It's Thanksgiving. I have a full course meal laid out for the whole day.
Breakfast:
Longanisa and salted eggs
Lunch:
Baked Sea Bass
Grilled Bacon wrap scallops
Dinner:
Grilled Red grouper
Fish heads in Miso soup base
Baked mussels
We went shopping the day before, and we did get a whole bunch of good deals. Books and CD's from Borders with a 50% coupon. And from the 99 cents per pound Sea Bass at Seafood City to our newest find of fresh seafood from Catalina Offshores.
Catalina Offshores is a treasure trove that we found out from a co worker. It's some sort of a fish warehouse here in San Diego that gets their fish fresh everyday. The nice part about this place is that it's open to the public.
We were new and didn't know what to expect so when we got there, this guy Tommy came up to us and asked "What fish are you looking for?". Of course we were clueless and basically said we're looking for something we can grill. He then walked us towards the back end.
We went around about a couple of office cubicles then went through a door to the back side of the warehouse. We then went to one of the freezers (not your typical freezers coz these were as big as a two car garage) and showed us a couple of fishes. They had piles of scallops in five-pound bags ready to be shipped, fillets of tuna, swordfish, sea bass, halibuts to name a few. Since we wanted our fish grilled we need to be looking for meaty and thicker fish so he then recommended getting the red grouper-- cheaper, meaty and yummy.
Obviously Tommy knows how to work with Filipinos. The moment he asked us what fish we want and how we wanted it cooked and saw that look on my face that I had no idea what fish was good, he then said "You probably want your fish whole and with the head on, right?". Why of course. A fish is not a fish without the head!
Anyways, we ended up getting four pounds of the red grouper (the head was free), three pounds of scallops, and five pounds of the yellow tail tuna for the price of (get ready for this...) $52. I don't know if that was a steal but it seems like it.
My dad wanted to get a few tuna bellies but Tommy said we probably wouldn't want it since each pound would cost us $40. See, I like Tommy's brutal honesty and add to that each time we made requests, he'd answer back with "I'll see what I can do" which always translated to request granted in the end. Now if you ask me, that is good customer service.
I guess we're all set for Thanksgiving. It's a huge feast more than enough for four adults and a baby minus the turkey. Why have it when nobody at home eats it?!
