Again I find myself trying to reconcile not being a hippy with the desire to find stuff for free. I make it up to myself by the fact that the people I know who hunt bargains most aggressively are also some of the poshest people that I know (my paternal grandmother was a huge fan of the bargain). If i graph poshness against bargain-nes, then there comes a point where free comes in. I’m not sure if it’s some sort of asymptotic approach, as there seems to be some truth in the cliché that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

If you are still reading after that insane babbling, then you must be wondering where this is going and what it as to do with crayfish. Well, Mr Fearnley -Whittingstall says that there is good eating on a crayfish, I like eating. He also says that I could catch myself one in a river for free, I like free.

Free is all relative though, as John frequently pointed out throughout the endeavour of thinking about catching, building traps to catch, and ultimately catching crayfish, I could have bought an entire jar of tails for £1.50 from lidl so it seems crazy to have whacked £30 at homebase on a load of wire netting, rope and catfood. I suppose I need to put a price on entertainment though.

We made our little mesh tubes, put a sock full of cat food into each one, tied them like pearls all along a rope, and lobbed them into the river, just about here, and went off to have our dinner. The next morning, much to my great thrill, a gargantuan catch of not a mere 5 cray fish, not even a mere 10! I pulled up the pots to reveal a solitary, but very angry looking, brown armoured battle prawn. he then added insult to injury by jumping out of the pot while I was taking photos.

The traps were reset, and fingers crossed.

That evening we headed down (in the car, so add fuel costs to the price of the dinner) and pulled in another solitary crayfish. The disappointment of this was tempered by the fact that John fell in the river.

Once we got it home and chilled it out I tipped it into a big pot of boiling water. The shell went very pink almost instantly, and after a couple of minutes we pulled it out and ate the tail and the claws. The meat in the claws is incredibly sweet, and the tail wasn’t far behind.

If the motivation takes me again, I’ll reset the traps and try and find another one, to halve the price of this one!

This crayfish was the first thing I’ve ever killed with the intent of eating it. It was a bit odd, and I’ll report back another time about how I’m dealing with the dilemma.

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