Para Comer: El Pez Gigantesco!

You know it’s a good sign when you pull into the roadside pescaderia and see a boat. Still dripping from the briny waves, towed by an extremely muddy jeep (begging questions about just how and where this particular barco puts out to sea), with an iron handed fisherman transferring gigantic long fish into a bucket to be transferred directly into your lap to be transferred directly onto the flames of an open fire to be transferred directly into your mouth. It’s certainly a good way to cut out the middle man.Two things. Firstly, the color of the interior of this fish case. I might move in. Then, LOOK at that fish-eye! Now that is a fresh fish. A fresh 16 pounder plucked from the waters that very afternoon. How much? 200 pesos. $15. You’ll scale it and clean it for us? Um, ok, sure, that sounds good (inside we’re saying: OHMYGODTHISISPARADISEANDWEBOUGHTALLTHEWHITEWINETHEYHADATTHEFUNNYGROCERY!!!). We’ll take it, after all, we’re having seated dinner for 19 in the Weekend at Bernie’s dreamhouse.Sweet Philly K (my favorite, pictured here as an ancient fisherman-scientist, “The Old Man and the COBE“) dressed her up in spangles of orange, lime baubles, onion bracelets, and strange dark peppers, we rolled her like a 10 cent Havana cigar, and roasted her over the open flames for an hour. Para Comer, El Pez Gigantesco!

thanks again to E.B.P. for the last photo.

Author: loiseaufait

Little by little the bird feathers its nest, and object by heart burnished object we surround ourselves with lovely necessities of memory and function. It is these things that make a silly Apartment a Home or a silly Wednesday an Occasion. Whether my nest is an old farmhouse, a sixth floor tenement walk up, or a brownstone basement... whether I share it with family, vagabonds, women of heart and mind, or a little brown cat and a sweet ginger banjo, my principal joy is filling it with light and laughter (and corralling). View all posts by loiseaufait