When there’s no fresh produce in Florida, there’s always fresh seafood. Tonight’s main course was caught and cooked by Cooper – flounder.
My father forced me to eat a mussel as a child, and I didn’t eat seafood for a good 10-15 years after. It was slimy and chewy and something I still won’t eat to this day. But I’ve been living in Florida for the last 16 years, so seafood has naturally become part of my diet. It doesn’t happen every time, but it is such a treat when John comes home with fresh fish. Tonight it was flounder, and it was Cooper’s catch, but John has brought home mahi-mahi, snapper, grouper, and snook before. It’s the equivalent of walking outside to pull a grapefruit from the tree. The finest restaurant in town can’t serve me anything fresher. “Fishy” flavors take time to evolve; our flounder didn’t have a hint of it. The fish was light, flaky and delicious.
Cooper was successful today; he won our dinner. Luckily, the two hawks that swooped down into our yard yesterday didn’t win theirs. I was out at a baby shower, but John was inside when he heard the squawking. Oreo had run into the back corner of her coop, and there were two hawks outside her door. They were too big to get in, and John scared them away when he opened the door. Although one was only scared up; he was still lurking on the utility wires. John got this photo with his camera phone and then got the pellet gun.
The hawk must have felt the scope on him because he flew away before John could fire a shot. And FYI: the pellet gun wouldn’t have killed the hawk. The hope was just to scare him enough so he won’t come back. The hawks scared us enough that we’re back on vigilant Oreo-watch again. We got a little too comfortable with her getting bigger and always standing in Luke’s shadow. She’s still at quite the yummy age, and the hawks aren’t her first visitors. A stray cat was trying to get into her cage a couple weeks ago. But sleep tight, Oreo’s safely in her coop for the night.
