I bought a huge cookbook on Sunday.
Our apartment had been one year, to the day, without a cookbook.
So I celebrated our triumph, and my sudden wisdom (we should have a cookbook... it would be helpful...) by purchasing the most expensive one I could find.
The beast of all cookbooks. The definitive guide. A reference manual, with a red ribbon to mark your place.
And right away, I was at the store, looking over the steelhead.
"Give me that small one near the back," I said. It weighed exactly one pound.
Hmm... fresh basil, garlic, fresh cilantro, a couple of avocados, tomatoes...
Flowers for the table.
At home I read that fish should be left well enough alone.
So I brushed the fillet lightly with oil and threw it in a preheated pan.
Just before flipping it, I threw salt and pepper carefully across the pink flesh.
I diced two tomatoes, finely chopped some fresh basil, added a spot of garlic, a dash of salt, a larger dash of pepper, and ten drops of olive oil.
This completed the side dish.
By the time we were ready for dessert, no one had room for it.
We shuffled off to bed and dreamed of trout making its careful and fateful way home.
Back from the sea's deep secrets, up shallow freshwater streams, toward death.
