Picnics and fishies

It's raining right now, but it's beautifully warmish. As in, "not freezing." The past four days - count 'em, four - have been spectacular. The kind of days that cause everyone in town to walk around, grinning madly, and saying, "See, this is why I love St. John's!" And it's true. The weather's a total bitch for half the year, but the other half is phenomenal.

Yesterday, after a beautiful morning in the back yard with a friend and her lovely daughter, I decided the men and I should enjoy a picnic supper in the park. A proper one, like in books and movies, with fried chicken and potato salad. So I chucked some chicken thighs in well-salted buttermilk to soak, made some potato salad, baked a little strawberry-studded cake, sliced some tomatoes into wedges, and packed a basket with all our food, plus napkins, proper cutlery and plates, and jam jars of ice water. Oh, and the salt shaker and pepper grinder. I cooked the chicken as Hubby C got the boys ready, and quickly packed it in a glass casserole lined with a tea towel and brown paper (to absorb the grease), wrapped that with more tea towels, and placed it in the top of the basket, covered with a folded tablecloth. When we got to our picnic spot, the chicken was still hot and crispy and juicy, and I was chuffed indeed.

It was the first time we've done anything like this, and I'm determined to make it the first time of many. Charlie-Bear was so excited. We play picnic at home all the time, but a real picnic (pronounced "pic-mic" now and forevermore) was just too cool. As we laid out our food on the tablecloth, he declared, "This is the best pic-mic I ever saw!"

Joodles discovered that he likes tomatoes. Which is good, because I have 21 tomato plants this year, between my place and my mom's, and if they do well I might need someone to help me out.

I took a few photos of the food, but really, it's nothing that fancy. The fried chicken was really fried - I soaked it in buttermilk, with salt and pepper, all afternoon, then took it out and let it sit for about twenty minutes in beaten eggs (with more salt and pepper), then tossed the pieces in flour with salt, pepper, paprika, thyme, and a couple pinches of sugar. I fried the pieces on both sides until they were golden, then popped them in the oven at 350F, on a rack (which was on a baking sheet, natch) to finish up cooking. I've never been able to cook chicken pieces all the way through in the pan without the skin becoming too dark, so finishing up in the oven is my strategy. When chicken thighs have been soaking in buttermilk all afternoon, then dipped in eggs and fried in oil, you really don't have to worry about drying them out.

The cake was from this Smitten Kitchen recipe. It's the third time I've made it (twice with strawberries, and once with rhubarb), and I think it's going to be my all-purpose summer-fruit-user-upper cake from now on. So simple. I used buttermilk in place of milk-milk, and, for the picnic, I baked it as two rectangular cakes in two loaf pans instead of as one big round, because there was no sense bringing a full cake to the park for just the four of us. The other rectangle is in the freezer now. I didn't get any cake shots at the picnic, so here's a staged one.

I can't wait to try the same recipe with peaches and plums. I would like to try it with yellow corn flour, too, for a gluten-free option. The original recipe gives an option to replace half the flour with barley flour, which is much lower in gluten than wheat flour, and I'm looking forward to giving that a try, too, when I make a fancy flour run. While Miss B is now able to eat all the gluten she likes without any issues, I'm definitely eating too much. I don't think I have a sensitivity as such, but too much white flour isn't good for anyone.

The other fantastic summer event of the last week was the Great Caplin Caper we had on Sunday. Caplin (or capelin, depending which dictionary you use) are small fish, like smelt, that come to shore on the east coast of Newfoundland to spawn every year. They're food for the humpback whales, so when the caplin come in, the whales generally follow, and we get some pretty incredible shows.

The end of the caplin's life cycle comes when it spawns, then throws itself on the shore, flaps around a lot, and expires, becoming food for seagulls. If you catch the caplin before they die, though, you can take them home and have a great big meal and participate in one of this area's most famed traditions. When I was a kid, my father and his friends would gather around to a feed of caplin, pulled from the ocean less than an hour earlier. They're only little small things, so people fry them up and eat them whole. Some people gut them, others don't bother, especially when they're particularly small, as they are this year.

So anyway, last Sunday we decided to go to nearby Middle Cove beach to look for whales, as Charlie-Bear is crazy about whales, and we have promised him that we'll take him to see some before the summer is out. We ran into a friend and his boys there, and we were having a lovely time, when Hubby C noticed that the caplin were, as we say here, rolling. I was about to go back to the car to find a bag so that we could bring some to my mother, when Hubby C said, "That's okay, I'll use my hat." Said hat is a slightly beaten-up straw one, and can be seen here. The next thing I knew, there was a frenzy of delighted hat-based inshore fishery, with Hubby C and our friend's older son scooping up fish in their hats, while I hung on to Joodles, and Charlie-Bear hung on to my leg, terrified, saying, "I don't like those fish!" Fair enough: there is definitely something unsettling about being ankle deep in fish flapping about in their death throes. If he becomes a vegetarian, I'll be pretty sure I know what triggered it.

I had been carrying a tote bag with me, which was hastily emptied of its contents (a bottle of water, a notebook, and a pen) and filled with fish. We brought some to my in-laws, who were delighted, and gave some to my mother. We had some for supper Sunday night, but neither of us is overly fond of caplin, really. So now we have a load of caplin in our fridge that needs to find a home fast. If you're in St. John's and you're reading this now, come get some caplin! Please! Take it away!


For all that we're now stuck with a lot of fish we don't want, the experience of seeing the caplin roll is truly incredible. Someone I know posted this video on Facebook, and it captures the event beautifully. I'm not sure who the person is who made the video, but thank you. (Warning: this is about dying fish, so if you're squeamish about that kind of thing, you might not want to watch it.)