Octopus

Octopuses have eight arms with two rows of suction discs on each one (lower left). They use their arms to scurry along the ocean floor. When they sense danger, octopuses shoot out ink to darken the water and hide themselves. Their mouths can drill into hard shells and tear prey (lower right).

This is a simple octopus description i found on the net.. Octopus... have u eaten it? If u live in Malaysia..Yup..i am sure one way or another u would have eaten it.. fresh.. or dried..I remember the last time i went back to malaysia, my brother joe bought dried octopus for us n we brought that dried octopus to Tuekry..türks cant stand the smell but i...hmmm..like a precious gem.. i protected my dried octopus possesively n cooked it bit by bit.....while halil watched me ate it in full understanding...when i offered him the octopus, he said..*no thanks* heheheheheheh..sharing octopus was not good n so i didnt heheheheheehh

I thought i would never eat it again... at least not in turkey...until of course the last edremit... while buying the fish from the fisherman there who just came to shore with their catch...halil also discovered that the guy had caught octopus as well...did he buy? nope..he didnt.!!!!

When he told me, i made him turn back n he bought the octopus...one kilogram of weight of octopus which only costed him 10YTL.!! very cheap!! (for fresh squid..it is 15YTL this
year)..little did i expect..the octopus was

ALİVE!!!!!!

Never in my life had i bought an alive octopus!! İt was 11am at that time..we went home..put the octopus inside this plastic container..

Yup..that picture was snapped when it was still alive..the arms r very powerful indeed..it stick to u like a very powerful glu...

eeeeeeeeeee..geli geleman i !!!

Halil:

U r not going to cut it while it is still alive right??

Simah:

Of course not..i am not barbaric..let us wait till it dies

And so i half closed the lid of the plastic container n we all went to the sea for our usual sea splashing...

Deep down i had this images of the octopus moving out of the plastic container... moving around the house...

Came back at around 2pm...checked on my octopus..n..it was still alive!!!

I was contemplating that if by night the octopus was still alive... i would set it free back into the ocean...but i wanted to eat octopussssssss......please octopus please die before night...i prayed..

N by 5pm, we left the place for another sea splashing...splash splash... came back home...almost dead...yippie'!!!!.

Instead of cooking the fresh fish n squids we bought that day, we decided to eat out that night...we never eat out in edremit after all these years... that night we decided to..off we went..

Came back..n YES! it is dead!! Yippie!!!!

I was still geli geleman...but my desire to eat it won..

With a plastic functioning as my glove...using a meat cutter knife....with all my energy left in me ..i cut the arms of the octopus..it was very difficult..very hard n very slimy...i should have cut the head part as well but feeling bad enough about killing the octopus.. i led the head into the rubbish bin...eeeeeeeeeeee still geliiii..

Put it in the deep freezer n on the next day..i cooked the octopus my style.. (sorry no picture here)...it took ages to cook (which i didnt have)..but u know what?? unlike the octopus i had ever tasted..even while i was in malaysia...this fresh octopus is very delicious...cooked to perfection, the middle part is actually milky tasting...(it was a fat octopus).. the outside part is not as hard as i had imagined..it is actually delicious...very milky very heavenly...

It took me hours for the octopus to die but it was worth it...Cant take away the guilty feeling though...i mean we buy fresh fish n squids from the fisherman,right? they r already dead when they transfer hands into ours... they were fresh..still with the heavenly smell of fish n seaweeds around..n the squids..when u cook them...the freshness gives it a very sweet taste that when u add in loads of chillies in the gravy....u cannot find this anywhere else..definitely not in istanbul... n the size of the squids??..Besarrrrrrrrrr......very big indeed...

I am an octopus killer....quilty as charged..

These r among the things i love about edremit... fresh fish..fresh squids...

If halil go n buy the fish there n if he asks the fisherman what fish is there for today.. the answer will be..

*Allah ne versa*

Whichever Allah gives..

And that whichever r the ones we feast for dinner in edremit..

I think the last edremit i had eaten at least 4 kilograms of squids n we brought back 2.5 kg more to istanbul...

Edremit... i miss u already..