never be any good LOL.

The other thing the “boys” wanted to do was fish, obviously. They found it alittle hard to fish in the ocean as there bait was continually stolen by these Sand crabs. I managed to go in and catch one, but as you can see he was still alittle small. I did wish to eat him though after he bite my finger and made me bleed, but I was not that desperate LOL. The boys did let the biggest crab of the day go, before I got there I should add.

Casey did manage to regain some of his hunter kudos by catching the only legal fish of the weekend. A large esturine bream, on a handline I should add. So he definately gave the fish every chance of escaping. But we still paid homage by cooking it on the barbie and enjoying every morsal! (Method at the bottom)

Do you remember the weird memes? Well, I probably should have mentioned something. I of course don’t consider it weird but everyone else seems too. Ok, here it is. I don’t have a microwave, I don’t want one and I have no idea how to use them. So, what do you think now? So how does this impact on the muffin?

When we went shopping for the weekend I spied a packet of muffin mix. I never, ever buy these but I thought it might be fun and alittle kitschy for the weekend. So I took the packet and my muffin tray down with the rest of the food.
So, we get into the cabin and there is a microwave, gas elements and no oven. Uh oh. We of course planned to do most of cooking on the barbie so that was fine, but I would get no packet muffins . I then decided that I would attempt them anyway by using coffee cups! I opened the microwave instruction book and tried to figure out the power and time… I greased the cups, poured in the batter and presto! Muffin in a cup! They actually worked very well, except that there was 5 people and 6 cups. So we couldn’t have muffins and coffee at the same time

I spied the kangaroo and then berated Chris til he would photograph him (easy to tell the difference between the sexes as he has, no pouch and huge “back wheels” ; ) . So this is where I would like to say thanks to Chris for most of the pics as I unceremoniously left my camera at my parents house with Kiri, so he provided all of these photos excet for the food Thanks Chris! I would also like to congratualte the other couple SJ and C for getting engaged! (before the weekend…) We had a great time and can’t wait for the houseboat next year!

To cook and celebrate bream on a barbie (Barbeque)
1 Big Fish (bream, snapper..something like that, scaled and gutted)
A big piece of foil large enough to wrap twice around your fish
A piece of baking paper big enough to wra once around fish
butter, lime, garlic, salt and pepper, beer
1 hot bbq grill plate

Place foil down then the baking paper. Lay down a few slices of lime and some salt and pepper. Lay your fish on top. Put garlic slices in the cavity and some salt and pepper. Season the top and put some lime slices on top, a few knobs of butter and a dash of your fav beer (or wine). Wrap fish well and lay it on the grill plate. Cook each side for about 8 to 10 minutes(depending on how big the fish is and how hot the plate is), until it is really hot.
Open up at the table, enjoy the smell, share with friends and pay homage to the fish.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2006 at 6:09 am and is filed under Recipes, Country/ Australiana. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.