Can I just say that I am COMPLETELY surprised at the salmon that resides in Lake Michigan.
Lets go back a few steps. Over the 4th of July my parents came into town for a weekend of fun times. With a packed schedule including seeing Garrison Keillor tape a live show of A Prairie Home Companion at Ravinia, some White Sox baseball with fireworks and eating out (it’s really what we do best). Another fun thing that came up was a guy that works with my Dad has a boat on the Southside and invited us to go fishing on the Lake.
Ok, admittedly I have an idea about the water in the lake that is most likely false. In my head I kind of have it figured that for the most part its gross. I think it’s one too many times on the architectural boat tour where they talk about how so much of the city is built on garbage, random no swim warnings and the Asian Carp invasion that just sounds scary. So when we talked about fishing I surprised when salmon came up as what we were probably going to catch.
Long story short
Scene: Boat on Lake Michigan
Cast: Mom, Dad, Awesome Southside Fishing Guy 1, Just as Awesome Fishing Guy 2 and me.
Within the first 20 minutes Mom and I were done. Seasick as all hell. This has officially ruled out “boat guy” as possible boyfriend material (this is the second time it’s happened by the way so I guess it’s not a fluke)
The rest of the FIVE HOURS Dad with the help of SSFG 1 & 2 caught a couple of really pretty nice sized salmon. We usually fish for stream trout so these fish seemed quite big by our standards so we were happy. And no, we are not mad at Dad if you were wondering, it’s the coolest thing he’s ever gotten to do here in Chicago and our puking and misery were not going to ruin that. And the Dramamine did kick in after about 3 hours so I did have some of the time was much more pleasant (Mom never shook it though, total bummer) After SSFG1 broke down the salmon in about 5 seconds we were back on our merry way from the depths of Calumet Marina.
It’s delicious. I am so happy with it; it’s mild not fishy and better than I had expected. We froze, divvied and FoodSavered it all up and tonight I decided I needed a bit of a healthy meal. I mixed some yellow curry paste with fat free Greek yogurt and orange zest/juice and put 1/2 of it on the salmon. I preheated the over with the pan in it (trick I love by the way) and in it went. Ten minutes later – viola. I added the rest of the curry mixture and my little side dish of orzo with zucchini and what a lovely Tuesday meal it was.
