Greetings and Salutations!
Currently I’m too tired to think.
I got maybe 8 hours of combined sleep from Friday until now. The fishing was fantastic and since it was sort of like being on a combat op, I’m still a bit woozy from the lack of sleep. Granted I wouldn’t trade it for anything right now. It was well worth the time and effort and J3?
Dude is a God among Frens for that hookup.
In fact I’m really enjoying the whole post trip analysis.
Part of my issue and pre-trip reticence was that when I last went for a deep sea fishing trip, I was like 10. I spent the entirety of the trip seasick to Hell and Gone. Leastways that I can remember. DeadDad didn’t fare too well either as I recall. I guess that “Mal de Mer” runs in the fam…
That or we’re “Natural Borne Grunts”
Myself? 100% Grunt, thru and thru.
See… Dramamine/Sudafed/all the other ‘cures’?
T’ain’t none of them work worth a damn on me.
All they do is make me extremely sleepy, which means I’m blowing chunks whilst halfway into a coma. No fun at all to say the least.
So that being said, The Scopolamine Patches that Doc Samizdat hooked me up with? Oh Holy Hells Batman!!! I owe Doc another bottle when next we meet up. THAT shit worked like a charm!
So as you all saw, the first night home, I cooked up some pan seared and fried Blackened Snapper over rice. It was (of course) off the chain as I mean it was so fresh it started ‘twitching’ when I dropped it in the pan to cook. I also when I first got home realized that I had SO MUCH of it, I just had to share with my next door neighbor, Miz Ellen.
Miz Ellen is my church lady next door neighbor.
She’s a 80+ year old Born-Again Christian Black Lady who I really dig… she’s been a great source of intel on the local comings and goings, and keeps me in the loop as to what she hears and see in general around our local A.O.as she’s wired in in her local church. She’s been here since I first moved in back in 2005. My first X was so asocial that Miz Ellen never really interacted with me, nor my fam. Afterwards (post deeee-vorce from Frau #1) when G moved in w/me, G got Miz Ellen to open up, and she’s been cool with us ever since.
Even more so as during the Hurricanes we’ve had in the past few, I’ve made sure Miz Ellen’s house was secure, windows taped and helped her with anything she needs. Heavy Lifting being the #1 request for me and Todd… carrying in her flats of bottled water and suchlike.
So since she’s on the ‘cool kid list’ I brought her over a half-a-filet. Now… understand getting Miz Ellen to accept ANY food/gifts/help is like pulling teeth. She “(I) …don’t want no charity!!!” as she’s put it from her POV which I can respect, not that she needs it… however, for this offering, I explained that this fish was so damned fresh it just had stopped squirming, and to give it a shot as it’d be the best she’s had I’d wager. She reluctantly took it, and hey… Mission Accomplished.
Now… the next night (Monday Night) she came out while I was walking the doggos. Normally she doesn’t come near the two puppers as she’s deathly allergic. In this case however? She came blasting out, hugged me and told me that “…in all 83 plus years that God has graced me to live here on this here planet, that was the best fish I’ve ever had in my entire life!!!” She apparently was overjoyed at the gift. Told me she wasn’t sure to begin with as she was supposed to cook up some fried chikinenz, but switched out, and was thankful she did!
I told her she was welcome and to let me know if she wanted more. She thanked me again and bailed. Until this afternoon.
Around noon the doorbell rang while I was on lunch… seems it was none other than Miz Ellen bearing gifts! Now, she’s the head of the food pantry at her church, and in the past when they have too much, she’s dropped off the occasional care package here at the Casa. I guess since the fish was such a hit, she dropped one off today as a ‘thank you’ which was cool AF IMO.
I of course then got to show her the pics of the trip, which impressed the Heck out of Her, and then, I ran inside and gave her another full filet this time. Needless to say she was beyond grateful again, and to me? It’s good politics to have the local Head Black Matriarch of the Local Church in your corner so to speak.
Good neighbors and all that.
She’s in the past even teased me when I scream some racial epithets when I do something stupid… she’s really cool like that.
So that was yesterday.
Tonight?
Well besides me getting ready to crash the fuck out early AF as I’m tired-tired-tired? Well dinner HAD to be made and I had almost two pounds of mixed leftover fish left that needed to be cooked tonight no matter what… some parts were amberjack, some were snapper, and one of them bags has my triggerfish meat as well…. but I’m pretty sure that that wasn’t in this bag… either way…
I started off by making a beer batter.
I used the leftover blackening spiced to season the batter:
THEN
I pat-dried all the remaining chunks, and pre-seasoned them with some MOAR of the blackening seasoning:
I got the deep fryer set and ready, and laid out the wire rack to cool off the post-cooked fishies. Little known thing: When you deep fry a chunk of fish, if you don’t ‘air dry/drain/cool’ the piece, it’ll get all soggy on the side it’s laying on. Pro-Tip: Let it drain on a wire screen/rack like you see… it’ll keep it’s all-around crispiness instead of all going super-soggy.
Jes’ Sayin’
I dredged and dropped each piece, and cooked them for about 4 minutes, 30 seconds… then I pulled them, and let Sapper get his ‘feed on’
The ‘tater cake’ is a breakfast hash brown. I realized as I was cooking that we didn’t have any french fries to cook up, so this was the substitution. I mean what the Hell? It worked right?
So the next thing was to ‘wash rinse repeat’ which I did, and my plate ended up looking like this:
Needless to say…
I’m so full….> UUUUURP!!!! <
Holy Crapola!!!
Man… talk about “Goodness From The Sea”
I just may have to forego the next weapon purchase and look at a rod and reel. Seems there are day-trip fishing expeditions out of Saint Pete that’re short and cheap… granted if you DON’T have any luck, well that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
HOWEVER
Red Snapper at my local Publix?
It’s $22 a pound for ‘previously frozen’ Red Snapper.
$75 for a six hour tour (my, how positively ominous Aye?) and IF things play out? It pays for itself in many respects.
So that’s tonight’s intel dump.
My brain is still trying to process a lot of ‘junk’ and I’m NOT up to speed. I’ll attempt to get better, but it’ll be slow going.
So More Later
Big Country
Amazing how that works Aye?
You make beer batter using Miller Fucking Lite?
Troglodyte.
I’m sure a nice barley wine or imperial stout might have been better, but I prefer to drink good beer as opposed to using it for batter….but hey, that’s just me. 😉
It’s what I had on hand you Phillistine.
Deal w/it Berg LOL
It’s like using bad water, lol.
At least he didn’t use Old Milwaukee. That stuff is horsepiss.
No worse than IRON CITY. Dorm mates dad left him a case and he could not even give it away! This being in the mid 70’s when one frat set the record of over 800 kegs in a 10 week semester plus all of the other beverages in bottles,cans, and re-hydrated fruit slices. Cook with what you gots. looks good
The longneck bottle cases were indestructible and had hundreds of uses, and only one way to get them…
The last White shore-launched commercial fisherman on Lake Superior, Armour Sarkela, used those case boxes on his boat, at his sawmill, and all over in his house.
It’s a batter. I suppose seltzer would have been better, but lite is pretty close to soda.
Well what is he supposed to do? Drink it?
No, no, no.
In wine there is wisdom.
In beer there is strength.
In water there is bacteria.
Well, it’s better than having Bud Lite in the house…
Besides that, do you really want to use a really decent beer to make beer batter?
Good beer goes into the cook and the folks at the table
The better the beer, the better the batter. I had some battered-fish made with Spaten Optimator (a double bach beer, very heavy taste, ambrosia to the old gods of Germany…) that actually made fresh-water catfish taste decent.
Or schlitz. Only thing it was good for was cooking.
I’ve found when making beer batter Guiness stout works awesome and gives a nice flavor.
Awesome on the fishing and you’ve found a fun new hobby.
You notice in those pictures you had a big grin on your face and all of the BS “issues” at home including all of the politics in the news is totally out of your head ?
My father in law was a retired Sr Chief in the Navy and once he retired he worked at the prison and that was a very stressful job. His stress reliever was fishing and he said it was better than any shrink and took his mind off everything. He passed away a happy man at 86 fishing every day in the lake behind his house after he retired from the prison.
BCE,
You have a way with cooking. Have you considered the possibility of a BCE cookbook? I’m a bachelor and I’m interested in your cooking. I bet a lot of other people would be interested. There would be a lot of value in that, methinks.
-Sumdood
Fresh salt-water fish can’t be beat for flavor or texture. Only thing that gets close to that is fresh-water trout caught in the mountains right-the-fuck=now and into the pan. For breakfast, lunch or dinner.
Want real good salt-water fish, get into a mess of king mackerel or tuna or wahoo or other deep-water fast movers. You’ll look at snapper and grouper as second-class fish after that. Still great, mind you, just not super-great… It will absolutely ruin your ability to eat tilapia ever again.
And the whole ‘fishing’ thing is more about getting away from everything and decompressing. So if you do the ‘charter fishing’ thing, be careful to choose a good charter service as some of them are basically evil fucking fistfights and chimp-outs waiting to happen. Talk to the people you know who’ve been on trips or who’ve had friends they trust go on trips. Weed out the fuckfaces and then good luck.
Just as an aside, scopolamine was one of the leading candidates for a truth serum. They stopped perusing it (allegedly) for ethical reasons, not because of ineffectiveness.
That fish in the prep picture looks way better (and more appetizing) than what I see in my fancy supermarket. Your taking care of the neighbor touched me…that’s good karma and it will come back to you. Keep moving forward!
Bleeding the fish makes it taste even bettererer. Just like with all meats.
When you catch it, you can club it in the head, and then slit the gills.
Easy.
all that GREASE………
i had a salad with grilled chicken breast
my annual physical labs showed absolute health and zero disease. plenty of skeletal damage from the lower back down… arthritis in the lower back, hip, knees,and both feet. INFANTRY!
Same here believe it or not… GREAT ‘good cholesterol’ and I’m actually healthy as hell outside of the arthritis and hypothyroid issues…
And the last ultrasound of the liver and heart came back awesome, so I got THAT going for me as well…
I’ve been getting shit from the quack for years that my “total cholesterol” was too high. Problem for him is I actually understand the research, and having my HDL at 50 and a 4:1 LDL:HDL ratio is about as good as it gets, “total cholesterol” being pretty irrelevant. (Triglycerides are well under 50.)
So he sent me in (along with the wife) to get that CT calcium scan. It directly measures the plaque buildup in your arteries, instead of guessing from bloodwork. They even make you sign a waiver for them to immediately wheel you into surgery if your score is too high.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/heart-scan/about/pac-20384686
I scored a fucking ONE. (Lower is better, around 100 is where they start getting worried.) And of course, because of course, the wife scored a zero and is giving me shit about the one.
I don’t recall ever frying my fish. Pan seared, blackened, grilled, smoked, poached or baked, but never fried. Not that I don’t mind a friend fish once in a while. I just don’t like the cleanup.
“A friend fish” – damn, I crack myself up. That was a funny typo (if you have kids).
RIGHT AFTER divorce #1 was initiated I went on a ‘kitchen refit buying spree’
X#1 NEVER had nor used GOOD kitchen equipment… so one of the first purchases was a QUALITY deep fryer like you see… It’s made a WORLD of difference when and if I use it…
Like a box of them mozzarella sticks from Publix? Oven baked or air fried? They come out like shytte.
2-3 minutes in the REAL fryer? As good if not better than a restaurant.
Another cool thing is fried dough, which growing up in Hampton NH was a summer staple (Blink’s Fried Dough) and is a nice dessert treat on rare occasion… X#1 also had no clue what a GOOD kitchen knife was, and I subsequently went with some high quality blades which make life OH SO MUCH easier, with Shun being my preferred blade of choice…
Pans? Try Le Creuset cast iron and All-Clad stainless steel… top dollar but WELL worth every. single. penny.
Oh and of course “Southern Cast Iron” which is a seasoned traditional cast iron pan… heavy and I can beat a motherfucker to death with it if needed
WTF is this?
Jesus. Where are the bloody chips?!? You cook up a superlative mess of fish…?
AND NO CHIPS?!?!
Unfriended, downvoated, poost flagged, and complaints in with the local police!
HAR HAR HAR!!!
Seriously. Your best chips next time, with a ton of salt … and a sprinkle of dark malt vinegar… ahhhhhhhhhh. Now THAT’S a proper fish fest!😊👍
Guilty as charged man…
We THOUGHT we had some in the freezer… a bag of them Ore-Ida crinkle cuts is -usually- in there. They normal suck BUT!
In the deep fryer they come out pretty good… what we -didn’t- realize was she’d eaten them at some point and we ALSO did NOT have any spuds available to make up for the deficiency, hence why I had to use our last two spudcakes aka Mickey-D’s style hash brown cakes as a pinch hit. It worked but yep… we done fucked up… the situation will be remedied on the next shopping trip believe you me!
Fish is so good I am enjoying mine raw, sashimi style.