Something Fishy

My Celiac sis was here last night on her way south and while we were visiting we got to talking about fish. Well actually fish came up a number of times, she cooked some of the halibut from Alaska that Chuck had caught for dinner- ice fishing – transplanted land locked salmon – the merits of fresh cooked trout vs frozen trout and tropical fish (not cooked at all). The halibut was divine! Made with cornmeal and Lots o butter :0) – ice fishing – we don’t get it. Landlocked salmon, apparently pretty good. Fresh trout cooked preferably over a campfire. And the beauty and durability of the Uncle Albert fish. She mentioned that Amy’s Mike has a fish tank and hadn’t heard of the elusive and wonderful green severum (once again, I am unsure of the spelling there) and so not wanting to make a post without “some” sort of visual I tried to take a couple of pics of Uncle Albert the third. Not as easy as it sounds, what with water, moving targets, reflecting from light and glass. So, the accompanying pic isn’t perfect, but hopefully will give an idea. It’s hard to get an idea of scale in the pic, but he is about 7 inches long and maybe 4 inches tall. He has lovely shimmery tints of blue and green in the body and darker stripes. His fins are pretty cool and on the rare occasion when he feels challenged or threatened will raise the fin on the top (dorsal Kelsey?) so he looks like he’s got a spiky Mohawk. He has big googly eyes and when he opens his mouth to eat it looks kind of parrot –ish. We got Albert when he was about 3 inches long and we’ve had this particular one for at least 7 or 8 years. Not bad for a captive tropical fish. They are classified as semi-aggressive and LOVE to eat lil bitty fish. So, any new fish that go in the tank need to be too big to fit in the mouth of the current size of the fish. CV and I decided that the Uncle Albert is our favorite tropical fish (at least the ones that I can afford and have purchased) Ok, so that was basically narrated for Mike’s benefit and I don’t know if he’ll even see it, but there it is.
This last week was rather an endurance test for me. I started back to school on Monday with high hopes and came home just after lunch. I went half a day again on Tues. and Wed. and stayed all day Thursday (with a bout of lying on the floor for about an hour) finishing up finals with the students. This whole recuperation thing is definitely testing my patience. I AM feeling better for longer, which tends to give me false hope and then when it starts to ache I get cranky. Chuck has been really helpful and considerate. He is a thoughtful guy and I’ll have to be nice to him when he goes in for his sinus surgery in a week.
I have been adding to my list of useless information courtesy of the Discovery and Travel channesl. I watched a nifty show about the 10 best bridges (6 of which were in the US) the 7 manmade wonders of the US, and of course, the ongoing delights of” Dirty Jobs”. It’s amazing what things humans can do – both inventiveness and grossness.
On a side note, Chuck got intrigued with a TV episode that involved cheese making and day before yesterday his “Cheese Making Kit” arrived in the mail. Last night he had his maiden voyage into the wonderful world of cheese. It involves cooking, mixing, measuring and chemicals. He whipped up a batch of soft mozzarella cheese. He wasn’t satisfied with the outcome because it stayed soft, but both CV and I like it. It goes well with crackers, vegetables and I’m pretty sure it will be yummy with apple slices. He has big plans to try all sorts of new cheeses. At least we’ll know exactly what each cheese is made of and not have to worry about mystery preservatives or growth hormones thrown in the mix.
Chuck is off to Boise again this weekend to teach a class and then on Monday he’s off to go ice fishing again with Larry and Judi. As I mentioned before, I don’t get the appeal but he enjoys it immensely, so I say “Go for it!” Now if it were in one of those cool little ice houses, sipping hot chocolate (well, tepid chocolate for me, hot chocolate makes me nauseas), a little space heater and a good book to read that might be another story. But standing around on gigantic slabs of frozen, creaking ice waiting for a fish to decide its hungry while the wind whips your face and your feet slowly but inevitable turn to frozen lumps of meat – no thanks.
That is all.