You Won't Believe What's for Dinner

Here in the Arizona desert, we have a brilliant canal system which allows us to store and distribute water to residents all year long. Our house just happens to back up to the canal -see the picture below...our yard, our fence, canal jogging path, the canal.

Hubby came home from work one day and, with JoJo, jumped the fence and dropped in a line to see what would happen. I thought he would only get some nasty catfish or maybe a rotten boot full of weeds. After only a few minutes, they already had reeled in two large mouth bass! They were so excited. Then JoJo was taught how to hold a fish properly by the mouth.

Daddy decided that one of the fish was too small so JoJo threw it back, but she was determined to keep the larger one and eat it for dinner!

We took it inside and washed it off...

The fish held still just long enough for this picture, then flopped onto the kitchen floor.
Here's the video of the filleting and the excited kiddos anxious to try some fish. It would be nice to have a fillet knife, but we made do. Hubbies kept trying to "brain" the fish by hitting it behind the head with a knife, so that it would be paralyzed, but it still put up a good fight. This video may be a little graphic, so if you get grossed out easily, just skip down to the picture below, but you'll miss the best part when JoJo says, "There's the Blood!". I think Hubby and I are so quiet in this video because we feel like he is performing surgery or something.


Now this lovely picture is of JoJo bringing the fish carcass out to the chickens. When we opened the door to the coop all the chickens got out and the kiddos helped me gather them up to put them back! Ha,ha- I love that picture of Jeepers holding the chicken!

Then, back inside for dinner. Hubbies and I were going out for dinner, which was great because this little fishy had just enough meat to feed the kiddos. For more on cooking fish, see my post Here Fishy, Fishy.

Put it with some fruit, veggies, and a slice of wheat bread made earlier and we have a pretty cheap, easy, and healthy dinner.

And the verdict...they both liked it! JoJo won't eat beans or broccoli, but a fish right out of the canal- no problem!

The fish was actually very flavorful and couldn't have been more fresh. We've thought of getting a pond in our yard filled with Tilapia, and I love that idea! But for now, why bother when there's a canal of bass just behind our fence?