Thursdays Blursdays

There's an old saying that says you can't truly understand someone until you've walked a day in their shoes.  Really, I feel like a day wouldn't be enough for someone to understand my crazy life, but if I was able to give a day to someone so that I could just lay back in bad and catch up on dvr'ed reality shows, that day would be a Thursday.  A friend of mine teased that I should just write about what I do every day on the blog and it would still be entertaining, so just to be cheeky, I'm going to run you through my day today.  Since this is a new blog, it will give you some insight into my life.  The posts won't all be this long, I promise.  Bear with me.  Here we go:

Wake at 7 thanks to alarm and our oldest child hovering over us.  Hubby heads to the shower and I grab my laptop to check the calendar, e-mails, messages, and Facebook, just in case I'm forgetting something else to jam in the day...like, as I notice, International Cuisine Night at my oldest's school.  In my head, not an issue.  We can pass on that.  Tell her to get dressed.

Then, there's a time warp.  I think I may have temporarily blacked out from pain when child #2 comes in and throws herself on my bed, connecting the most solid part of her forearm with the most tender part of my ankle.  Anyhow, before I know it, it's 30 minutes later.  Yikes.  Tell middle child to get dressed.  Luckily, I made rhubarb bread last night (silly family left me alone in the house while they were all at activities), so I have breakfast already started.  Throw some bacon on the stove to cook while I start on lunches for the girls.  Shuffle around hubby making his usual eggs for breakfast.  Slice apple and pears for breakfast.  Snag a piece of pear because I know once I put them out, I will have no chance at getting one before they disappear.  Keeping an eye on the bacon, cook some noodles and frozen peas and corn for the lunches.  Start slicing fresh fruits and veg for lunches.  Discuss not going to the school event with my oldest.  Begin guilt trip that eventually leads me to decide that we probably should go.  Slice extra veggies for hubby's lunch.  Break up rousing game of Duck, Duck, Bruce to feed the starving minions breakfast.  Finish making lunches.  Kiss hubby before he's out the door.  Push oldest to get bundled before she misses the bus.  Get her out the door and to the bus on time with backpack and lunch in hand.

I swear, that IS rhubarb, not mold.  Turns out rhubarb bread doesn't photograph well.

Go Fish

A lot of my friends are excited that I've started this blog.  Many of them have been telling me for months, maybe even years, that I would be great at blogging.  I guess only time will tell.  But, as a couple of these friends made clear to me today, any blog I write needs recipes.  I love being in my kitchen, making delicious food for my family.  So where better to start than the dinner we had tonight?

So, fish.  Fish, in a culinary aspect, used to be pretty scary to me.  Geez, sometimes fish in non-culinary aspects are scary to me!  If I'm in the lake and something brushes my leg, get ready for a yelp.  But back to the kitchen.  I always felt like there was so much more that could go wrong with fish.  Cooking it wrong, having it taste bad, or worse, giving everyone food poisoning.  On top of that, fish is one of those "love it or hate it" kind of foods, and I wasn't sure I was on the "love it" side.  Anyone out there with me?

Side note: I'm sure that I will mention my friend Amy in this blog a few times, but let me fill you in.  Amy owns and runs Amy's Organics, a "mobile organic farmers' market", and it is awesome.  She's awesome too.  You can check it out at www.amysorganics.org.  I could go on forever about what a great service she has, but that wouldn't put fish on your table.  So, long story short, Amy has made it very convenient for me to live out my values of keeping my family's food high quality, delicious, and local.  One of the things Amy delivers from her truck is fish.  Not ordinary fish...fish wild-caught by natives out of the waters of the Great Lakes.  I'm sure it's probably not as romantic as I picture it, but I'm still going to picture birch canoes and ritualistic dances for bounty and abundance eventually resulting in the gorgeous fillets that Amy brings to my door.  I braved the fish for the first time last year, and since then, my family has enjoyed many different types of fish, including perch and walleye.  It's not as scary as I thought, and I'm going to share my method with you.

Here's the fish.  Today, it's trout.  For my family of 5, two good-sized fillets (around a pound each) works out almost perfectly.  I'm sure it won't be enough once they get older, but this method is easy to multiply servings.  The fish we get is usually free of bones, with skin on, so it's pretty good to go from the start.  I like to rinse the fillets and pat them dry with paper towels.  Then I lay them out and get ready to flavor them up.

A quick introduction

So...this is my blog...