THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY

Part 3 THE BOOK OF LAMORAK De GALES

This is the New Year!

And yes, I’m still paywalled. This is always going to be Paywalled. I’ve been dogging it for a while and just managed to finish Chapter 49 today. It gets busy around here at Christmas time. There’s brunch to plan for, and decorations to go up, and presents to wrap…I don’t know how she does it.

I get away with it because she’s a control freak. She says that I’m just lazy — I say it’s Laid Back, but she ain’t buying. Anyway, anyone who knows her knows I’m right. She says I’m a great sous-chef because I keep her glass full. That’s all that matters, I guess. Anyway, our next big adventure is New Year’s Dinner. I think this is the dinner we look forward to, more than brunch even. New Year’s Dinner used to be New Year’s Eve. But now the stores are open on New Year’s Day, so we buy the lobster then so the kids can go out if they want to. We don’t do that anymore.

We started eating our Lobster Dinner before we had kids. It was always served on New Year’s Eve. The largest crowd we had for dinner one night was about a dozen, or maybe fourteen? We started cooking the damned bugs at about 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon. That’s when we realized we shouldn’t make appies to go with it. People just couldn’t eat it all. Great for leftovers: Stock, Bisque, Lobster Ravioli. From that point on, it was a pot of rice and a roasting pan full of lobster and spot prawns.

Oh yes, before I forget, the lobsters aren’t boiled. They’re stir-fried using a Chinese recipe we got from a waiter working at our favourite Dim-Sum restaurant. We’d gone there for dinner, and had the lobster. We didn’t know what to expect. They brought all of it out. Tail, claws, legs, stomach. With a bowl of rice. It’s done in a cream sauce, with garlic, and tastes out of this world. So we asked the waiter how they made it, and he told us he couldn’t tell us inside, we had to go outside while he had a smoke. He told us how to do it, and the wife wrote it down, asked questions, and felt confident enough to figure out how to do it. He even told her how to kill them. Because you have to eat them right out of the tank.

When the kids were young, we put the lobsters on the floor and tried to race them. The dog went nuts just seeing them. But that would only last a minute, because really, I was just killing time while she was getting things ready. What else do you think a guy’s going to do if he has to watch the kids?

So anyway, killing them. That first time we decided we were going to do it, she said she was going to have to figure it out. It was only about a week or two after she got the recipe. She said she had to try it out to see if she could do it. She picked up the first lobster, grabbed the knife, and cut the section between the head and the tail, put her fingers in there and tore the head off. Done in less than five seconds. Painless and quick.

Now, I suppose you’re wondering why I’m telling you all of this? We’re having lobster dinner with the kids this year — again — and I’m going to tape her cooking it. I’m using the Ipad and trying to figure it out, and I may actually have it…kinda-sorta. Anyways, the whole idea is to kick off our new adventure together. I’m going to have to come up with a name for this part, so if you have any ideas…feel free to leave a comment.

As for the rest of it, we’re going into CHAPTER 24 PART VI called: THE KNIGHTS AT THE TAVERN.

What was it last week…? Damn, you’re just going to have to up-grade and start reading. It literally is only pennies a day. But if you don’t know, or you’re a little leery, thinking maybe it might have “bad” language, it does. Get over it. It’s not as bad as all that. How much, you ask? Ok, I’ll tell you. I haven’t been saying how much it is because it’s embarrassingly cheap at $30 Canadian a year. It’s $10 a month if you just want to poke around a bit, sort of “kick the tires,” a wee before you decide to come in and join the fun. It really would be nice to see you. It’s a small and intimate group of three dozen readers only. One of them is my brother! (Just have to give a shout out to him once in a while because I don’t phone him enough.)

THE SHIELD OF LOCKSLEY as designed by myself on chatGPT