I think about the giant sea bass and then of good eating, but I'm not quite a regular aquarium visitor.

We got the aquarium pretty much weekly at this point. Or every other week at the least. We usually don't eat there, but when we went with mom she got seafood and I was like, "That's WRONG!"

Noah loves to pet the sea stars and the anemones (which he can sort of say) and the rays. Today he pet a big shark. It was a good visit, but would have been better had I not had a 100.5+ fever.

The goose was delicious. But cooking it was a completely different experience from the domestic goose we did a few years back that some of you may remember. That one had insane amounts of fat and I flavored everything else I cooked with scrumtious goose grease for like, a year.
 
This wild one was so lean that I actually kind of poached it in wine and stock and veggies. Still did it in the roaster so I could have done the side dish veggies that way too, but didn`t realize until late. Wild goose is all dark meat because (spoilerfonting for the squeamish) they use their wings constantly so all those muscles have blood in them, as opposed to domestic chickens and turkeys who don`t fly. So anyway, there are a lot of people out there who badmouth wild goose because of this or because they had it cooked incorrectly. If you cooked it like a fatty domestic goose, it would be so dry as to be inedible. I hear. But as I had it, I thought it was great.

Hee. And the ABQ restaurant is along one giant wall of the shark tank, so you can eat the fish while looking at the fish. We usually just get the green chile cheeseburgers.

I always thought scuba diving was a good way to figure out what to have for dinner. Things could be sorted into Pretty, Tasty or just Scary...

Pretty, Tasty or just Scary

But diving off the CA coast it's hard enough to SEE what's there.

Fresh scallops were always good and I once had lobster someone had just grabbed. But that was the extent.

Though I have seen abalone in the wild and it's yummy that it's a temptation. Though of course the wild I saw it at was a reef/preserve so while the abalone was HUGE it also wasn't available.

Having seen them prep abalone at The Hump I'm kinda off the idea of it now. But I'm not sure if I've ever tasted it before.

My mom used to get annoyed when I was a kid and we'd go to a seafood restaurant, and while we were waiting, I'd watch the lobsters in the tank and name them all and then tell her what I'd observed about their personalities -- which ones were fighting, which ones stayed in the corners, which ones were swimming around a lot, and so on.

Though I have seen abalone in the wild and it's yummy that it's a temptation.

I held a big lobster one day before the season where they were nabbable. But she was pregnant and I did not even consider keeping her because she was bringing new noms into the world.

But diving off the CA coast it's hard enough to SEE what's there.

True enough. Mexico and Hawaii are better for dinner browsing. California is just hoping you aren't going to shiver out of your wetsuit for me.

I just got an early reservation link for Chicago Restaurant Week. 3 course meals, $32 bucks. Any Chicagoistas interested in checking any of them out?

I'm available from Feb 19 - 24. (On the 25th, I'm leaving on a jet plane.)

Oh, I love abalone. Takes a lot of prep, though, you've got to tenderize the hell out of it. We went on a huge group abalone dive once, everyone took their limit and we prepared most of them the traditional way - sliced, tenderized, breaded, and pan-fried. A couple of them, though, we left whole after we popped them out of the shells, whacked them with two-by-fours a few times, marinated a while in lemon juice for a while, and then barbecued them. My god, that was good.

I've only had it twice in restaurants - once it was awful, just ridiculously tough, but the other it was delicious and much like I've had it at home.

I hear they are farming abalone in Monterey, now. I'm excited about the prospect of being able to buy it whenever I want.

I suspect my Canada goose informant didn't cook it properly. That fits with what I remember of him.

The mountain lion taste thing, though, I'm thinking that is a not-so-urban legend I absorbed in my youth. Or my grandfather pulling my leg, which I would have accepted as gospel truth because I was that type of child.