Peel and Cook a Fish

Warning - Not for a weak stomach! Peeling a catfish before cooking.



A small piece of pliers helped grab hold of the skin, while a thin serrated blade helped along the tough bits of connective tissue, especially near the fins. Once there was a large enough piece of skin to grab a hold of, simple hand pressure could strip most of the skin off.




Mark caught another catfish today out of the lake on our family's land. It is a flathead catfish, just like the one he had caught a few months ago. This one was quite a bit smaller, but the meat was just as good. He did the gory part and then I peeled the skin off of it. That really is the hardest part and takes the longest. I ended up with one and a half small fillets of meat that were fried up in dairy butter with a little bit of tarragon. Then I boiled what meat was left on the bones in a stock pot for 45 minutes and drained off the liquid. The 'fish soup' stock was quite good mixed with some miso. All in all, it was a good experiment.

Esme said 'hello fish' when she saw it in the sink and tried to talk to it. I explained to her that people eat fish and that we were going to cut this one up to eat. She was 'ok' with that - she said 'bye bye' fish and told him he was going to be cook cook in the oven. haha. She even wanted to look in our aquarium for more fish... but it has been empty for nearly a year. I think when she gets just a little older the full gravity of the situation will require a bit more comfort and explanation than a simple 'bye bye.' But I'm glad she took this well.

Esme got her own 'regular' fish sticks out of the freezer. She ate all of her fish and said it was very good. The whole 'real' fish experiment took too long and she was hungry right then. Mama and the cats both thought this fish was pretty good, though! The meat is like chicken in texture but with different 'break' points and finer bones. The taste was also like a much milder form of chicken and it held the butter flavor VERY well.

Hourglass Windmills

I'm working on Esme's quilt, but it isn't coming quickly. I didn't want to choose too hard of a pattern - so I sat down at the sewing machine and made a block that was easy... and it turned out to be this 'hourglass' pattern, set in fours so they look like pinwheels. These aren't the colors going with it exactly... but just a basic idea.

We went to the library sale in Camden today - but it was a terrible mess. There were way too many people in too small of a space, and hardly any of them looking what they were doing. It really was just too much, mothers screaming at children and people shoving and/or standing right in the middle of the walkway. Esme said she was scared and fell on the floor refusing to walk. Mark said he was done and went back to the car after less than five minutes. I did get Mark a set of scifi books that may or may not be any good, and a beautiful Static Mechanics book for me that was in the only area people were not flocking around - the science textbook section!

I have the weekend off and back on Monday to work.

NOTES: I got four quilter's magazines at a yard sale for a quarter each.. They are almost as old if not older than I am, and have some neat basic patterns in them to photocopy. On the cover of one magazine is a sampler quilt made with 49 different quilt blocks all the same size. Searching on that I found this website and was in love! I may actually have to try some of these little blocks soon -- after I stop letting Esme's quilt kick my tail and get it further along.

A day of not much...

We actually didn't do much of anything today, and it felt nice. I did try to take a nap earlier after Daddy got up from his. I've been badly in need of one after being woken up early in the morning every day by a little voice! During the nap Esme forced her hand inside mine and said 'you awight mama?'... then tried to yank my foot off... then left me alone for a little while. Daddy gets naps... why can't Mom?

There was a huge thunderstorm a few hours ago - thunder, lots of lightning etc. The power must have flickered off and on about seven times within an hour. I was at the sewing machine, glad that sewing machines 'reboot' much quicker than computers during power outages! I finished a pair of purple 'short pants' that have been cut out for a while. Grandma gave us the material for that - and there is another pair of short pants cut out that are yet to be sewn up. Making just a little progress here and there on the quilt, nothing to photograph yet.

Of balloons , trees and wagons

We had fun today after the sun went down a little bit. I got this 'Happy Birthday' balloon from a coworker yesterday when we stopped in to check my next week's schedule. Esme really likes balloons - and this one went for a walk with us and managed to get stuck in a tree (I even had it tied to a weight but she undid it somehow). Daddy climbed this far up the tree to get it and scratched his leg a little ... but he did get it down. Wow!


I wasn't sure whether to take a picture or not at this point!

Daddy also did a little 'Calvin and Hobbes' in the wagon on the way down to the lake - these pictures are going to be classic! We took the boat out for a little bit and the dogs swam around a lot, then Mama and Daddy took turns pulling Esme back up the hill in the wagon.

Swimming lesson

Esme did such a good job today at her 'swimming lesson' at our lake. She has been saying 'No No' to 'Do you want to go swimming?' for two days in a row. The last two 'lessons' she has been screaming and crying most of the time asking to go back to the truck, to go 'outside, inside, sorry, please!' etc etc..

Today she giggled, blew bubbles in the water, kicked her feet and hardly clung to either of us. In fact, I had to ask her to come back once! Her little swimmer lifejacket is doing a great job letting her wave her arms and swim around by herself.

I think it helped today that she knew after we swam some she would get a ride on the boat. She loves the boat. That is how I got her to come willingly to the lake with us - she didn't want to swim but DID want to go on the boat. I told her we had to go swimming before we would ride the boat (which is the 'process' every time) and she said 'ok' and got ready to go. She is our process kid, definitely...

Esme is also scared of 'big brown bear' lately. This comes from two things. Her Starfall on the letter 'b' has a 'big brown bear' that growls. And this game I'm playing lately Frontierville has a big brown bear that stands up on the loading screen and is roaring with fangs beared. One night when we were outside in the dark playing in the sand I told Esme I was worried about big brown bears coming and finding us.. and she grabbed my hand and marched right inside. I feel a little guilty, but not much *haha* as I was hearing noises in the woods that I couldn't attribute to the dogs. When we were out on the boat the other day Esme was saying 'what's that!' and making her scared noise in several places. I (jokingly) pointed to a very dark area of the woods and said a 'big brown bear' lived there. Today on the boat she pointed to a different but similar dark part of the woods and said 'big brown bear there'. She has quite the memory!

And yesterday at Grandma's house Daddy was getting a metal jar out of a cupboard. Esme sometimes plays with that jar and makes it go 'ding' by hitting things against it. It lives in a specific cupboard, or at least - it did, until Daddy decided to take it home. It was something Grandma was keeping for him. Esme got really upset about us not putting it back away in the cupboard, and didn't want us to go out the door without putting it away. She knows she has to put away toys and that was a toy! We had to explain we were taking it home and have Grandma say it was okay. Again, the process kid...

Note We went to the flea market this morning. The alphabet panel fabric came in the mail today, as well. It looks like it is just about the perfect size if a border is added around the outside. I haven't made many more squares for the quilt yet - machine is still acting up some, but hope to get to a few more tomorrow? We don't have so much running to do tomorrow as we did today.

Lifejacket: It's a Stearns Puddle Jumper in bright yellow :) We got it at WM, but Amazon has an online listing for them. It really doesn't look like much until you see it in the water! If the strap is loose she gets a little water right up under her mouth and she gets scared. When the back strap is properly tightened it is just perfect... need to double check that each time before going in the water because it loosens up and slips position as the straps dry out.

Thirty one

I went out for my sunrise this morning. I didn't actually focus on the sun itself like last year - but in the difference between light and dark, the noises of the world, the bugs and frogs and dewdrops, mist on the lake and being childlike wherever I wished. I stuck toes in the sand, played with the garden hose and the mud. I sat down and watched minnows and frogs smaller than the nail on my pinky finger. It was nice. I discovered a pink gladiolus in our garden that is all by itself in the weeds - and saw the mist on the lake turn three different ways at once as it wandered around the surface. There were two blue herons and a plucky wolf spider that did not want me anywhere near it's mud puddle. The dogs ran about and made a general ruckus breaking the other normal morning noises of birds and faroff roosters and engines on the distant highway.

I came back and slept for a few more hours until Esme was awake - and then we went out for a short walk to the lake with the camera. She really wanted to ride the boat - but Mom said not without the lifejacket, which was at home. She gave me yellow leaves where she found them and collected green nuts. She was unhappy with the watching of frogs... have to go run Mom! I let her play in the sand a little back at the house until we decided what we wanted to do for the day.



Sunlight coming through the trees, filtering and making the thermal air currents dance between light and dark.



We went to Jackson for the afternoon, and visited the craft store and the bookstore. I bought one yard of the Kanji fabric I had made Esme a dress out of last year. I was surprised to see it there again! I found other little things that are hard to find for me here, a good sketchbook, pencils and eraser, an array of cardstock colors to make mosaic pictures out of and a glue pen for that.. etc... Just little odds and ends where we found them - seems to be the theme this year :) Esme got wooden snakes and lizards, a foam airplane toy and new crayons. At the bookstore I bought a harmonica for Esme and a bag game called 'Pairs in Pears' for both of us. It has four different 'font' sets of hard letter tiles like Scrabble in a zip bag that looks like a pear. Esme is excited about it and doesn't ever want me to put it away. Mark got another few books he has been looking for. Then we all got strawberry shakes on the way home :)



Esme has been a fairly good girl at home, except for not wanting to put away new toys at dinnertime. And now she is napping in her room after a full belly of fish and carrots.

Thirty one is nice.
And six more days of vacation is nice, too.