#Seafood March 24

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Today contribution to the 30-Day Letter Writing Coach4aday Challenge is on SEAFOOD.

The challenge involves composing a letter to yourself when you were an earlier age. The goal is to focus on a value, habit, or choice that needs to be adopted or made.

My childhood included being brought up in the Roman Catholic Church. That meant certain practices took place in our household. One of those took place on Fridays in Lent. We did not at meat which meant we consumed fish. Until I went to college, I thought all seafood tasted like Bluefish.

Spring 1972

Dear College Dan:

Today you are going to go to seafood restaurant in Greenville NC on the highway to Little Washington NC. The dining experience will be with some college friends that is going to change your perception of SEAFOOD.

Growing up Catholic in Northern NJ meant on every Friday of Lent your mom would go into the freezer and break out some of those Bluefish you dad caught at the Jersey Shore. Almost everybody you encounter later in life will share with you the following fact about this species of fish. The meat of a bluefish needs to be cooked or eaten fresh from the ocean. If not, they tend to go bad quickly. What bad means is they have a strong fishy taste and smell. You will be 19 before you realize not all seafood is like that.

At this restaurant during your freshman year in college you see all of your friends ordering the flounder and shrimp platter because it is the special. You succumb to peer pressure and do the same. That order has you anticipating eating something you won’t. When it arrives, it looks nothing you expected.

When you try the flounder, it has zero fishy smell or taste. At that moment you realized that seafood can in fact be fantastic meal.

Seafood Loving Dan