Heavenly

I’ve said this about a lot of things, but this time I mean it! This is what you get eat in heaven every day.

What do we have here? Starting with the fish…

• Bluegill fillets that Gary Pippenger gave us. What’s the best fish in the world? Bluegill, that someone else has cleaned and given to you!

Then going clockwise…

• Sweet and tangy cole slaw. Made from a cabbage I got last Saturday at the Columbia City Farmer’s Market. At 5 days old it’s at that perfect point of ripeness just before it starts getting soft.

As if it couldn’t get any better, then we have…

• Tomatoes fresh from our garden. The very first slicers of the year. Our tomato season will last 2 months at the best. It is all the better for being so brief.

Continuing clockwise we have…

• Hush puppies made from corn meal I ground from heirloom white open-pollinated corn that I grew from seed given to me by Sam Taulbee. If you’ve had hush puppies at a chain restaurant you know them as leaden balls of greasy cornmeal. These are ethereally light clouds of creamy corn batter surrounded by a crunchy layer of fried batter.

And finally…

• A few thin slices of the first banana peppers from our garden. They make a nice spicy crunch with a bite of fish or hush puppy.

We even had a couple of hush puppies left over for Spenser and Owen (the Wonder Dogs.) They certainly enjoyed them, but they had little hushing effect.

Best of all, I fried the fish and hush puppies on our Jay Rosswurm Signature Big Stone Cooking Area. So all the mess is outside and not in the kitchen!