Dining a la Office Depot

I was making myself a lovely trout dinner when I ran into a few snafus. I don't know whether this makes me a hillbilly or what, but I ended up cooking with some rather...unconventional methods.

The trout dish is a great recipe I cribbed from a famous restaurant in New Orleans. It involves blanching veggies (asparagus, carrots, potatoes) and wilting spinach and adding fresh tomato slices. There's a garlic/lemon olive oil combo to make (with fresh basil out of my little container garden!), and then you sort of layer everything and wrap it in parchment paper. :P ::drool::

Well, my first problem came trying to cut through the trout to separate the fillets. Apparently my knife is not sharp enough to cut through fish skin. I tried and tried, until it seemed like it was becoming a hack job. I was getting really pissed, so I grabbed the scissors. Do you know how easy it is to cut through fish with scissors? Well, it is. On to my next problem.

After layering and oiling everything, it was then time to wrap the parchment paper. Let me be the first to say that I suck at wrapping presents. When they invented the gift bag, I was the first in line to buy it. So naturally, somehow I managed to botch the wrapping of the parchment paper around the fish. All the loose ends were left up in the air. I couldn't flip it over, because then some of the items on the top would burn. I got some tape. The tape wouldn't stick. Because it's waxy paper, you dummy, I thought. So I got the stapler. And I stapled it together. I felt like a moron.

But you know what? The fish was great.