How fish becomes fish food

I spent the last semester of my senior year in Mallorca to improve my Spanish, and it also ended up broadening my culinary horizons. Like, I learned how to make salad. This would be a pretty obvious thing for most people, but I've always hated salad with dressing and ordered just the dry leaves, leaving waiters dumbfounded and weirdly suspicious. It turns out that I just didn't like those commercial, creamy, too-salty dressings, or maybe it just bugged me that I didn't know what was in them, but I DO like salads with dressing now. I keep oil and vinegar dispensers (bought there, with "Aceite" and "Vinagre" printed on them -- oh, aren't I so hip and cosmopolitan!) on my kitchen table -- some leaves, a little oil and balsamic, salt, pepper, maybe some Italian seasonings, and whatever else you want in there, and you have a salad with very little effort. My host mom would put all sorts of stuff in, like apples and nuts and seeds; I loved her creativity. Salad is so much more a part of the meal there (as is soup, bread, and dessert -- how do working señoras find the time and energy? I think reasonable working hours and the sacred tradition of siesta have a lot to do with it), and they go a long, long way beyond romaine and cherry tomatoes with something pale and slimy out of a bottle.

Anyway, another eye-opening experience was the seafood. Stateside, I'm a "vegetarian," but I do eat the occasional bit of fish when I go out. Sometimes I'd buy those bags of frozen fish at Aldi for $3.99 and sautée or bake them and serve them to myself alongside some pasta, and they tasted fine. Well, I'm here to tell you, if you live in a landlocked state like I do, don't EVER spend any time on an island because it will ruin fish for you forever. The fish that I ate at my host house was probably fished out of the Mediterranean a day or two before, and it had a succulence and a mildness and a depth of flavor that I've never experienced. If I were a Mallorquín, I'd probably be horrified if I were served something that had been frozen for months. It's just not the same at all.

I returned from Mallorca on June 17th, and today was the first day I ate fish since I came back from there. I thought I'd give my palate a lot of time to forget what island fish tasted like. Tonight I cooked myself up a frozen Tilapia fillet, thinking I'd be able to say "Oh well" and accept what my landlocked status handed me.

ACK, PPTH, PTUI! Horrible! Dreadful! It tasted exactly like the smell I get when I open the can of freeze-dried krill I keep on the top of my turtle tank to give him an occasional fishy treat. (Some treat!) Stale, old, and saturated with "that fish taste" which I think is the reason some people can't stand fish. Disgraceful. Is this what islanders who come inland think we like to eat? No wonder Mallorquins are a bit reserved...who'd want to talk to anyone who thought THAT tasted good?

So from now on, I buy my fish -- if I do at all -- from the Co-Op and at least get something that came out of a nearby river. Life is too short. If you want an easy dinner from the supermarket, save yourself $3.69 and get a package of Ramen Noodles. You'll feel better afterward.