Good eats!

With the closest food place about 45 minutes away, Cheryl and I have been forced to come up with new ways to fill a late night eating niche. That is....supper. So this forces us to once again cook up something that does not take a long time and is not a frozen pizza. If you remember back in July....we moved, and all of our cooking supplies were lost in the process. Why take them when we never use them...was the thought. However, now even a basic mixing bowl is a luxury. Well, Cheryl has been snapping pictures of our little creations...so I wanted to post a quick blog about some of the things we come up with cooking with next to no real cookware. Of coarse there is the pizza and jiffy pop popcorn. But Cheryl has been bugging me to post these. The ham on cream cheese was pretty good! Hope everyone is having a good week so far.

Marketing Bluegill as a food fish.

So! How can this be done? It would seem that most people already know of bluegill and many might have even tried it. Yet why are they not harassing their local grocery store to carry them in their fish department? There were a number of studies that I believe were flawed in their results. ( check out page 7 of the study for the conclusion) Their conclusion was that there was a market for walleye but not for bluegill. The flaw I believe was that they were gathering their data from sportsmen at a wildlife banquet. Fishermen have probably already tried bluegill and either prefer other fish or have their own way of preparing them. Basically, they are connoisseur ( or fish snobs! ) My idea of selling bluegills is to let the fish sell themselves. That is let people sample them with the simplest recipe ( rolled in flour and fried in butter) in the grocery store that they are available. You have all seen them in your local grocery before; Selling chicken or pork by allowing customers to sample a prepared piece. And even if you did not go right over and purchase a half pound of the item right then. It at least put the idea out there that the fish is not awful! My mother-in-law is one example of not being familiar with fish or how to cook it. Start the ball rolling small to create a little buzz. It might take a while, but eventually people will grow accustomed to it.

The Best way to Eat Bluegills. Fillets!

Ok, I hope everyone is not bored of the bluegill thing yet because I finally have something that I like to talk about and all these topics keep bouncing around in my brain. So What is the best way to eat Bluegills? I know that some of you are thinking there is a recipe that follows, however! The best way to eat bluegills is one right after the other. And the only way to truly enjoy them that way is to have them with out any bones in them. Let's face it: No one likes to pick bones out of their fish! So you are now asking, " How do you get the bones out of such a small fish?" Where it may be true that bluegills are often small, I have used this technique on fish as small as 5 inches! ( yes a potato chip sized fillet is all you get...but they fry up so tasty!) So here is a YouTube video of someone who cleans them the same way I do. The ribs remain on the fish and the fillets are clean and boneless! Enjoy!

More sites from Ohio

Here's a few more things that we found interesting on our travels. A really cool bridge between the Michigan/ Ohio Border. There were a lot of trucks on the tollway. Many of them had this little placard on the back. Cheryl thought it was cool and worth forwarding. Then there is the close up of the foods from Japan. the little balls are sweet and sticky, Cheryl didn't like the texture, but they are made of rice paste. The orange bag had like a cheese puff only dipped in Carmel instead of cheese. Very tasty! I'm still formulating a plan with the aquaculture thing. I could not sleep at all last night ( don't know if that is a good thing or not) perhaps it was excitement, or maybe all that coffee I drank in the afternoon. Whatever it was, I'm feeling this sense of urgency. We'll post as I find out more.

Water lillies, Beer batter candy bar? and Fish...Hmmm fish!

Just a quick post tonight on a few experiments in the kitchen. Cheryl read somewhere that the Brits take candy bars and deep fry them. So she has been bugging me to try this for years. The opportunity came yesterday when we had fish for dinner. It's surprisingly pretty good! Taste like a doughnut with a candy center. As for the fish...we are going to try to make it a weekend tradition since we have not been eating as much fish as we used to ( back in the "eth works at a fish hatchery" days. As for Origami, I have been working on a koi but still have to master it. But in the mean time....I have found a water Lilly that I like. Hope everyone has a great week this week!