EELs.

A talk of Gen X hunting and gathering, from Rural NZ.

1992. Rural New Zealand. Im 14 and trying to grow big and strong.

This was not working out on the food being supplied by those in charge of my welfare. There was never ever enough food. Just nothing edible enough to keep me full. And really only room in the fridge for Dads beer.

I was basically living on the meager dinners. And even then, there was never enough because in NZ, Scarcity mindset mean you must ALWAYS MAKE SURE YOU NEVER cook enough food. There must be No leftovers Ever.

And if your hungry, that means your greedy!

Fucking Mental.

Im sure some Brits and Kiwis reading this grew up like this. How are you going to buy 200$ worth of booze a week if you have to keep buying groceries for your hungry kids?

Anyway…I once found a way around the starvation.

What kept me alive was my self designed ENERGY POTION.

ENERGY POTION RECIPE:

Get the huge cup. In my case is was a Seattle expo 1985 Chowder bowl.

3 heaped tablespoons of Nestles Instant Coffee.

3 heaped tablespoons of Milo.

1934, Australian industrial chemist and inventor Thomas Mayne, who was working at Nestlé, developed "Milo and launched it at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Mayne came up with his formula for Milo combining malt extract (made from malted barley), full cream milk powder, cocoa, sugar, mineral salts, iron and vitamins A, D and B1, in an attempt "to develop a completely balanced food drink which contained all the necessary proteins and minerals". It was intended to help children to obtain enough nutrients in their diet.
A child that needed nutrients was me.

The next part of the potion is Sweetened Condensed milk. Half a can.

Condensed milk is cow's milk from which water has been removed (roughly 60% of it). It is most often found with sugar added, in the form of sweetened condensed milk. Sweetened condensed milk is a very thick, sweet product, which when canned can last for years without refrigeration. The product is used in numerous dessert dishes in many countries.

This shit is amazing. The U.S. government ordered huge amounts of condensed milk as a field ration for Union soldiers during the Civil war. This was an extraordinary field ration for the nineteenth century: a typical 10-oz (300-ml) can contained 1,300 calories (5440 kJ), 1 oz (28 g) each of protein and fat, and more than 7 oz (200 g) of carbohydrate.

Shit I just realized That I was probably single handedly keeping Nestle afloat, and in turn this potion was keeping me alive.

Anyway….

Add boiling water to the above and stir stir stir.

Fuck man. When I got on the bus the lobes were humming. I was raving good.

Singing Nirvana at the top of my voice and barking out excited yawps.

I had the juice and the fire. I was ready to Win School.

If you have those ingredients lying around, I implore you to try it.

ENERGY POTION...makes your hipster bulletproof coffee or Dipshit energy drinks seem like ginger beer, man.

---

I digress… this story is about eels…

How is this about eels…?

Well I started crashing from the ENERGY POTION high around lunch time and my tiny lunch of maybe a yogurt and an apple was never enough.

In NZ and Australia school has these shops that sold food to the kids that had money.

It was Amazing. They were called TUCK SHOPS

It sold pies, Mutton Hocks, ice creams, Sausage rolls, Chicken and Corn rolls, drinks and all sort of amazing shit to the starved.

It was rare I could ever steal enough money to buy much… maybe a sausage roll and a 50c ice block if I could heist a 2$ coin out of the cars dash console….

One day on the bus, looking out the window… which is what miserable tired kids did before phones, I had a brainstorm. I could hunt for food.

I was a good hunter and had shot many a rabbit… but never saw them as a food source… To me they were just something to kill and be more powerful than.

I went hunting after school on the hilly farm paddocks down the road from our house. Shot a rabbit and carried it back home.

By the time I got home the dank rabbity smell fuming off the floppy corpse was making me almost spew, so there was no way I would be eating that.

I sadly took it down to the waterhole on our property and threw it in.

It bobbed about in the slow moving pool leaking blood.

Long shapes emerged from the shadows…and started ripping at the rabbit.

Eels.

The ancestors of modern New Zealand eels had been swimming up and down New Zealand waterways since at least the early Miocene (23 million years ago). The longfin eel is one of the largest eels in the world and it is found only in the rivers and lakes of New Zealand.

I knew you could eat eels. I decided I was going to become a great eel catcher and grow strong on eel meat.

That night I made three hand lines out of my dads fishing gear, and prepped the small smoker box. Filling it with sawdust from the wood shed.

After school the next day I went up and shot another rabbit.

This one I chopped into chunks with a hatchet and hooked the furry chunks onto the lines.

Just on dusk the eels came out and I caught one right away.

I gutted it, skinned it as best I could and sliced it into rounds and smoked it. As soon as it was cooked I tried it..

It was amazing. The Japs Know a thing or two I tell ya.

I pounded down probably about a kilo and almost spewed. I got the Eel Sweats.

An hour later I had dinner with the family. Definitely not talking about the eel I had eaten, and was hiding in the shed.

I felt a strange feeling. It was “Full.” This was a new feeling.

I remember lying on my bed in a near orgasmic state of bloated satiety.

Later I snuck down to the shed and put the rest of the smoked eel chunks into an ice cream container and stashed it down the back of the fridge.

I took it to school the next day and gorged on it.

A kid asked me what it was…

Shit… I couldn’t say Eel… that was fully gross… but we were a town that hosted many Game fishing tournaments… and I knew what was good in the eyes of these kids and their fisherman fathers…

“Smoked Marlin.”

I knew this went for about 40$ a Kg and was a delicacy.

Whoah! Can I have a chunk?

“Well this stuff is really expensive… but I could trade you for a pie or sausage roll from the tuck shop…”

Well…we have been here before dear reader. I was scamming kids for their lunches years earlier… as you can read here…

Breads of the Fairy.

And so it was that over a period of months I traded a total of probably ten fat river eels for a tremendous amount of food and treats and even sometimes money or these kids lunches.

My father caught me, as I had used up all almost all the Kerosine that was needed for the smoker… but when I told him how I was scamming the kids at school by trading slimy river eels that I was catching with rabbit chunks, he was so proud he bought me four bottles of Kerosine.

I finally got snapped when a kid bought a whole container from me for 20$.

He took it home and proudly served it to his game fishing father and his high class family at dinner.

He was not happy when he confronted me the next day.

“Bro, my dad says there’s no way in hell that shit you sold me is smoked marlin. He says it’s fucking eel. I know you live up in the bush on a river. Its fucking eel isn’t it? You’ve been feeding us eel!"

"Me: True… but… in Japan NZ eel is the highest Delicacy…and you liked it… The Japs know a thing or two, I tell ya.”

“Fuck the Japs mate!”

I fled.

Eel was not a cool thing, but a gross slimy thing, and within hours my scam was exposed and I was once again shame faced before my peers for duping others.

It was not the first time that would happen nor would it be the last.

Four other times I have proper duped people with food.

1. Found a candy gummy frog squashed on the sidewalk in Australia, I squeezed it back into shape and gave it to a fellow roofer to eat.

   

2. Fed an Australian friend dog Jerky when he came over to the USA to stay with us. I didn’t tell him, ever. He ate the whole bag and loved it.

   

3. When I moved my new Family to Australia in 09, I was hunting a lot and almost all the meat we ate was from these trips.

I made stews of what I called “Wild Mountain Chicken”

One day my stepson found a weird hand shaped bone… and said “What sort of chicken has bones like this?” Rabbits of course. :)

He never guessed what the Jumping Outback Beef burgers were.

4. When my wife was pregnant every morning I fed her on Sausages that I had made.

   She complained that they had a bit of a weird taste…

   I ate mine with gusto… showing her they were indeed great.

   What she didn’t know that there were two batches of sausages. Mine on one side of the freezer, and her and the babys on the others.

   Mine were made with the best cuts of lamb and beef.

   Hers were made of mostly guts. Liver, heart and Kidney.

   Good organ meats for the growing baby.

   There was no fucking way she would eat that foul offal without my trickery.

   And eat it she did. For the entire pregnancy.

   Once I went away and she made herself some sausages from my side of the fridge, and went on about how they were so amazing…

   When I returned from my trip she was shocked at how the sausages changed back to being kind of bitter… but I just gas lit her about how good they were and eventually our baby was born super strong and healthy. I told her about the offal sausages when he was 2 and she was commenting on how unusually strong and healthy he was compared to other kids his age. She was only mildly enraged.

Thank you so much for going on this journey with me. We will end our tale with the song EELS from the British Surrealist Comedy THE MIGHTY BOOSH!

Eels up inside ya
Findin an entrance where they can
Eels up inside ya
Findin an entrance where they can

Boring through your mind, through your tummy, through your anus, eels!

Eels!

Give it up now!

Eels!
——

HOOK ME UP!!! Buy me FOOD! Or a Coffee :)

If you enjoyed this and constantly having money you don’t have, ripped out of your bank account via a subscription, doesn’t appeal to you , you can support me on this link below.

Dont be cheap.

https://buymeacoffee.com/obsidianblackbird

—