Cooking... really?

Yesterday I created a fish bake loosely based on a creamy halibut dish my girlfriend (Renee) prepared two months back. I tried calling her for some assistance on the temperature and wet ingredients, but she was not available. So... I winged it. Winged, is that a word??? I decided to wing it!! And normally I would not report such a thing. Some winging attempts have resulted in me pouring inedible garbage down the toilet, the disposal, or even just throwing out the back door. Not this time, though. No, this time hopeful as I was, when smelling the creamy dill sauce as I escorted the warm stoneware dish from the oven, I knew I was in for a treat.

My first bite was creamy and buttery with that hint of oil separation that makes lasagna fantastic, and a flavor understated yet confident in its dill-ightfulness. I fell backward to my kitchen sink, and cursed myself for not forcing my roommate (sitting less than 10 feet away) to confirm my euphoria. Instead I silently shook in a food induced seizure beating my chest to make sure I was awake. And then, as my tongue trembled, I took another bite.

Of course, this could all be circumstantial... when the result of a wing and a prayer is favorable it's too often looked upon as a miracle. In this case, I know what I saw, what I smelled, and what I tasted. And for that moment, it was heaven.

Creamy Cod Fillet Miracle Bake

3-4 Cod Fillets
2/3 cup sour cream
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup Romano cheese (fine shred or grate)
1/3 cup seasoned bread crumbs
2 TBSP of butter
dill weed
salt
paprika
lemon juice
olive oil

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Dry the cod fillets on a few pieces of paper towel till the fillets are able to soak in new moisture. Squirt lemon juice on each fillet front and back, and rub in. Dab a little olive oil on each fillet front and back, and rub in. Crack salt on each fillet front and back. Sprinkle dill weed on each fillet front and back.

Place fillets in a stoneware dish at least 2 inches deep, do not crowd the fish, they should only cover about 3/4ths of the surface. Sprinkle about a third of the Romano cheese on the fish.


In a mixing bowl, combine the sour cream, milk, butter, and mayo. Add dill weed to season. Pour contents of mixing bowl to the sides of the fish. Make sure the liquid is just short of the height of the fillets, but ladle some of the liquid over each fillet to completely cover them. Hit each fillet with some paprika.

Place in the oven for 12-15 minutes.

In a separate mixing bowl, combine the rest of the Romano cheese with the bread crumbs. Mix and press them well.

Pull the fish out of the oven, turn the oven on to broil. Cover with the bread crumbs, pressing some into the fish. Sprinkle some melted butter over the top. Place back into the oven, and cook till golden.

The Art of Floating

A bus glides past pushing flowers through the night,
and they swim into my world,
chipping chaos off my mind.

The irises the daffodils flooding like moonlight,
brush against my face,
cats plow them down the drive.

Son of a Scoundrel

Little Landon Lee was born today
six weeks early and upside down,
but strong and healthy nonetheless.

He was born 23 hours shy of 9/18/09
to a daddy with a scoundrel’s eye
and a mom fighting to make herself a life.

At half and four pounds soak and wet
sixteen inches long he’d stretch
and not quite reach Cloud City, not just yet.

And today I pray he never knows
the betrayal of his father’s foes
or the darkness that seems to come and part again.

Instead my trust runs deep with force
and speed of falcon’s past retorts
and hopes he grows to charm and chance.

But if revenge is found on tongue
diplomacy I pray will run till
grasp of steel warms cold in fist.

Ode to Pimento Loaf

I bought bologna today, the cheap kind with the red plastic ring. I haven't had it in years, but used to eat it all the time when I was a kid. I’ve heard fried bologna was good, but haven’t had it. My favorite was always the bologna with the green stuff in it, not the pickles but the olives. Pimento loaf I think, and it was my dad's favorite too. He would bring it to work sites on the weekends that he had us. Sometimes he’d have demolition jobs on the weekends. Nothing explosive, but the kind of job where you ripped everything down by hand and tried to salvage anything you could. He'd give us some basic task like chipping mortar off of bricks and palleting the good ones. 12 bricks long, 6 bricks wide, 10 bricks high, keep’em tight. May not have been much, but at six years old it felt empowering to do a man’s job, and I hated it. I wanted to go bowling or play video games in an arcade. But then there’d be lunch. Dad would give me and my older brother 5 bucks and send us to the nearest gas station for a case of soda. There would always be extra, so we’d pop quarters into whatever arcade game they had inside. When we ran out, we would head back to the job site, and build bologna sandwiches, 2 pieces of bread, yellow mustard, slice of pimento loaf, can of Mountain Dew, Doritos. That's the last time I actually enjoyed bologna, as a kid eating it with my father and brother at a dirty job in a city I barely knew, working for free.