Fishy (mis)Adventures Part I - The Feast

WARNING - some of this might be a little graphic for the PETA set.  Or for squeamish people (like me) who prefer to buy their meat already dead and wrapped in cellophane.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After watching what appeared to be a few rather large fish swimming around in the tank for the past couple of months, we decided to take a few out for dinner.  The water is still too dark to see the fish very well, so we weren't sure if they were really that big, or if it was a trick of the light, but what could it hurt, right?

So, on January 3, my son and I pulled a few out with a net, but they were way too small, so we put them back.  We did this a couple of times, until we finally came out with a few that were smallish eating size.  Not wanting to allow my fish to suffer by letting them die of suffocation, we put them in a bucket of water and took them upstairs.  I had done a few searches on how to "humanely" kill a fish, and the most popular way I found was using something that stabs them between the eyes, stabs their brains, and supposedly instantly kills them.  I didn't trust my skill at getting just the right spot through the skull, so I decided I would try the next best thing (IMO)...chop off the heads.  I knew killing the fish would be the least pleasant part of the entire aquaponics process, but it's got to be done. 

The Six Fish We Decided to Eat

First of all, this method turned out to be very messy.  In hindsight, this should have been very obvious.  Usually, by the time a person cleans a fish, it has been dead for at least a few minutes, so the blood circulation has stopped.  Chopping the head off a live fish - blood spurts everywhere, all over my kitchen counters and all over us.  So, first lesson - don't chop the heads off of live fish.

Fish out of Water

Yuck

Ready for the Grill...or so We Thought

Next, just like the proverbial chicken running around with its head cut off, the trouts' nervous systems are still active, even after they are dead.  Flopping around, gills moving.  Ricky even found a little tiny fish heart that was still beating several minutes after the fish's death.  Gross.

Thinking the drama is over, we put the beheaded and cleaned fish on a cedar plank to be grilled.  Apparently, the nervous system was still active for longer than we thought, because when my husband went out to the grill to check the fish, a couple of the headless fish had "jumped" off the plank and onto the grill.  Weird.

Well, either way, dinner was good.  Fish, rice, corn, and naan.  I was so excited to taste the fish that I almost forgot to take the picture.  So, here is the half-eaten, grill-jumping fish.  Yum. 

Trout Dinner

Stay tuned for Fishy (mis)Adventure Part II - Trout Rapture....