salmon

going ... 

going ...

gone. 

Butter and lemon sauce, with a splash of old leftover Zinfandel, and with briny un-rinsed capers and finely diced onion in place of shallot -- a simple dressing that works as well on vegetables as it does on fish. 

While stationed at Barksdale AFB, for a few months my father was transferred to Eareckson Air Station, away from us, and how we did hate that. This followed specialized training at Boloxi which also separated us. Eareckson is an airport and a radar site on Shemya Island, second to the last of the Aleutian chain, before Attu and after Kiska. (It is actually more complicated than that, but those are the larger of the numerous islands in the area.) Family lore purports my father's vast and highly specialized grasp of electronics was needed there, ever the hero of all his own stories, but my suspicion is that he pissed off somebody really really REALLY badly. Whatever the case, from all reports it is a bleak outpost indeed. Fishing, wildlife and such is in great abundance there, and they did have quite a lot of all that at the mess,  but there is only so much a guy can reasonably take. Besides that, my father is not what you could call one of the great outdoorsmen. So the stint put the old boy off salmon permanently, and that's a shame. Odd though, his fondness for halibut and king crab remained unchanged. His stories of seals and bears and caribou and such held us all spellbound. To a boy the adventure sounded perfect.