1. I began driving a car with a daytime license back in 1968 after taking a course in driver education. Back in 1968, Spokane's KJRB-AM and KGA-AM were both Top 40 radio stations and we could pick them up pretty well in Kellogg. During the summer of 1968, I used to dream up reasons to borrow Mom and Dad's car -- usually I offered to go to the store or on some other errand. I never went directly to the store and directly home. I took little drives. I loved driving out McKinley Avenue toward Deadwood Gulch, past the lead smelter, then the zinc plant, and on into Smelterville and back. While driving, I listened to KGA or KJRB, depending on which station came in better, and I came to love all kinds of songs from the summer of 1968 because I associate them so strongly with the thrill I felt driving Mom and Dad's car. It was the summer of "Hey Jude", "Classical Gas", "Mony Mony", "Sunshine of Your Love", "Summertime Blues" and a ton of other great songs.
This all came back to me as I finished my workout at the Wellness Center. I'd just finished the last of twelve reps of my second set on the calf press when Status Quo's "Pictures of Matchstick Men" came on over the sound system. Suddenly I was up on Market Street in Kellogg with our lawn mower loaded precariously in the trunk of the car, KGA blaring, getting ready to mow Pete and Casey Wescott's lawn while they were out of town. In the summer of 1968, that song stopped me cold. I loved it -- and, now, fifty years later, I still do.
2. Christy and Carol and I are giving each other Sibling Assignments today. We decided to wait until we are all done with the assignments to post them. This afternoon I remembered Sunday family dinners from when we were kids and wrote what I remembered and reflected on how fortunate my sisters and I are that we all live in Kellogg and have decided to eat family dinners together three Sundays out of every month. I should be posting this piece in the next week or so.
3. The Deke and I each cooked one half of our dinner tonight. The Deke baked a spaghetti squash and prepared an awesome tomato sauce to go over the stringy pulp of the squash, topped with Parmesan cheese. I'm so happy we have leftovers.
I prepared poached tilapia. I cut a lemon into slices, lined the bottom of the cast iron skillet with them, and topped the slices with fresh oregano and chopped green onion. I placed the two tilapia fillets on top of this foundation and poured a cup of crab stock over it all. I brought the liquid to a slow boil, turned down the heat, covered the pan, and let the fish poach until it was done. I removed the fillets, turned the heat up to high, and let the liquid reduce for a few minutes and poured it through a fine mesh strainer so, if we wanted to, we had a lemon crab juice to pour over our fish. I could have made it thicker as a sauce, but I just didn't. I put my liquid in a small bowl and dipped each forkful of tilapia into it.
Tilapia doesn't have a lot of flavor on its own, but it absorbs flavors beautifully. I enjoyed how poaching the flavors of the crab stock, lemon, onion, and oregano helped them merge in the tilapia.
This was a simple, kind of adventurous, and very delicious dinner.
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