I am mad for anything made of fish flesh. Uncle Dougie told me a few years ago that Pappa Dobie, my grandfather now gone 26 years, would walk beaches in Scotland and snack on anything he could work out of a shell with a penknife. Growing up in the Annapolis Valley, I ate dried seaweed called dulse, bought at the corner store, as a recess option to potato chips. [I have a pack in the desk drawer now]. Recently a relative of Swedish extract left end of a Swedish tube of "Kavier" in the fridge. [Europeans eat food from tubes because Europe is the future now - when we are not looking they wear shiney silver clothes all the time.] I am sure the paste in the tube is what we would call roe and other bits from lesser species than the caviar class but it is pretty damn tasty stuff on breakfasty toast, especially when enhanced with hungarian hot pepper paste from a tube. Nothing wakes the brain like fire in the belly.

Similarly, I make and eat fish cakes. I thought I had hit the pinnacle of fish cake making when I used my own purple-fleshed spuds of the "All Blue" variety and the left-overs of a baked salmon all with dill. My wife, however, has introduced left-over rice as the base and a world has opened up. Now, Thai red, basmati and sushi rice compete with the spud for a place in the pattie along side marine life, egg, caramelized onion and herbs. Why do I tell you all this? Because each of your lives would be better with increased fish cake consumption.