Go fish!

We had two rain-free days in a row on Tuesday and Wednesday! That's the first time that's happened since April. Since we were in a relative dry spell, I finally dug a big hole and planted my new peach tree. It had about a dozen peaches on it when I bought it. Three of them are left. Wind knocked the others off.

My cherries are just starting to turn. My guess is it will be ten days until harvest. And my gooseberries are big and fat. Most gooseberry pies are made with green berries. I really love jelly made from ripe, purplish berries. So I'll wait for them to turn as well.

I tried a new tuna salad replacement experiment. Still having issues with stuff that comes in cans and jars, even when the ingredients list no forbidden substances.

I really miss my Hellman's mayonnaise, with it's forbidden soybean oil. So I'd made some homemade mayonnaise. First I tried to whip some up in my mini blender. Didn't work. Came out soupy. So I tried the same recipe again using a hand whisk and a bowl. Worked great! I could have just eaten the whole bowlful with a spoon!

Then I poached two tilapia fillets in water with just sugar and salt. When they cooled, I broke tham apart and stirred in some celery, carrots, a hard boiled egg, and some of my fresh mayonnaise. I ate it with sliced yellow tomatoes. De-lish! The next day I ate the rest of it for lunch. Sorry, no photo. It's all gone now. I'll be making this again and again. I'm delighted to have a replacement for tuna salad, which I could eat every day during tomato season.

I had the great fortune to spend one winter in Key West. I fished at least a couple of days every week. I always had plenty of fish available. So did everyone else on the island. So there were many variations of fish salad recipes. Some started with smoked fish, others grilled fish, and some of us just cooked our fish on the stove. All the locals seemed to have their own "secret family recipe." Some used hot peppers, some sweet peppers. Most used mayonnaise, but I remember one we used to spread on crackers that had cream cheese and green onions.

There was one I particularly liked that started by marinating the fish in sour orange juice and mojo sauce from the grocery. I think we used that one on the cero mackeral, and maybe mullett. Orange trees produce sour fruit when their roots hit salt water, so we had a lot of sour oranges down there. There was a key lime tree across the street from my house, (house? ha! I mean the trailer from purgatory!) so I used them for lots of marinades.

I was happy to reclaim my Key West state of mind for a while. It was nice to relive an evening of cooking after a day of fishing on Captain John's Greyhound. I probably went fishing with Captain John and Mate Jeff a hundred times over ten years of vacations and one winter as a "snowbird." We fished in all kinds of weather. I came home fishless exactly twice. That's a pretty good record!

One of the biggest challenges of fishing (for me) is maintaining an even suntan. The Greyhound had a sun deck up top. So I could change positions and angles while the boat moved from one fishing spot to the next.