SOCKEYE for Six

Alaska isn't on our travel itinerary at this time, but it is for a friend of ours. He and his friends took their "bear bells" to wear, and flew to Alaska to fish. I went to the fresh seafood counter at Baker's in Omaha.

JB said he didn't like salmon. I think it was just my patties he doesn't like. When the Dr. said he had to have Omega3, she recommended lots of fish, salmon in particular. I wondered how I'd get it down him.
They grocer had pond-raised salmon that were pale next to Alaska's bright salmon-colored wild Sockeye. I bought a pound and a half at $9.99 a lb., and baked them in parchment paper according to a recipe from Suzanne Somers Fast and Easy book.

On the paper, for each fillet, I placed two slices of lemon and half a teaspoon of butter, and added a sprig of my garden fresh tarragon. I salt and peppered the skin placing it down on the lemons. Salt and peppered the top, and added a heap of chopped onion to each. Folded up and over, they baked on a cookie sheet for twenty minutes at 400 degrees.

We had a feast. Delicious! What little was left we shared with our two cats. Madchen would have nothing to do with it. Schatzie was thrilled, ate his and raced through the house. Her bites went to the outside cat we occasionally feed, and the balance we mixed with cream cheese to spread on crackers. We got our money's worth. This recipe is a keeper. JB just came to the kitchen looking for more spread. All gone.

copyright 2007 Red Convertible Travel Series.

Sunday at the pit

msn photo

The 400 mile fishing trip to Alexandria, Minnesota used to be the highlight of our summer. Now we drive twenty to Jim & Carol's cabin on a sandpit off the Platte River and have just as much fun without the work of packing, unpacking, packing and unpacking. We took a lot of food for a ride.

The Platte River ranges from trickle-width to a mile wide. Shallow, but tricky, it has surprised many a person with a swift current that made a deeper pool and stole their life. And there's quicksand - bottomless sucking sand. Crossing the Platte I noticed three air boats lined up on the south bank as if set to race across - about a block. With their powerful and extra loud engines they'd be in North Bend before they could stop.

We are a High Plains state in the "breadbasket of America". Nebraska farmers raise corn, wheat, and soybeans in abundance with the help of irrigation. I'd like a quilt of an aerial photo of our summer fields: shades of green, brown, and wheat gold, center pivot crop circles, the few trees around farmsteads, and straight roads with square sections unlike Minnesota and Mississippi.

Nebraska is one of eight states atop the Oglala, one of the world's largest aquifers (reservoirs). Its estimated age is from 2 to 6 millions years. According to U. S. Water News Online it's the deepest in Nebraska's sand hills in the northwest area of the state.

Our population is concentrated in the east. Sand pits are created by dredging sand for commercial use creating lakes the size of Paul Bunyan's pinky. Legend has it that it in Minnesota he stepped and created lakes - 10,000 of them. Sounds more like he clogged.

Jim and Carol dwarfed their cabin adding an over-sized deck with pergola. They don't do anything small. He's 6'9" with a sense of humor that goes all the way to the top. I stretch to be 5'5" and call him my two-step step-son. I have to stand up two to talk to him. Sweetcorn for dinner isn't an ear or two, it's a dozen. The only thing small in their life is Maddy, a little poodle.

The inner tubes Jim inflated were tractor size. Imagine that. We fiddled around trying to decide how to get in. I opted for the dock. Carol held it while I eased my booty into the middle without flipping and hung my legs and arms over. The water was cold in places and warm in others. Refreshing. Relaxing. Maddy wore her life jacket with leash attached but preferred to sit on Jim's shoulder. Neighbors yards were adorned with moving whirly-gigs to keep the geese from eating their new grass and making deposits.

Hunger nagged. Should we walk to the shallow area and roll out? Jim suggested placing a tall ladder in the water at the dock so I could climb out, up, over the top and down the other side. You first. I moved to shallow water, Carol held the tube, and I popped out.

Carol, our favorite daughter-in-law, is a great cook. Other years we had fresh fried crappie or walleye, new potatoes, peas and dill weed in a cream sauce and peach dumplings with ice cream for dessert. This year I brought fried chicken. She sauteed onion, garlic and portabella mushrooms, added chicken broth and rice. Delicious. Rhubarb crisp was dessert with vanilla ice cream. Sour, rhubarb needs lots of sugar. I love it. The roto-rooter of the bowels, it needs to be eaten in moderation.

It was a great mini-vacation, and I got to sleep in my own bed.

copyright 20007 Red Convertible Travel Series

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY

msn photo

Watermelon is as much the 4th of July as fireworks. Bite into it's refreshing coldness. The juice slips down your chin, your elbows, the front of your shirt. Everything gets sticky.

At a picnic we watched a man spit a couple watermelon seeds down the front of a woman's blouse. She didn't say anything, but her eyes narrowed in anger. We could tell she was thinking how to get even. She circled behind him, wrapped her slice around his neck and squeezed.

Whatever you do, celebrate freedom. It's ours and it's precious.

copyright 2007 Red Convertible Travel Series