Fish #1

I have been frantically preparing for an upcoming vacation. In addition to packing and assisting with some of the trip planning, I have been researching restaurants near our hotel, double checking the cruise line's website about having gluten free and lactose free meals, figuring out which restaurants had food I can eat at the airports, tasting and buying packaged snacks, and cooking fish.

Yes, you read that right. I was cooking fish. We are going on a cruise and I know that fish is going to be on the menu often and what better place to eat fish than the Caribbean, right? I can count on one hand how many times I have eaten fish (ignoring McDonalds fillet of fish and super cheap fish sticks that are so far removed from fish, that they really don't count.) And I grew up Catholic - I should have loved eating fish on Friday's during Lent! Somewhere along the line, I decided that fish was gross. (Likely because of the slimy texture that I attributed to the fish I would see in the grocery store.) Life without fish really never was a problem. I was able to opt for macaroni and cheese or a grilled cheese sandwich on those meatless Fridays. But now, with a cruise looming in my near future, I needed to eat fish. To make sure I was not intolerant or allergic.

So I consulted one of my many cookbooks and found an easy recipe that was very hands-off with regards to the actual cooking. I placed my single serving of Whole Foods salmon on aluminum foil sprayed with cooking oil and added some lemon before sealing up the packet and cooking it on a cookie sheet in the oven for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I cooked some rice in my rice cooker. When the timer went off, I took the fish out of the oven, consulted the cookbook to make sure that the fish was indeed done (it was) and added some fresh squeezed lemon juice on top. For good measure, I also added a little bit of lemon juice to the rice.

The fish was not slimy at all. It has a much softer texture than meat, but nothing scary. It was quite tasty, despite the overpowering lemon. The good news? I'm not intolerant to fish! So I can add that to my "approved" menu and enjoy some delicious fish prepared by chefs who know their way around a fish much better than I ever will! One more culinary door has opened!