This week has been "wanting fish" week for me. Odd. I bought a piece of black cod (aka sablefish, line caught, USA) at Whole Foods on Wednesday, sauteed it in olive oil and a bit of butter, and it was so luscious and delicious. Very rich. Today I wanted to grill a piece of fish, thinking a halibut steak or something like that. I went to two markets on the way home, nothing that looked good or that I wanted to sell the dog to get (really, $25.99 for salmon, more for halibut, it's fucking local, come on.....) So, in desperation I stopped at Whole Foods again to see what they had. And look! Line caught wild swordfish on sale for $15 a pound! They cut a piece in half for me, I marinated it for about an hour in olive oil, lemon juice, finely minced rosemary and black pepper. Hot grill, three minutes on a side and then off to a plate, tented it and then grilled veggies.
You know how sometimes you grill corn and it is crappy? Dry and overcooked or barely warm and under cooked? Tonight = perfect. Charred, hot and still juicy. And a half red bell pepper, nice. And grilled onions. Long, long ago I often grilled red onions with honey and Dijon mustard. They were good. These, tonight, were better. Here is the link. I didn't go so far as to chop them into a chutney because I only used one large onion and they were so good that I ate half of the entire thing. http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1018132-barbecued-red-onion-chutney
OK, enough on the perfect grilled dinner.
Book: "Sweet Lamb of Heaven" by Lydia Millet. This book is very well written and quite intense at times but it is also a bit too esoteric for me. It jumps from a typical stalking husband plot (husband who will do anything to get the wife and kid back just to make himself look good) to a group of people who have nothing in common except that they sometimes hear voices, which is not such a bad thing, maybe. Confusing, yes, and you stop really caring about the main character and her daughter because all the voices she has heard and others have heard are never explained and because you want her to just stand up to the dick husband and slap him or, hey, kill him.
The first third is blah. Then it picks up a bit, and it gets a little creepier in the last third but by then you are tired of the little daughter's insight into everything, but then you also feel bad for thinking that because then she acts like a normal six year old for a day. Would I recommend this book? Not really, but not for any reason other than it is so out of the realm of reality that it seems goofy. But then, hey, so did "Gone Girl" and "Girl on a Train" and "The Girl Who Played With Fire" and on and on.
And the fucking crows. Every morning for the past three weeks the crows are up at 4:45. They scream around, doing that barking crow thing for at least 30 minutes, which is totally enough time to wake up a person like me. Then, magically, they shut up. My alarm is set for 6:10, but since the sun comes up around 5:50, once those crows start up, I am fucking awake. So from 5:30 to 6:10 I try to go back to sleep but it's impossible. I hate the crows. I hate them as much as I hate mosquitoes. Why they need to be vocal at 4:45 is a mystery that I do not need to solve. I simply want them to stop. I want them to die.
more on this to follow....
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