MMM-MMM GOOD!

It's 7:49 a.m. and Junior is at a rare first shift at work and Patrick is here with me sound asleep.

Went to Superior Court yesterday, with junior and Stephen, but that is another story.

Excerpt from my part of an e-mail exchange this morning:

Speaking of asparugus, some of mine has popped up, and so today I start harvesting. Fresh food is the best. No fertilizer, no pesticides, no herbicides, no preservatives, no flavor enchancers,no artificial flavors,no nothing--just tips and butter and garlic.

One of My most memorable non restaurant meals, was when I was a kid maybe 10 or eleven years old or maybe older. I had a little pram like sailboat I used to sail around Clearwater Bay.

The intercoastal waterway went thru the bay and there were a series of spoil banks along it, the result of maintenance dredging. They eventually aquired vegetation and became proper little islets.

One night, while camping on this island with a chum, I caught a little pin fish, and fried him up in my skillet. Time from Gulf to Mouth was mere minutes--Now that's FRESH FISH. And that's when I learned that the flavour the of sea food is directly proportional to how long it's been dead. We had built our fire on that island of driftwood, on the little beach, and as the sun set , watched the tide gently lap up and extinguish it. Would be a much better story if I was 18 with a girl in a bikini-but hey.

So, I have eaten much seafood shortly after I caught it, but that little pin fish was still the best tasting piece of fish I ever ate!

And of course, if you don't catch anything, there are other alternatives to keep from going hungry.



While a college student in Jacksonville, fishing with friends in brackish water on a wide bank of the St. John's River, (The only principle navagable waterway in the world that flows north besides the Nile, and the river made famous because the Creature from the Black Lagoon escaped into it, and at one time one of the most poluted Rivers in America with 21 communicable diseases in it) we caught nothing edible. So we were fishing with live shrimp and guess what? Roasted on palmetto sticks over a beach fire they tasted just fine!!

Now barbequed River Otter cooked on a spit over an open fire is another story--tastes like fishy chicken...

-tr-