This weekend we drove down to Grandmother H.’s house near the Blue Ridge mountains in Virginia—the only place I ever fish. The pond has not changed since I was little, and I enjoy teaching the girls to fish in the same place that dad and grandfather taught me. Uncle A. claims that he nearly landed a huge bass recently on a plastic worm. Classic fish story. All I’ve seen there for decades is bluegill. A couple of hours Saturday evening using earthworms as bait brought in three little fishies. D. insisted that she wanted us to prepare them head-on, since she likes to pick heads (at the tender age of nine—gourmet in the making). I complied, and we discovered that fish, even dead fish without any intact organs to speak of, continue to twitch for quite some time.

Sunday morning we set out to fish a bit more, but as we began hunting for worms got sidetracked by mushrooms. A nice little crop had poked up overnight: half slippery jacks and half russala. Russala are always considered edible in Russia, where I learned my mushrooms. Some North American varieties apparently cause stomach upsets, but those can be identified by peppery taste. We collected as many as we could find, discarding a few that someone had already nibbled, and had the centerpiece for lunch.

K. devoted about a half hour to picking needles, leaves and other debris off of the mushrooms. I was going to cook them with scallions, but D. and P. convinced me to sauté each independently (the girls are not into aromatics, for some reason). It was butter and evoo with a splash of soy sauce—my standard flavor enhancement move for mushrooms. Fried the fish dredged in salted cornmeal. The adults—A., grandmother H., K. and I—had one minuscule fish between the four of us. Then P. donated most of her fish to our cause after enjoying chewing on the crisp tail. D. picked her own fish bare and had the cheeks from all three. Bony little fish, but sweet white meat. The combination of mushrooms and fish is, I admit, an unusual approach, but this time it worked well. Frying, to enhance the flavor profile of the fish, was a crucial element of the composition, I think.