A Delicious Weekend of Neurotoxins

So it turns out tilefish is very tasty: mild, sweet, firm and flaky. Goes well with home-made mango salsa on a bed of jasmine rice, salad on the side. Or an ear of buttered sweet corn. Can be baked, broiled or fried.

It is also loaded with mercury. Right up there with swordfish.

Some of the sites I checked said limit to one serving per month. Others said don't touch it. All of them said absolutely not for children or pregnant (or potentially pregnant) women. Surprisingly, the official Florida government guide which breaks down fish contamination risks by river, lake and coastal zone by named species and even includes various types of puffer fish (fugu) doesn't so much as mention tilefish, let alone list any warning.

I maybe should have checked those sites before indulging.

As it is, my brother and I are neither children nor female and we eat so little fish as a rule that our cumulative mercury levels are most likely quite low. Any degradation in cognitive functions is just age-related. Probably. Still, I sealed up most of the fillets and stuffed them in the freezer so we can space out our consumption. I figure the risks are low enough and the fish is tasty enough to not warrant throwing them away.

On the bright side, it's raining mangoes, a new half-dozen tomatoes ripen almost every day and the peppers are getting thick. And they're all free-range organic so they counteract any effects from the fish.

Right?

Miscellania: Deep Sea Edition

I came home last night to find what I thought was a rather large fish all wrapped up in the refrigerator but when my brother returned home he explained it was actually two fish that, while large for the refrigerator, were actually fairly smallish representatives of their species. It seems a friend of his has a boat and goes out in the deep Gulf (900 feet/275 meters) which is where he caught some tilefish. Our chilling tilefish are each almost two feet long; full-grown adults are often up to five feet. So it looks like this Memorial Day grilling will be seafood.

Not my brother's friend. Just
an example of  a largish tilefish.

So far Rainy Season has been hit or miss and the construction workers across the way have managed to dodge the occasional storm to finish installing doors (except the garage door), basic plumbing including vent pipes, basic asphalt shingle roofing and, possibly, basic electric. Some interior walls are up. Last week, one guy on a family roofing team across the river was killed by lightning and one of his brothers injured when they thought a storm had passed and went back up to continue their project. Two other brothers were there but unhurt.

This last platelet donation went reasonably well. Only a few complaints from the machine and none from me. I turned down the T-shirt, the penlight flashlight and the coupon for lunch at the hospital commissary but I did accept the $25 gasoline gift card which I gave to my brother. That's not a regular perk but something they offer based on cumulative donations although I don't know what my total is at this point except it's not whatever I thought it was.

Tomatoes and peppers are coming along nicely. The mangoes are starting to overwhelm. I seem to always have 8-10 on the counter at any one time waiting to be processed. Mango salsa for the tilefish!

The Clockwork Calendar

The weather folks announced Rainy Season is scheduled to begin this week. So far the clouds have rolled in on schedule every afternoon along with occasional thunder but no actual rain, yet.

In anticipation, the builders not only put up the under-roof on the new house across the way last week, but also managed to nail down the tar paper covering and install the windows so the interior is mostly waterproof now (although there are no doors either on the house or garage). The interior framing is installed as well but I haven't seen anyone around in close to a week now.

Meanwhile, while we're waiting for the rain:

There are butterflies everywhere. Mostly sulphurs and zebras of various shades of black and yellow. I saw a beautiful copper colored one this morning, like a small, dark Monarch, that blended in well with the dead leaves.

We have several buckets set up along the front walkway, three or four with tomatoes and a couple with peppers. We picked a couple of cherry tomatoes already and there's a nice bell pepper that'll be ready in a day or two. Others are ripening and more flowers are blooming every day. I've already chopped up a couple of ripe mangoes and there are more turning yellow-red. We have several green ones my brother brought in but I don't know if they fell or if he just picked them unripe. They're starting to soften so I'll cut them up and see if they're edible as is or if I have to cook them. So far this year, they're all on the smallish side but, if the rains do come as predicted, they could still grow more.

The bucket of sticks in water by the front door, which is just one of several scattered along the side of the house, has come to life after a couple of years and  seems to be blossoming into frangipani. As a matter of fact, they all are. The bougainvillea is in full bloom as is the desert rose and a dozen or so lilies between the house and the walkway. And the new coconut palm and banana tree have both outgrown their pots. (The banana's easy but the coconut will have to be placed far enough from where people and cars normally go so falling fruit doesn't kill or injure someone or damage a vehicle.)

The only downside right now is that the clouds have brought humidity to go with the heat and so we've had to close up the house again after a couple of glorious weeks and turn on the A/C.

Update: Right after posting this the clouds rolled in, the lightning struck and thunder roared and the rain came pelting down in sheets so thick you can't see the road out front. Rainy Season, right on time.

Redneck Studies: Consistent Randomness

In addition to my long-standing observations regarding the native redneck's (i.e., my brother's) inability to pursue any project to completion, I have also noticed a distinct tendency toward increasing randomness in his immediate surroundings.

On occasion, and for no apparent reason, he will go through the pantry and move cans and boxes of supplies from one shelf to another. I can't determine if he was actually looking for a specific item since nothing ever seems to be gone or used. They're all just moved. It happens, to a lesser extent (possibly because he hates leaving the door open), with the refrigerator as well.

Similarly, the lawn mower and various other yard implements can be found at any of three or four possible storage sites, not dependent upon where they were last used.

Late yesterday evening, he suddenly began stomping around the house in a foul mood, opening various drawers and going through the recyclable trash in his room and the kitchen. Being the first Sunday of the month, he had decided to pay a bunch of household bills. and now couldn't find them. We're talking mortgage, utilities, storage unit(s), credit cards--the works. He ransacked the house, and then his truck, and then the house again before giving up for the night. I know he was afraid he might have put them in with the other trash paper and thrown them out last week.

This morning he got up early and started rummaging through his truck again, scraping it out down to the floor mats. When I went out the first thing I noticed was a stack of envelopes sitting on one of the lawn chairs by the fire pit he never quite finished installing so I said, "I see you found all your bills."

"No I didn't."

"What's all that stuff on the chair, then?"

"What chair?"

"The lawn chair. There's what looks like a pile of bills and a bag of pistachios on it."

"That's probably the bills." He left off cleaning the truck* and went inside still pissed off but now at himself. Your welcome.

We've had a run of a few absolutely glorious days, warm, sunny, dry and breezy, perfect for sitting outside. I did so a couple of days ago with a book and iced tea, reading and watching the blue jays and mockingbirds fight over ownership of the bugs in the lawn (blue jays are more obnoxious and tend to win), and saying "Hi" to our black snake as she came home in the early evening from wherever she goes during the day (she stopped about four feet away when she noticed me and we acknowledged each other for a few minutes before she made a wide semi-circle to go around and back to her woodpile).

In short, it's been pretty much perfect outside and my brother had decided to do the bills outdoors and got everything set before he went inside, became distracted and completely forgot what he had intended to do and where. He'd walked right by them on his way to his truck and never noticed because, to my knowledge, he's never sat outside to pay the bills before. It was just another random (though thoroughly supportable) notion.

*And will not continue, now, until he can't find something else in the future.