{"id":8131,"date":"2025-10-12T01:56:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T01:56:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/?p=8131"},"modified":"2025-10-12T01:56:31","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T01:56:31","slug":"water-fish-and-challenge-coins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigcountryexpat.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/12\/water-fish-and-challenge-coins\/","title":{"rendered":"Water, Fish and Challenge Coins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Greetings and Salutations!
I for once<\/strong> was up early and actually got a LOT of ‘stuff’ done today! Go me! One of the missions was to remember to pull out a bag of the deep-freezed Red Snapper filets, which I did and was perfectly defrosted for a glaze and bake for dinner…

And the day’s activity was one that’s necessary and not too much fun… that’s water refills. We have a water filter\/cooler\/heater that we use as the town water is just soooo bad… like “kidney stone” levels of minerals… hard water indeed.

Since I never went in for one of the water softening machines, for whatever reason it just seemed like too much work, I went with buying some jugs of water initially<\/strong> and then ‘reloading them via a ROWPU machine which are located on almost every corner down here.

ROWPU meaning Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit.

The one I use is a “Penguin Brand” aka Water dot Com and costs (now) $2.50 for 5 gallons of purified and filtered Agua:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This one is located outside of a CVS and gets serviced pretty regularly. In this case it was last done on October 2nd, which is fine.

What kills me is it used to be a quarter for a gallon, and $1.00 for 5 gallons… then is started creeping up<\/em>… until it’s now at $2.50. Mind you I’m not<\/strong> bitching… to buy a 5 Gallon Jug at Publix, including the bottle deposit is like $12-$13 a bottle!

Now, for us, well…. waaaay back in the day I did a spell working for Nestle Waters doing customer service support… let me tell y’all:
Worst.
Job.
Ever.<\/strong>
No joke… I’ve done phone support off and on my entire life… it’s easy, relatively mindless, and the pay is aight… one is NOT going to strike it rich by a long shot, but for a “filler” gig? It’s not bad. You can make a living…barely<\/strong> but like I said, it’s a good simple job that doesn’t require much other than just showing up. However… Nestle? Holy Hells that was the worst<\/strong> job I’ve ever had.
Period fucking dot.

In my case, I used it both as a filler gig AND to take advantage of that sweet, sweet, employee Discount. In my case I used it to acquire quite a number of 5 gallon jugs:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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13 all told… 65 gallons of potable.
And the day before I got fired?
I went into MY account and cleared any of the jugs that I was supposed<\/strong> to return I had listed under my account, so I didn’t owe anything… Mind you it wasn’t my account<\/strong> but a bogus shadow account I had made specifically<\/strong><\/em> to utilize for things of this nature… Long term I knew<\/strong> this gig was bullshit, so I set things up for me to profit as I could, when I could. I mean FFS the deposit for a Nestle 5-gallon water bottle is typically around\u00a0$7.00 to $8.00… add on the $8-10 they charge for the water itself?

SHEESH!

So the next day I got fired and my access got closed out.
It was a mutual thing
I sort of quit\/fired.
Essentially I made<\/strong> them fire me so I could get unemployment… That was over 7 years ago…

And yep. The jugs?
Still operational.
Every few fill ups we sterilize them with a light bleach solution and run the rubber caps thru the dishwasher… we don’t want to get any creeping water based crud right?

We also do a scrub on the water dispenser every 3 months.
Just Regular maintenance yannow?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The water as you see, we keep racked in sets of 6-5 gallon jugs. It keeps them out of the way, but readily available to load into the cooler as needed. Plus the racks have wheels so we can easily move them around if necessary as well.

And yeah, the paint job on and around there purely sucks.<\/strong>

That was back when I -tried- to have DC and her ‘meat of the week’ paint the family room for some much needed cash… and as you can see, they did a fucking suck-job of it… eventually I’ll go behind and fix it, but right now?
Meh.
I got a LOT more important things to unfuck around here.

Then dinner tonight?
The Red Snapper again… Courtesy of J3’s generosity on taking me out on that trip… and MY luck in landing that big 17 pound sumbitch that we et on tonight:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That’s one big honkingly HUGE filet<\/strong> ain’t it tho?
Marinated in a wee bit of pure lemon juice for 10 minutes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then I dredged it in the seasoning… which consisted of
Salt
Black Pepper
Paprika
Garlic Powder
Onion Powder
Aleppo Pepper
Cayenne Pepper (just a wee dash)
Italian Seasoning (slightly <\/em>more than a dash, but more than a spot)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The other bowl is plain Panko mixed with 1\/2 a cup of grated Parmesan cheese.
I prepped two pans. One for the sear, and the other to bake\/broil the fish in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The baking pan I melted a full stick of salted butter.
Then I melted 1\/2 a stick in my LeCrueset cast iron.

I pan seared the fisjh in that 1\/2 a stick of melted butter, and flipped it once. Each side I seared on HIGH heat for about 45-60 seconds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THEN I layered a thin coating of the cheese and panko IN the butter, and laid the pieces of seared fish on top of the panko and cheese mix. Then I covered everything with the remaining panko\/parm blend, and baked it for 12-14 minutes at 375.

It came out looking like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And served up like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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OMFG good.<\/strong>
Very rarely do I miss on a meal.

Even better knowing -I- had caught the damned thing too.
Made it that much tastier IMO.
J3 will probably comment and agree w\/me.

Man am I full…
This diet has been going well… the problem is my stomach has shrunk, so that meal? I’m as full as if I had ate a full grown moose… TOTALLY stuffed.

Thankfully NOT uncomfortable so however.

So tomorrow I’m hoping for better weather. It’s actually VERY cool here right now (73 degrees) but with 190% humidity… walking around outside feels like you’re almost swimming I swear…

IF the Weather Gods and Kami line up, I’m hoping<\/strong> for either vehicle repair time OR better yet, some trigger time<\/strong> as I have 5 weapons that need testing\/firing, one of which is that Beretta and the Glock 21.

Plus ANY trigger time is a good time right?

OH!
And Lord forgive me… I can’t remember if I shared this or not… Back when I went on the fishing trip, there was a minor ‘issue’ that came up…I won’t go into specifics, but yet again<\/strong> the Sheriff’s Office got a call to respond to Mi Casa again<\/strong>.

Now at this point, it’s getting to be like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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