The Two Bite Trout

I am hungry.  As in, all of the time.

You'd be amazed about how a major shift in diet can do this to a person.  And it's not like I can just treat myself with a fattening meal at the end of a week well starved.  Nope, this is my life and I have to eat accordingly.  A Meniere's diet is pretty lean and it's hard... nay... impossible to feel full on fresh veggies and fruits.  My waistline is not complaining, nor is my shrinking butt.  My growling stomach is another matter.  It reminds me of leaner times.

If ever I am asked what I remember about growing up, I would automatically say that I felt hungry... ALL of the time.  We were poor and there were a lot of mouths to feed.  Food was revered, prayed over, and worshiped.  It sounds sacrilegious, but I'll not lie.  Meal times were not missed in my house and the punctuality of eight children to the table was staggering.  It had nothing to do with the quality of the food, but quantity.

And that is just the way it was.  It wasn't a bad thing either.  By the time I hit sixteen years old, I was still very much hungry.  I had other habits too, like I am not a morning person.  Which, one summer morning I was tossed awake by my mother when a boy showed up at my door to take me fishing at the crack of dawn.  I usually forget morning appointments, purposefully.  I like my sleep, but for him I dashed out and went fishing.

Now, this boy was nice.  We'd been friends for many years and I loved to fish and so did he.  We went down to the river behind my house on a (if I remember right because I was still half asleep) gloriously perfect summer morning.  My pole was broken, so I spent the majority of the morning stomping through bull rushes, cat tails and under brush.  Nice Boy had waders, so he would call out to me where he was in the water and I would try to follow by land.  It was a very arduous game of Marco Polo, the all time low being when I fell waist deep in a beaver's den.  Regardless, my loyalty meter was still staunchly in his favor.  I must have liked him more than I fully realized.  At the end of the fishing trip, he found a shallow bank and handed me his pole, where, if I am permitted to brag a little, I cast out several perfect flies into a deep pool under some trees across the river.  On my third cast, I caught a minute specimen of brown trout.

My first thought was: FOOD!

Nice Boy was primarily a catch and release kind of fisher, but I insisted we keep it.  I didn't see a wriggling slimy fish gasping for water in my hands.  I saw it as fried up, slathered in butter with a crust of roasted almonds all over it.  I remember he cleaned it for me and chopped off the head and tail and handed it to me with the most incredulous look on his face as if to ask: what on earth was I going to do with two bites of trout?

Eat it, my dear boy.  I am going to eat it!!

And now, this bright morning, with my tummy grumbling, my vision swirling and feeling mostly nauseated, I can almost smell the cooked trout and I salivate.  Here's to hunger!