#1 Eat a fish I caught.

I got the idea for this one from reading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I highly recommend it. It is definitely not the preachy, be-a-vegetarian book I heard it was. Michael Pollan's not a vegetarian. He's not telling anyone to be one. He explored what food is and where it comes from. He decided to first have a McDonald's meal and then see if he could figure out where all the pieces of it came from and second to make his own meal, fully from things he himself hunted, gathered, and cooked.

The book made me think a lot about what I eat, how messed up the food industry is and how detached we are from our food.

Don't worry. I'm not going to get all preachy on you either.

This item made the list because I decided that I should be more attached to my food and realize what I'm eating. I decided that if I could catch a fish, clean it, and eat it, I

could keep eating meat for now. Could I kill some big mammal? Probably not. I mean, I have a hard time killing bugs. Bugs. Even ants. And it hurts me a little when people kill spiders. (I got that

weird hang up from Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, which felt a lot like Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged to me: really thought-provoking message but just not good literature. Though, at least Kingsolver's story and characters were believeable, so it feels like the message stuck with me a little better. If you're offended, I'll argue with you about Rand some other time. Be ready though. I have an arsenal.) I probably couldn't kill a chicken either. Probably.

But I did it. I caught the fish - accompanied by Dave Merrill, Edmund Cruz, Edric Cruz, Nader Elmasri, and Norris Narsa. It kinda drowned on its own, so I didn't have to whack it or anything, which Alicia had made mention of the day before and I freaked out. I would have a really hard time actually actively killing. Even though I know it's the same thing letting it passively die. So the fish died. You can see in an earlier post how I cut of its head, slit it's belly, and pulled out its insides.

The plan was to then build a fire, cook the fish, and it eat that night, but a huge storm rolled in and killed that plan. So Dave Merrill froze the fish for a later date.

This past weekend, Angela Mioglionico and Danielle Reyes joined me at Dave Merill's. Dave built a fire. Danielle named the fish Gary. And we cooked him up. He was a little rubbery and tasteless, but he was fine.

I only wish I could have done it all in one day so he'd really feel like a real fish I was eating. One that was squirming in my hand just a few hours before. But it worked.

Next time I want an ocean fish!