Holy S**t!

[silverthorne]

Flounder!

I have found flounder!

I have a bag full of huge ass frozen flounder steaks! (say that five times fast while squealing in delight. Go on. I dare ya.)

I have not had flounder since I left New Jersey for the (ever so) sunny (OMFG, too sunny!!) and totally oceanless sands of Tucson, Arizona.

Like...ages ago.

1982, to be exact.

I loved flounder, okay? I'd GO FISHING FOR DAMNED FLOUNDER with my mom during summer break in order to get me some fresh flounder (which...we never succeeded in accomplishing anyway and would end up in the roadside diner on the way home where there was already flounder waiting and ready to go.)

I have gone without since then because, well, frankly 1) No one did it like that diner and 2) New Jersey to Tucson is an awful long way for flounder to go...and it rarely got there, anyway.

BUT TODAY, THERE IS FLOUNDER IN THIS HOUSE!

And it will be grilled and slathered in lime and lemon and pepper and served with veggies. It WILL BE MY FLOUNDER, and it will be good!

And although I know they are Teh Ebil and will dine on my flounder-happy soul in Hell when I die, I will thank the Dreaded Walmart Gods for their frozen offering and sing their praises and sacrifice Target Employees to their dreaded Maw.

But first?

FLOUNDER, MAN!!!!

Comments

[skywardprodigal.livejournal.com]

bwahahahahahaha

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

:)

[del-the-psycho.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, we use flounder as bait back home. :V

And curse their names when, like, 304982398 of them get caught in our salmon nets and thusly clog it up.

This is very surreal to me that people would be excited over having and eating some! But then again, I'm a spoiled Alaskan when it comes to seafood.

Have you ever had halibut? Millions of times better than flounder, IMHO.

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

Now why would you go and use a perfectly good food fish for bait? Gogetsomesquidorsomethingyousavage. ;)

LOL. Yeah, that sounds like what happens in Jersey, only it's horseshoe crabs vs. blues (and horseshoes, at least when I was a kid, were illegal to eat).

Once or twice. Still love flounder. :)

[del-the-psycho.livejournal.com]

Squid is chewy. :( And, hahaha, we're so jaded and set in the fact that flounder is 'bait' fish, like herring and cod, that I was the only one of my sisters that opted to try the flounder chowder my mom made once. Which was only made because we were getting so pissed off at the flounders in our net that Dad said, "Next flatfish that's over five pounds in this raft is coming to the cabin with us and becoming soup. B|"

And we didn't believe him because, ewwwwww, flounder, WHY WOULD YOU EAT THAT. But he was true to his word! And I gave it a shot, and it wasn't half bad. But my siblings wouldn't touch it. :V

I've come to the point where I won't eat seafood down here in Cali, at least if it's Pacific fish. Because 1) I ain't eating any filthy farmed fish and 2) I felt bad when I tried some crab rolls in a swanky restaurant here once and laughed when I realized it was actually imitation crab. THESE CAFILORNIANS ARE HOODWINKED, I TELL YOU

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

Thats why you give the squid to the fish you're trying to catch; who wants to eat rubber?

LOL on your dad, and good for him. Flounder is usually best when you either treat it lightly, or bread and fry the hell out of it. :)

Heee! I actually like fake crab (it's popular in AZ too, but we know it's fake there XD. --Yes, B, we know you guys know better--), but yeah, unless I see the shell it came from, I tend to look at it funny...just in case. Of course, hearing about folks from someplace that isn't landlocked eating 'imitation' seafood... O.o

Ah well, I suppose we're semi-safe until they figure out how to fake the shell part, too. That's when you really have to start worrying.

[del-the-psycho.livejournal.com]

Hahah, the funny part is there are a lot of blokes back home who consider squid to be a big ol' delicacy, so no bait from those guys. And they're just damn hard to actually catch. And octopii are too cool to chop up. :(

I figure they're eating imitation crab either because its cheaper, or because they don't know any better. I don't eat it because it's dyed cod. :B Blech. (The real fun came in the time my brother went to a seafood market on the east coast somewhere, and took pictures of what was advertised as King Crab's legs being sold for a CRAZY HUGE price...but any idiot could tell it was actually Dunganess. IT'S NOT HARD TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE, PEOPLE OF THE LOWER FORTY-EIGHT)

Hahaha, they'll start throwing bits of painted and treated eggshells in with the fake crab JUST TO THROW US OFF.

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

I'll admit to liking fried calamari if it has sauce to be dipped in, but by itself? Nah, the gumming that goes into it just ain't worth it. I don't like it when my teeth bounces off my food when I'm trying to eat it. Fish should not come equipped with their own personal force field, especially after death. Shells are bad enough.

See, that whole 'it's being sold as this other thing over here' is a good way to distinguish people who have actually fished and been around the fresh product before from folks who just...buy it if it looks good. (Hint: with seafood, looks don't matter. In fact, if it looks good, it's been messed with. Or still alive.)

...Sadly, I can see that happening at some point in the future.

[rebl1969.livejournal.com]

Ugh, halibut. I was once on a flight from Juneau to Seattle with a bunch of not-well-frozen halibut stored in the cargo bay. We had to stop in Ketchikan for fuel and that only exacerbated the melting problem. The whole plane stank like Fish Hell and I'll never eat halibut again.

[del-the-psycho.livejournal.com]

Having to stop in Ketchikan only makes it worse. :V Ugh.

And halibut when freezer-burned or not thawed properly tastes exactly like the devil's asshole, I'll completely give you that too. But as for fishy smells, I'm kind of immune at this point. Over a decade of commercial fishing and living in a cannery town'll do that to you, I suppose. :P

[rebl1969.livejournal.com]

Where do you live? While in college I did three seasons at Excursion Inlet, near Gustavus, in the salmon cannery there, and my now-husband-then-boyfriend went to Ekuk and Excursion Inlet for a total of six seasons. We were there for salmon but we'd go to the dock during breaks and watch the fishermen haul in these huge, huge halibut. They looked like kitchen tables with eyes on the top!

I can't eat salmon, either. I'm ruined forever for sea fish, although I love freshwater fish like trout and catfish. MMmm, trout....

Hah! Did you know Hilary Clinton used to work on a slime line? For trues. She went to a cannery during college, same as me only years earlier.

[silverthorne.livejournal.com]

I lost my taste for catfish after working at PoFolks for a year in the kitchen. We were allowed to eat fromt eh menu at a 75% discount (hmmmm), but you cna only eat so much cat fish.

I got really good at breaking the spines though--a firm grip at the base of the tail and a shake and a jerk and the weight of the fish does the rest. It feels kinda like holding onto a xylophone when someone runs the mallet down the bars.

(And as a note for anyone reading--the fish were already dead and pre-frozen when we got em--just that they batter up and fry better if the spine, which goes all rigid, isn't interfering with the process).

[del-the-psycho.livejournal.com]

I was born and raised in Kodiak, Alaska, and I used to set-net fish with my family every summer at Egegik in Bristol Bay ever since...I wanna say 1991. Of course, I just moved down to Cali only a month ago. I do miss my fishy homestate!

I've never spent much of any time on the panhandle, though. Mostly the bay, the gulf, and the better part of the inland. (Whoohoo, Anchorage, Fairbanks and Tok.)

The funny part is I'm still trying to warm up to freshwater fish. Catfish and whatnot. It all just tastes odd to me. And pollock is another one I had to condition myself into eating, since it's technically just cod, and cod is another bait fish. Eating cod is just-...You just don't do it. FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS EAT COD

Ahahaha, that makes me respect Hilary just a wee bit more. Slime lines are heinous! I will always prefer being the fisher as opposed to the processor.