Sometimes it's not About the Food

The whole fish, and nothing but the fish.

Some days, it's about the process. The First Reader and I had a very nice lunch-fest yesterday at Yung's Café in Fairborn, our favorite Korean restaurant. I ordered the grilled croaker, which was a thing of beauty. Normally we chat while we are eating, but this was a remarkably silent meal for us, because I was concentrating on deconstructing a whole fish with chopsticks only, and avoiding most of the bones. It was delicious, but a process.

The feast, which is surprisingly affordable for being copious and beautiful food.

Eating the fish reminded me of another fishy meal, one that was a whole day in the making. It started with lunchtime at the creek, eating hotdogs and marshmallows over a campfire, and ended with a fish-fry in a big cast-iron skillet. Some meals aren't about the food, they are about the process, and the memories, and knowing that it happened once, and will never happen again. A singularity of a meal.

Hotdog on a stick, over an open fire. Ambrosia!

sticks: man's first cooking utensils.

Marshmallows! Toasty goodness.

The fisherman!

Perch, trout, pickerel, all pretty and slimy.

Fish fry up! For scale, that's a 14 inch cast iron skillet.

Fishie!