The Other Side Of Our Kitchen - written by CHOPPER!

How's it going! Don't let the picture scare you, it's all show really. You have no idea how good it is to finally get my own post on the Squisyness Blog! This is only the first of a few posts to come, as I have much to say about my gorgeous girl and our wonderful world of food.

Since moving to the tropics we have had so much new and exciting food coming out of the kitchen, and there is plenty more to come! Yes, I am sure there are lots of you out there that are very jealous of me - and rightly so :)

I was never a seafood eater before I met Amelita, but she has converted me into a huge fan. The seafood alone in Townsville is worth the 1400km pilgrimage from Bris Vegas, with the fresh mud crabs, prawns straight off the neighbours trawler, and big Barra just itching to get onto my plate.

But seafood isn't the only thing that is plentiful here. The beef is so tender it melts in your mouth. Just last night Amelita made her signature dish from the BBQ Challenge - Rib eye fillet with ham, banana & hollandaise sauce. One of my favourite dishes. Such a great combination of flavours with every mouthful. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it! Yes honey, taste the layers of flavour :)

I think the fresh food in Townsville has made a huge difference to our big move. If we didn't have the seafood and all the fresh produce here in Townsville, I think we would take a lot longer to adjust to small town life. Things are a lot slower up here and anything you want done takes 5 times as long to happen, but while the food keeps pumping out of our kitchen at a rate of knots, Chopper and the rest of the crew are very happy campers indeed.

Tonight we had a fishy fry up. Barramundi, prawns and callamari topped with a sqeeze of lemon, and a generous dollop of Hollandaise sauce. Went off without a hitch really - oh except when the stove caught fire! Thats right, all the cooking was done and some of the oil just happened to spill onto the hotplate and away it went! All I could hear coming from the kitchen was Amelita calling out (quite calmly really) "FIRE!! FIRE!! FIRE!!" I raced into the kitchen and franticly looked around the sink for something to put the flames out with, and Amelita, with a trayful of seafood in one hand just grabbed the tea towel and bashed the fire out with no effort at all! How stupid did I feel? Well, besides the fact that there is plenty of water in the taps, I didn't even think to grab the extinguisher from the pantry. Not that I needed it. As Amelita demonstrated, all I needed was a bloody tea towel!

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for the next installment of The Other Side Of Our Kitchen. If you liked it let me know, otherwise I might get the arse! See ya!

Chopper