A “His, Hers, and Ours” Weekend: Ours

After fishing and tulip gazing, we decided to make a stop at the meat store in Mountlake Terrace. That’s not a typo, we found an honest-to-goodness meat store. Of course, they also had over a thousand styles of hot sauce, barbeque sauce (including three types of Gates and four of types Arthur Bryant’s BBQ sauce), salsas, and other spices, as well as fresh cheese, and yes, even meat. We loaded up on steaks, lunch meat, BBQ sauce, and cheese. What a place! But the real highlight of the day was our dinner of fresh-caught trout. We paired the trout with our asparagus and wild rice. This is quite common, and though I was out of practice, I still cooked up a delicious meal. Kristin, on the other hand, had a hard time with the way I prepared and cooked the trout.

Fresh trout are cleaned, slathered with butter, and baked for 20 minutes. They are two small to fillet, so they are cooked on the bone. This loosens the meat so it can be pulled easily from the skin and bones.

To her credit, Kristin ate the whole fish (minus the head) and actually liked it. “Trout are in the same family as salmon,” she justified, “so, it was better than I expected.” And that answer was better than I expected!

A “His, Hers, and Ours” Weekend: Hers

After fishing, we went to go see the Tulips blooming in the Skagit Valley. This falls in the “Big Deal” category for local events, so much so that there is an actual festival dedicated to the blooming of tulips, though I have never been. We drove through the valley, enjoying the partly-cloudy afternoon. On the way, we stopped at an honor-system vegetable stand. We bought two pounds of fresh asparagus and made change with apples. We eventually did find the tulip fields. The flowers were beautiful, though I always thought there would be more. We had the most fun people watching. The tulips attracted tourists as far away as Russia, Japan and Germany. Everyone posed for photos in the tulips. Some groups went between the rows, at least until the groundskeeper shooed them out of the field. The fest was fun, but next time, we’ll avoid traffic by bicycling.

A “His, Hers and Ours” Weekend: His

What better way to start the weekend than getting up at 5 a.m.? Getting up at 5 a.m. and going fishing! That’s right, April 25 was opening day of lowland lakes fishing season, a subject of great anticipation for many in the Northwest. For those Midwesterners reading this, this is a big deal for several reasons: 1. Trout are dumb and delicious. Like cows, except harder to catch. 2. The dumb trout get caught first. 3. If you don’t have a line in the water by 6 a.m., all the dumb trout will be caught by someone else and you will not catch anything this morning, today, or all summer long. So for this reason, we drove 100 miles to my Dad’s house, woke up before dawn, and putted around the lake in the rain in an effort to catch something with a brain the size of a marble. (Yes, that actually is a car in the photo!) As (beginner’s) luck would have it, Kristin caught two rainbow trout! Turns out the trout liked worms better than lures on opening day and stuck twice for her. She got one 9” and one 12” trout.