Turkeys

Had Thanksgiving at Team Crabtree's place last week. It was, mostly, delicious, and the time was, mostly, a good time. Wanted to share a few pictures. And hate on a dog.

First, the board. The central hub of organization and scheduling. Why Adam and Ashley have a gigantic white marker board I am not entirely sure, but it came in handy when we finally started preparing dinner at 1100. Plus how else would we have remembered to dress Spanky the Chihuahua?

Second, the fixins. After hours of labor -- Ashley's not mine -- we finally had ourselves some food. From top going clockwise we have the cooked parts of the turkey, the less cooked carcass of the turkey, "rolls", my attempt at some sort of candied yam thing, some tasty stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, creamed corn soup, and a ceramic bird full of gravy. All in all a good dinner aside from a continuous background chorus compliments of Sparky the Chihuahua.


And, lastly, the what the hell is this? If you guessed Nerf football cut in half and placed in a Pyrex baking dish you would be only partially correct. For reasons unknown squash was on the menu until a prolonged bake yielded this. A very comfortable bike seat. Due to unforeseen complications in preparation the squash was ditched in favor of eating Patsy the Chihuahua instead.

For more Thanksgiving photos including pictures of Cupcake the Corgi, Sushi the... some sort of dog, and Spunky the Chihuahua; check it out! The rest of the weekend was spent playing video games. Just as the Pilgrims did back in 1776.

Something's Fishy with this Fish

Fish. Some are pretty to look at, some are fun to catch, some keep the jellyfish in line, and it is said that altogether they are all an important integral part of the food chain. Not my food chain, but someone's food chain they say. That was until yesterday.*

Although sushi currently seems to hold the title of "greatest thing ever," I have always personally been under the impression that mankind did not discover flame broiling simply to have another task added to his day and in which to potentially cripple himself with, but rather because he once killed something, immediately took a bite out of it, and thought, "man, there's gotta be a better way." Persuaded at times by family and friends to occasionally question these assumptions I have always been disappointed and have always been told that that particular place either did not have very good sushi or just not very good sushi at that particular time. With odds such as these even if it turned out sushi was delicious I doubt it would be worth the culinary gamble you need to go through in order to get the good stuff.

Similarly once or twice I have deigned to try fried fish under the belief that fried batter makes everything better, and while this is still universally true, better does not necessarily translate into good. Fried catfish and fried Chinese-body-bone-and-eyeballs fish would taste better still without the catfish and bodies, bones, and eyeballs.

I have also since been fed salmon, tilapia, cod, orange roughy, and likely other tasty sounding but not terribly tasty tasting fishes only to be unimpressed every time. Canned tuna continues to be an offense to both my taste buds and my nose buds.

But I had not, until recently, tried ceviche. The thought of adding acid to fish for whatever inexplicable reason just never sounded appealing to me. It turns out, however, that a handful of hydrogen ions and a little bit of denaturing of proteins are exactly what is needed to take the fishy out of fish. I am still not entirely convinced that there was in fact fish in the dish, but I am repentant. I was wrong. I am sorry fish eating people of the world. Fish, or at least the fish served in the ceviche at Rosario's, is in fact palatable if not enjoyable to eat. What else can a little bit of acid improve? Liver? Gibblets? The global economy?



* In the interest of full disclosure. I had actually had one prior occasion where I sampled and did not die from eating fish. The butterfish in Hawaii is actually quite good if you can get all the bones and what not out of it. But come on; it's called butterfish. It's like God was demanding it be eaten.