Bass for dinner

Earlier this week I sent David to the grocery store and told him to pick up a few things.  I only asked for 5 things which should have totaled less than $20.  When he came back from the store, he had bought lots of impulse buys (angel food cake, wine, a whole pineapple...), spent $65, and had only remembered 3 out of the 5 items requested.  I might have been just slightly upset with him.  David said, "Rachel, you know that's what happens when I go to the store.  I love impulse shopping."  (Perhaps he does this to get out of grocery shopping?)

So the next day, I had several errands to run and didn't have time to go to the other grocery store to pick up items for dinners for the week.  So David offered to go.  I was smarter this time.  I sent him to the store with a written list and David promised to stick to it.  He did pretty well, except for one item:

The list said "1.5lb tuna steak" but this is what he brought home.  A whole bass.  With scales and bones.  I asked David, "What were you thinking?"  He replied, "They didn't have any tuna.  They had halibut, but it was $18 a pound, and I knew after how much I spent on my last shopping trip that would be a bad idea.  So I saw this bass and it was only $4 for the whole thing!  Plus I thought you might get really excited about having a WHOLE fish, head and all!"  He was pretty proud of himself.  Oh David, that's why I love you.  Every day is an adventure.

The only problem - neither one of us knew what to do with a whole fish.  At least it was already gutted.  I looked up online about how to scale a fish, and it was recommended to do it outside otherwise you would be cleaning scales off of your kitchen walls.  But one trick that was suggested was scaling the fish submerged in water to keep them from flying.  So that's what I did!

De-boning it sounded even more difficult and required needle nose pliers which we of course do not own.  So upon the recommendation of another website, I just threw the whole thing in the oven.  De-boning is supposed to be easier once the fish is cooked.  After about 18 minutes, this is what we had:

Mmmm delicious!  David picked all of the meat off of the bass and we used it for our fish tacos.

Definitely an adventure.  Best part of dinner?  The beer we drank with our tacos.  :)

The remnants.