French Onion soup

Zepher
Chris & Lyn Darch
Thu 18 Sep 2008 23:15
17:13.35S
164:40.66W
 
 
Hi Folks,
 
The topic of the day was not the weather for a change but soup ! we are using up our remaining veg from Tahiti as apparently the local customs in Tonga like to confiscate veg at random to supplement there diet so we are told, anyway they all got chopped up and Cpt Fluffy excelled herself with a Gordon blue styli soup , with croutons made from our bread of yesterday produced by Rob, needing by Ruth so it was a team effort minus the crocked kipper ..
 Weather wise the airwaves on the ANZAC net were abuzz with rumours of lows in the Tonga region, we couldn't make out half of it as they operate on 6 MHz and as most of the boats are within 300 nm of each other so not  much was heard, we gleaned later that day from Rhythm who is some 400 nm away searching out Coconut crabs the size of dustbin lids in a little island called Suravior (part of the Northern Cook chain of islands) that as with most weather forecast most of it was speculation, as is with these nets after three different weatherforcasts so many ideas emerge it hard to pick your way through all the psycho babble , best to make your own mind up and not follow the pack !
I am attempting to do chefly duties today , things have improved on the rib front apart from the rolling around some nights when the wind lightens and the boat skews off the top of the swells with no wind to drive her, that's when it hurts if a hand hold is not near ones mitts ..
 Looked through the cook books and found a good one by the ultimate gastro gnome .. Keith Floyd now there a chef who knows his plonk , and I once saw him prepping ostrich on a sail boat off the Cape of Good Hope SA
none of this hiding in a studio lark straight to the coal face and get on with it  .. mind you he had earlier been to a ostrich farm to pick out his intended victim, whilst talking into the camera the bugger sneaked up behind him and gave him rather nasty peck .. as much as to say it ant me mate , Floyd was half pissed at the time and found it highly amusing , but the way that ostrich gave him a peck it defiantly hurt ! and I guess he was off to the supermarket after that, I wouldn't like to wrestle one of those buggers down unless it was with a tazer ! anyway its meat balls in a tomato ,onion,garlic and mushroom sauce .. the crew all asked for spare ribs but I said they weren't quite ready yet !
 
An anticipating crew ... of the grub that is ..