Saturday 12 December 2020

Saturday Photo: What I Can't Find This Year...

This is going to be a Christmas not like any other I've experienced, but we're healthy and we have more than enough to eat, so I shouldn't complain.

But I will, anyway.  The photo is of the salt herring I bought just 10 years ago when we were camped out in a rental apartment after a fire that put us out of our house for 8 months.  (Didn't lose much, weren't hurt, shouldn't really complain about that either.)  What I was preparing to do when I shot the photo was filet the fish and put them to pickle in order to make Swedish sil according to my mother-in-law's recipe.  It was a holiday tradition, and by last year even two of the three grandkids had come around to liking it.

In recent years I've had trouble finding salt herring in Montreal: for the last two years I bought a pail from a local wholesaler who this year has been been having issues with sanitary practices, so I haven't even tried to buy from them.  Two weeks ago we checked out various kinds of commercial pickled herring--including a Swedish import--but even after spending a week in the pickling solution, the taste and the texture of the fish were clearly not up to standard.  

So what I think I'll do is just pickle onions in the pickling solution and pretend that everything is just what it should be.

And that, on reflection, is what I guess we all will do this year.
 

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