Snails Sunshine Coast - my love affair with snails

I have spent a lot of time thinking about snails. More than I ever would have expected since I have never been a great fan. As a common garden variety, I thought they were pretty yuck and the main reaction they provoked was stomping. As an edible dish, well, the garlic coated snails I had whilst travelling through Andorra in the Pyrenees a number of years ago were akin to garlic coated snippets of rubber thong that made enough of an impression on me to never wanted to eat them again.

But then my whole snail world changed. I was introduced to the world of the snails, first as a dinner guest, and then as a guest of a local snail farm. I mean who would have thought it – a snail farm here on the Sunshine Coast? I wouldn’t have thought there was a demand, but it would seem the degustation of escargot has its own secret following.

Snail feeding

To say snails are odd little creatures would be an understatement. But they are oddly endearing ones as well.

They have a reputation for being slow but let me tell you, that is a myth. Just try and take a photo of them and you will soon see they can travel quite fast!

I guess I had always thought snails were quite dirty creatures too, living on compost heaps and being indiscreet enough to leave a slimy silver trail wherever they went. Another Myth. In fact I think these little guys could all be Virgos. They could even be a little OCD. I know my little snails did not like it at all when their environs were even remotely neglected.

Yes, you read right… my little snails. All 23 of them.

My new snail friends…

Backtracking a little, my visit to Glasshouse Gourmet Snails was fascinating and not at all what I expected. I was instantly quite enamoured; they are such funny looking creatures, with their little heads, eyes and tentacles constantly pivoting around or retracting. My hostile preconceptions melted away quite quickly.

Breeders Mary Page and Cliff Wilson are passionate about what they do, so their set-up is quite elaborate. Essentially, the snails are raised in shade cloth enclosures. In some instances they are just larges shade cloth covered crates, but there are also what Mary and Cliff call their free-range enclosures.

Free range snails – fancy that. At this point I thought I had heard it all. But the free-range enclosure was quite funky. No real roaming restrictions for these little guys.

So predictably, after my visit, I found myself driving home with my own 23 adoptees sitting on the passenger seat. In a sense I felt I was rescuing them as they were bundled up ready for distribution and would eventually end up on someone’s plate. I was feeling good.

Snail out for a walk on the daybed…

Back home, my intention was to take some photos and then do a bit of experimental snail cooking, but once I set up the photo props with the nasturtium flowers, and they started sticking their heads out to say ‘hello’, I didn’t have the heart.

Of course it wasn’t without a minor tragedy as I dropped the bag when I got out of the car and cracked a few of their shells. Needless to say I was devastated. My plan was to rescue them, not give them group concussion and I spent the next hour ‘Googling’ whether or not they could indeed be saved. Turns out they can.

So there on my day bed, I literally sat for an hour watching these odd little creatures as they munched away on their carrots – which they apparently like sliced into quarters and free of skin. After five days of purging, they were ravenous, and now I had ruined their purge, I could hardly eat them, could I?

It took four weeks of housing them in a polystyrene box on my kitchen bench before I took some serious action and built them an aviary. A sore thumb and RSI in my right arm later, I had mini snail condo set up in the garden. OK, it wasn’t the Palazzo Versace, but it would do very nicely. As it happened the aviary was a bit of a failure and I ended up relocating the snails into an old aquarium which proved to be quite beneficial as quite unexpectedly… yes, I became an aunt.

The new abode must have renewed their vigour (or maybe it was a survival instinct that prevented extinction) and a number of the snails laid eggs. They dig little holes and bury their eggs in the dirt much in the way a turtle does and I was fortunate enough to see the cross section against the aquarium glass.

Magically I could even see the eggs hatch into snails, and then watch them burst their way through the soil… all 100 or so of them!

Snails hatching

It takes a snail nine months to reach maturity, as in eating size, which I actually thought was quite a long time, but I guess it is relative to their size, and well, they are renowned for being somewhat on the ‘slow’ side.

So then came the process of watching them evolve into little adults. Some would think I had a lot of time on my hands…

The only thing the miracle of birth ensured was I was never going to eat my little friends now. Way too cute.

baby snails

Having said that, it didn’t stop me eating their close relatives during several snail experimentation projects, one with Tonya Jennings from On the Ridge Cooking School where we cooked up French dishes, and another with Jamie Milverton from Jamie’s Gourmet to see if we could make a snail pizza work!

And no scoffing. Somewhat surprisingly, even to us, the pizza was surprisingly good, which was everything to do with its accompaniments as the braised snails worked well with buffalo mozzarella, garlic and a splash of olive oil. While I am not about traumatise dinner guests with my latest foodie find, it was fun trialling possibilities.

But all good things must come to an end, and at the risk of causing a snail epidemic in my back garden, I released my little slimy friends to forage freely. It was either that or I was going to have to upgrade their accommodation and, truth be known, between feeding, cleaning and maintaining, they are quite a lot of work, so the back garden seemed like an awesome alternative.