My Night to Cook: a journey in photos

We made an attempt to cook the fish one Tuesday, while the Philosopher worked late. It was... interesting.

I made this loaf of bread first:

Then Norah helped me bread the fillets.

 

I had to document each kiddo trying a bite of fish:

 

And after all that, this is mainly what we ended up eating for dinner:

From now on we're letting the Philosopher handle the fish frying (and baking and stewing and ... everything else).

My Sardine Stew Prep Crew

We were a little nervous introducing Sardines to the kids, but they were really curious and interested in the prep, cleaning, and cooking.
Here are a few shots that I took of the process. I tried really hard not to get my hands dirty.  ;o)

Norah talks to the fish.

My Sardine Tutorial

I didn't know what to expect when we got the email on Fish Tuesday.
Sardines?? What on earth do we do with sardines??


If you're not familiar with the Monterey area you might not know that this area was once filled with sardine canneries. Now there's nothing to see of the former canning economy except for "Cannery Row," an area which we have yet to visit.

They were big and not at all like the kind you imagine coming from a tin. The problem for us was that they came whole. So we had to do the prepping in order to eat them (and apparently you need to eat them right away as they don't freeze well). A lot of people (including a lady picking up her fish at the same time we were) swear that grilled sardines taste awesome. We, however, do not own a grill. That left us with a few alternatives. The chef decided to try a sardine stew (the pictures online instilled little confidence, but the basics of the recipes we found were good).

I'm trying a new method of video sharing here, so bear with me. I took several videos of the kids prepping the sardines with us. (And when I say us, I mean the chef, as I did not touch the things.) I have uploaded 3 videos to youtube (Part 1. Part 2. Part 3.) of Toby taking us through the steps of cleaning and prepping the sardines. I hope they come through if I embed them here. **

** There may be some people out there that can't follow the videos here and will need to view the videos from the links above. Just keep in mind that I have no idea how to monitor the OTHER videos that show up on the youtube page alongside mine and what pops up after my video is shown. Please don't click on anything that looks sketchy, and don't tell me what other videos are linked to mine. I don't really want to know. I've set the privacy level on my youtube videos to "private" so only the people with these links can see them. Hopefully that keeps things under control. But if I get a lot of spam or random views from sketchy strangers I'm going to take them down. Here's to taking the "next step" on the Internet highway.

My Sweet 13th Anniversary

We celebrated our 13th anniversary in style by enjoying locally-caught tuna steaks and homemade salsa. Holy cow was it delicious! I fed the kids early (lucky kids got spaghetti and meatballs) and our meal looked so appetizing that Toby asked if he could have some of the "sushi fish and rice" too. So we made him a little plate and he got a 2nd dinner of tuna and rice and corn on the cob. (Anyone want to guess how much that kid eats on a daily basis? These growth-spurts he goes through are crazy; they make me really fear what he's going to cost us in food bills once he hits his teens.)

We joined a food co-op within the first week we arrived in Carmel. Once a week we pick up locally-sourced fish and fresh fruit and veggies from the area. So far we've enjoyed halibut, smoked salmon, this tuna, and squid. (Yes, we prepped and ate calamari--and both kids helped out with that one! They ate more than we did, and I wish I had taken a video of Norah peeling the skin off a raw squid. She's going to make an awesome sous-chef in a few years.)