This is PATHETIC!!! This thing tells me that the last time I posted anything was May 5th. How did that happen?? What HAVE I been doing. Ohhhhhhhhh, now I remember. I started fishing. THAT's what happened! I made the gigantic mistake of agreeing to go out to a friend's pond with the husband who, by the way, LOVES to fish, just to get him to stop bugging me about it. And, lo and behold, the crappie were biting BIG TIME, and we caught at least 15 fish apiece. AND, that did it. I was HOOKED - hook line and rod and reel and little pink gummy worms.
So, that's what we did all summer - fishing every afternoon, or early evening. It was great. I got my own pole(s), reel(s), and they sit right here in my office in the corner. Actually, can't wait for it to get to be fishing time again. We caught lots of crappie and nice BIG bass in our pond and friends' ponds. This fall we decided maybe we ought to keep some of the fish and freeze some fillets.
GUESS who had to learn to fillet fish??????? You are right!!! Yours truly! Don't know why husband didn't want to learn - he sure likes to catch the suckers, but wasn't about to fillet 'em. So, after a couple tries with just a fillet knife, I invested in an electric knife with two different sized blades, and is that thing slick. I'm getting pretty good at the filleting thing now. As long as the fish are iced down and pretty dead by the time I do it. There's something about filleting a live fish that I don't think I'm going to do. I don't like them LOOKING at me when I'm cutting their sides off. There's just something really wrong with that picture. But, as long as they are just giving me that icy stare, I can get the job done.
Anyway, that kept us going this summer - that and our little garden that actually gave us a LOT of good eating. We had two rows of lettuce and ate lettuce and ate lettuce and ate lettuce. And then the banana peppers and tomatoes started producing. And THEY both did great. I truly believe that we got way over a thousand banana peppers off the 9 plants that we planted. AND, best of all, we discovered roasting them. THAT is the way to eat banana peppers. Just was 'em and pat 'em dry, then put olive oil on a flat sheet pan, single layer the peppers in the pan and drizzle with more olive oil. I started using the spray olive oil - makes for a much quicker job. Then roast at 375 for about 15 minutes or until just starting to brown. Take 'em out of the oven and sprinkle with salt, and just eat them. Don't have to seed them or anything. You'd never even know they had seeds.
When the okra started, that's how we made lots of it. Use the small 3 -4 inch size and roast like the peppers. No slime, and they are just delicious. We sure hated to see the okra quit producing. We had LOTS of it as well. Can't wait till next garden season.
Now my freezers are pretty full. Bill even went deer hunting this year and killed one his first day out and his first shot. THAT'S the FIRST time he's gone deer hunting since we've been married. AND, again, guess who had to cut the thing up????? Yep, yours truly once again. Luckily, I had a friend who is an expert at it, so we did deer together over in her kitchen. I would never try that on my own, but it worked out OK. So, we've got some good venison in the freezer as well.
See what happens when I don't blog for a while - I try to fill in the ENTIRE time since the last post.
So, we'll see how long it goes before the next one. :)
J
