Smells fishy

I don't like to eat fish. My avoidance probably comes from a scarring childhood memory involving the after-effects of eating oysters. I won't go into details but it wasn't pretty. Other than shrimp, I just haven't been very brave.

Last week I came across an online recipe for The Best Fish Recipe Ever. My thoughts immediately went to a recipe my mom tried on us when I was little. I was called Guaranteed Your Kids Will Love Liver. With two children and a husband who despised liver, she decided to give it a go.

I can still remember coming down the steps from my room to the kitchen, pausing midway and smelling a familiar smell.  Ugh! Liver?  "Mom," I asked upon arriving at the source of the smell, "What's for dinner?"  She responded rather quickly, "It's like steak." Hmmmm. That's not what it smelled like. But steak? Not one of my favorites but definitely better than the very strong and bitter liver she'd made in the past.

We sat down at the table, ready to partake of the steak we thought she had so lovingly prepared for us. The speed with which the meat entered my mouth testified to the fact that I had only heard one word of her response, "Steak."  Well, we quickly figured out that "like steak" was not the same thing as steak. In fact, it bore a very striking resemblance to the taste of that despised liver.

I don't remember exactly how that experiment ended but I can imagine that my mom erupted in gales of laughter as she tried to explain to us that we were the test subjects in her "guaranteed your kids will love liver experiment." I am certain that we were not as amused as she. I am also certain that we had to sit there until the awful grub was gone from our dishes.

I'm not sure what possessed me but despite my better judgement I decided to give The Best Fish Recipe Ever a try. One by one my family members asked what we were having for dinner. I couldn't think of any "It's like fill-in-the-blank" statements for the formerly scale-y creature so honesty was my answer of choice. Their reactions made me wonder if I had shouldn't have instead told them it was "like chicken." Except that'd be lying because chickens have feathers and feet and a beak and fish just don't. I think I literally stepped back a few inches each time I was asked this question, trying to soften the blow as I anticipated the rude remarks from one child, the cries of despair from the pickiest eater. Then I sat back, fed the baby, and watched the rest of my family dig in.

They liked it. They probably liked the sauce poured over top better than the fish but hey, they liked it. When the Good Doctor went to clean out the almost-empty dish, he realized that I had not yet had any. They ate so much that I was left with just a small helping.

That's okay. I'm not much of a fish fan, anyway. But Mom, my "Best Fish Ever" beats your "Guaranteed to Love Liver" by a landslide and I didn't even have to tell a white lie!