Busy Bee

 While I was weeding and watering flowers the other day
I heard this busy bee before I ever saw it.

I have a variety of flowers blooming right now so he was very happy to hang around. 

These alliums must be extra tasty because he made sure to visit 

each flower on the 10 or so alliums I have in my flower beds.

I am happy that he chose my garden to visit.  

Maybe he will bring his buddies back with him next time. 

Best Fish Fry

Every year my little (well, younger) brother and his wife host a fish fry.  

Will loves to fish and doesn't mind cleaning the resulting fish and popping 

them in the freezer afterwards.  

The resulting freezer full of fish certainly qualifies as a mess of fish.

Easily.  

He has the big electric fry great granddaddy for the hushpuppies 

and a propane cooker with a big cast iron dutch oven for the fish.

Dad came over early to help Will get started with the prep.

Even though they never slowed down it took a couple of hours 

of dropping fish filets...

and spooning Will's secret hushpuppy batter into hot oil to get it all cooked.

This was the first batch of the fish into the dredge. 

There was at least one more bowl of fish filets this big. 

All of this cooking smelled really, really good.  

Tasted even better.  

My cutie-patootie nephew Chase brought his new puppy.  

Needless to say he didn't have to do too much with this little lady...

 because where there is a puppy there will be Allison

and lots of other folks who were attracted this sweet little ball of fur.

Will always cooks the hushpuppies so he can tweak the batter if needed.

And sneak a few along the way.

Those golden nuggets of crispy, oniony, corny hushpuppies are amazing.  

I really think I like them better than the fish, but the fish is pretty darn amazing too.

Thanks Wilma for a wonderful dinner.  

(He loves it when I call him Wilma.)

Wake Up Little Sushi

Bruce and I love sushi.  

For the longest time we would go to our favorite place for sushi on Sunday nights 

after dropping the kids off at church for their Sunday night youth program.  

Since Ben started driving we haven't gone quite as often because we haven't 

had to leave the house on Sunday nights.  

And let's face it - sushi is expensive! 

I have read about how to make sushi, downloaded recipes, watched youtube videos 

for years but I had never tried my hand at making my own at home.  

All that changed today. 

Bruce and I shopped for the necessary items - bamboo mat, wasabi, pickled ginger, nori sheets, srirachi sauce...

green onions, cucumber, avocado

shrimp (I had thoughts of making crunchy shrimp rolls with tempura shrimp.)

I mean look at these gorgeous royal red shrimp!

Bruce got a lesson in how to devein shrimp.

I diced some tuna and made my spicy tuna filling.

Gorgeous tuna, salmon, and spicy tuna filling - yum!  

The shrimp all skewered up and ready to go in the tempura batter.

Mise en place all ready to go.

Sushi rice was easy to make and really tasty.  

I know that a legitimate sushi chef would have found fault with it but I thought it was pretty good.

How someone can apprentice for years to get sushi rice correct is beyond me.  

It's rice, people.

I appreciate the art of sushi but my goal was to make a tasty dinner for Bruce, me and two friends.

I made a nine rolls using the tuna, salmon, and spicy tuna mixture.

I didn't make the crunchy shrimp rolls this time because suddenly I looked at the platter and realized we had enough for dinner without them.  We ate the shrimp tempura all by itself.  

Sushi attempt #1 - a tasty success!

I will be making sushi again very soon.  

It was that good.

I'm wishing there were some leftovers in the frig...