Cooking with Coco – Fish for breakfast

On a brisk morning recently I was able to experience what truly fresh fish tastes like. 

My mom has a cottage on a river so in the summer we fish right off of our deck. On this particular day my grandpa dropped the fishing line in, waited a few minutes and then all of a sudden I turned around and there was a trout on our deck!

Killing a fish is hard for me to wrap my head around. You have to come to a mental state of mind where you can fully take the life of a living animal. We had to do it soon enough so the fish didn’t suffer. But once we killed the fish, cleaned it and deboned it, we were able to cook it.

We had already been preparing breakfast that morning so a little added protein was pretty great. We cooked the fish with lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper. It took no time at all for it to be fully cooked. 

We all gathered around to eat this delicious fish together: my mom and me, my granddad and nanny and my brother, Nate, who was home from Montana. We set the fish out in the middle of the table, along with bowls of berries, sliced avocado and our plates of scrambled eggs and toast. 

We said a little prayer to thank the fish for giving its life for our enjoyment and nutrition, and while we were eating we talked about how lucky we are to be able to eat food this fresh. This small trout gave us a big gift: a reminder of how fortunate we are to live in a place where we can gather our own food and eat fresh and healthy things from our own backyard. 

It was … delicious.