Taking the 'Plunge'....

As some of you may or may not know, our palette for seafood or 'things that swim in the ocean' has always been non existent. That is, UNTIL NOW!! Last week, we 'dove' into trying new foods and went for it - we tried FISH! Even though this may seem like a rather small endeavor, for us, this was a HUGE feat. Not only did we try it once, but TWICE! And, we are pleased to admit, this will most likely not be our last!!!

Here's how this challenge came about:

With our entire dad's side of the family living in the Maritimes, we've taken MANY a trip out to the East Coast. We've sat in on our fair share of lobster suppers and been to many a fish fry. Yet, never have we 'taken the plunge' and tried the local delicacies. Why? Well, we don't have a very 'good' excuse. We typically throw the blame on the 'fishy' smell, but quite frankly, in our eyes, the thought of eating something from the ocean is repulsing! It swims - ew!!

However, since our whole 'Drive to 25' is about trying new things and taking risks, an annual family 'Lobsterfest' seemed like a fitting place to face our fear! In the past, we've sat at the 'chicken' table and thoroughly enjoyed our separate meals, as we watched everyone else crack away at their lobsters. This year, we promised to taste the lobster (albeit without doing all the dirty work!).

When the time came, we put on our lobster bibs and 'took the plunge'. If we had to describe it, well, it was rather chewy and rubbery. We got it down and resorted back to our chicken...would we have it again...no probably not. But, we tried it right? That's the main thing and now we can 'honestly' say that we've tried lobster and are not fans!

Here we go...

We weren't about to end our seafood challenge after tasting lobster. That clearly wasn't a big enough challenge. So, we decided that we were going to buy some sort of fish to cook for dinner one night. After doing some research on which fish to go for (leave it to google to give us results for 'converting non-fish eaters to fish eaters' or 'how to cook non-fishy fish'!!), we settled on halibut.

We must admit, we were feeling almost more anxious about this halibut eating challenge than we were to skydive - as ridiculous as that sounds! We found a pretty basic marinade recipe online, and not knowing what would taste good, we tried it! The barbecue was obviously used for this meal, we drew the line at bringing the fish smell indoors!! That wasn't going to happen!

After some build up, once again, we 'took the plunge' and ate our first bite of halibut!!!! And....low and behold, much to our surprise, it wasn't half bad!!!!!!! No, were we actually admitting this...could this be happening? A small part of us, liked it?!! WOW! It actually tasted very mild and was flaky in texture, definitely not chewy like the lobster. We just may, quite possibly, revisit this whole halibut eating idea, and perhaps throw in some other 'white' fish meat.....yes, hold us to it!

The first bite....not quite sure yet!

We survived!

In the end, we're super happy to have challenged ourselves to this seafood experiment. We discovered that, although we may not be in the market for lobster in the future, white meat fish, such as halibut, just might pop up at our dinner table every so often (not weekly - not yet!). However, that does not mean that our attitudes towards it's smell have changed... 'fishy' odor = yuk!

Here's to trying new foods :)

Melissa and Laura