The Salmon.

When I was a wee sprite I was a hypochondriac. Yes, it's quite a large word. Perhaps this will help:

 hy·po·chon·dri·ac


[hahy-puh-kon-dree-ak]
-noun
1. a person who worries or talks excessively about his or her health.


Yes, my friends, I worried excessively about my health. I thought music too loud would cause me to go deaf. I thought light too bright would cause me to go blind. And I thought every piece of cooked fish had a big bone hiding inside, waiting to jump out and lodge in my throat, suffocating me to death.


I was weird.
I was also 12...ish.


One night, during this hypochondriac stage of life, my dear mother made the most delicious dessert on the face of this earth: Blueberry Dumpcake. I was so ridiculously excited! Until I found out that my dear, sweet father was making grilled Salmon. 


Now, at this point in my life I did not have a hatred toward fish. I thought it was okay. However, I had a very difficult time eating it because of the bones. 


First I would take a very itty bitty, teensy weensy, bite and chew and chew and chew. I chewed fish until it turned into a goopy, gloppy, mouthful of tasteless mush. Then I rolled that mush around and around in my mouth and cheeks feeling every square millimeter to double, triple and quadruple check for the tiniest bone that could lodge in my throat and choke me to death. Seriously. Then I would finally proceed to swallow very slowly so that the bone could lodge in my upper throat, a more easily accessible location, instead of my lower throat. Of course I chased down every one of these bitterly painful bites with huge gulps of water so as to hopefully assist the bones in making it to my stomach instead of sticking in my throat. 


As you can imagine, it took forever to eat a very small piece of fish.


Back to the night of The Salmon. Perhaps my family was going through a rough financial patch, or perhaps my father did not like to see food wasted, or perhaps he desired more Blueberry Dumpcake for himself. Either way, that night I was required to finish the entire contents of The Salmon on my plate before any thought of dessert. 

Now, Salmon is a fish that the more chewed, mushed, rolled, and masticated it gets, the more horrible it tastes. 

So, of course, after the first grueling half of mushiness, I dug my heels in. Then I grunted. I groaned. I whined. I complained. I tried to negotiate. I did everything in my power to not eat The Salmon. I begged my mother for mercy. But of course, she was on Team Dad. Eventually I finally realized there was no hope, and I pulled one last trick out of the bag: tears. Big, fat, juicy crocodile tears.

(which did not work) 

As I force fed myself The disgusting Salmon with gargantuan crocodile tears running down my face, I chanted this phrase over and over in my head: "I will never, ever eat Salmon again. I will never, ever eat Salmon again." 


And for many, many years after this very traumatizing experience, I really never ate Salmon. Even when my dear mother took me out for Sushi and suggested I try Salmon, I resisted. I thought for sure it would taste identical to The Salmon. Eventually, I folded and tried Salmon in the Sushi variety. Surprisingly, it became my favorite Sushi piece. However, you still couldn't pay my enough to eat Salmon cooked. 


Until one day, I realized Salmon has a vast variety of health benefits for your body. I thought in my head "well, I'm a really good cook, so maybe I can make Salmon taste not like The Salmon." And guess what? 


One day I went out and bought a Costco sized bag of frozen Salmon and baked us a piece. 

I've never had such delicious Salmon in my life.

 

p.s. this is not what my salmon looked like. I forgot to take a picture.