So, seafood for Thanksgiving, huh? Yeah, we actually went and did it. Wasn’t exactly my grand plan from the get-go, let me tell you. But sometimes, you just gotta roll with what life, or in this case, a very determined spouse, throws at you.
Deciding on this Madness
It all started ’cause someone got tired of turkey. “It’s always the same,” they said. “Dry, boring, predictable.” I tried to argue for tradition, for the stuffing, for the sheer ease of one big bird. But no, this year had to be “different.” Different, it was.
First, there was the debate. Hours of it. Crab? Lobster? Just fish? We finally landed on a mix. A bit of this, a bit of that. Sounded ambitious. Sounded expensive, too. And I was the one who’d have to figure out how to cook it all without burning the house down.
The Great Seafood Hunt
Then came the shopping. You think getting a turkey a few days before Thanksgiving is chaos? Try hitting the fish market. It was a zoo. Everyone else apparently had the same bright idea, or they were just stocking up for some fancy Friday feast. Prices were through the roof, naturally.
I found myself haggling over shrimp, something I never thought I’d do. The guy at the counter, old fella named Sal, probably saw me coming a mile away. “Fresh today!” he’d yell, holding up a fish that looked like it had seen better days, maybe last Tuesday. But you gotta pick your battles. I picked some salmon, a pile of shrimp, and a bag of clams that I hoped were still alive.
Prepping the Ocean’s Bounty
Bringing it all home was one thing. Prepping it was another. My kitchen, folks, it looked like a scene from one of those fishing shows, but without the triumphant music. Just me, a lot of scales, and a growing sense of dread.
- De-veining shrimp. That’s a special kind of torture. Took forever.
- Scrubbing clams. Felt like I was giving each one a personal spa day.
- Trying to fillet the salmon. It’s not as easy as those chefs on TV make it look. My fillets were… rustic. Let’s go with rustic.
The smell, oh boy. It wasn’t bad, not like spoiled fish, but it was… intensely seafood. For days. My cat, however, thought he’d died and gone to heaven. He was more help than anyone else, mostly by trying to steal things off the counter.
The Cooking Ordeal
We aimed for a few main things: grilled salmon, a big pan of garlic shrimp, and some steamed clams. Seemed manageable. Famous last words, right? Juggling all that, plus trying to make some non-seafood sides for the less adventurous eaters, was a workout.
The salmon actually turned out okay, surprisingly. The shrimp vanished in about five minutes flat. The clams, well, most of them opened. That’s a win in my book.
You know, this whole seafood adventure reminds me of the time my brother-in-law, Dave, decided he was going to “fix” our leaky faucet. He watched a couple of online videos, bought a wrench set that looked like it could assemble a spaceship, and then spent six hours making the leak worse. Water everywhere. Ended up calling a plumber anyway, who fixed it in twenty minutes. Dave still talks about how he “softened it up” for the plumber. Some people just have that boundless, misplaced confidence. That was me, in the kitchen, with three types of seafood and a rapidly approaching dinner deadline.
So, How Did It All Land?
The meal itself? It was… memorable. People ate. Some raved about the shrimp. Others poked at the fish suspiciously. My kid asked where the turkey was. Can’t please everyone, I guess. It was definitely different. No one complained about it being dry, so that’s something.
Clean-up was a beast. I think I’m still finding fish scales in weird places. And the smell of garlic and fish stuck around for a good while, despite all the windows being open.
Would I do it again? Hard pass. Honestly, give me the slightly overcooked turkey, the lumpy gravy, the whole nine yards. It’s familiar. It’s less work. And my kitchen doesn’t end up smelling like the bottom of a fishing trawler for three days.
But hey, we tried it. It’s a story now. Another Thanksgiving for the books, even if it was the one where we all kind of missed the bird. At least Dave wasn’t in charge of the main course, that’s all I can say.
