Evidently, in his formative years, his mother, and his maternal grandmother fed him oodles of tuna fish, sometimes in the form of a tuna fish sandwich, or maybe a tuna fish casserole. One meal he particularly loathed was referred to as tuna supper surprise. It was some baked dish, with potato chips on top of a tuna noodle mushroom soup concoction. I think I even suffered through something similar a time or two.
Then, about 20 years later he runs into me, a brother of the detested tuna fish anything. Oh could we share stories of lunches and dinners that made are stomachs quiver. But back then, if someone set it in front of you, it was eat it, or go hungry, we choked it down. Try a skillet of fresh raw liver, once, I can still see it in memory, sizzled in bacon fat and onions. The liver in the pan with the added heat, made it move. If yer lucky, you get over it after about 50 years, maybe.
So add a few more years, and we went brook trout fishing, we came back to my house, grilled the brookies, and we ate them till we about bursted. The leftover fish the next day, we plucked off all the remaining meat, for reasons today we still don’t understand, we mixed it with some mayo, some diced pickles, a smash of minced onions, and we both had brook trout (Minnesota style), tuna fish sandwiches. Boy did we fix our childhoods.
Now all these years later, we laugh about the gastronomical suffering we supposedly endured as kids, and still can’t wait to go brook trout fishing, much to “tuna of the seas” dismay.
- The Trout Whisperer
