Why pay more?

The other day, I saw some fresh BC wild spring salmon for sale at a fraction of the cost of the massive, chemically-laden fillets of Atlantic salmon. I thought: Why not try it out? It's supposed to taste much nicer. So in a fit of naive post-vegetarian thrift (you have no idea what the sticker shock is like when you've started eating meat again after ten years off), I placed the whole salmon into my grocery cart.

This evening, the moment of truth arrived - I needed to do something with this nice, fresh, dead thing in my fridge. I had a look at a bunch of websites trying to find some very clear, illustrated instructions, but alas, I was on my own. (I did, however, find a quirky Japanese video that, with sound, is rather funny.) Once I'd overcome my sudden squeamishness at handling a whole, very dead fish complete with eyes, fins and tail, I discovered that a very sharp knife is essential to the process. Unfortunately, we don't own a very sharp knife. This poor fish had to suffer the indignity of having its head and tail hacked off with a dull paring knife. Filleting the rest of the fish after I'd disposed of the icky parts was another messy nightmare. Then I had to pull out all the bones that I'd left behind, and there were a lot of them. The whole process took an hour; I have to say I'm very glad that this was a small fish.

Eventually, I had two extremely raggedy fillets with the skin on and managed to bake those in the oven with a bit of olive oil and pepper. The end result was quite tasty - buttery and light - but I haven't made up my mind yet if it was worth the effort. I do know for sure that I'll be asking for a set of decent knives for Christmas this year.