Summer Yummies I Can Still Taste

The first day of summer has passed, and summer is finally upon us! With that said, it's time for those bikini bodies to come out to play. We're also going to ruin them in the process.

Summertime means a lot in the midwest. We've come off of a long and brutally cold winter. The spring has been colder than usual, only beginning to feel like we were close to summer in the past few weeks.

When summer hits the midwest, it's time to get out those grills, hit those carnivals, backyard barbeques, and family get-togethers. After putting all that work into swimsuit season, it's time to enjoy the summer goodies that are famously bad for us.

Fish Fry's

Grandpa's fish fry was a staple of the summer season from my childhood until he passed on. As a young kid, this was one of those events that we didn't complain about going to with our parents. There was no want or need to get out of them.

He always held them at a sheltered area in the campgrounds in Keithsburg, Illinois. It wasn't a long ride, about 45 minutes from home. When we got there the crowd would already be starting to form.

As kids, this was a chance to hang out along the river, go hiking down to the water, skip rocks into the Mississippi, and have some fun. The adults would be busy gabbing while grandpa manned the frier and a grill.

When it was time to eat, we would all come running. That sweet, garlic-flavored crunch of that first bite of freshly cooked catfish was always incredible, leading to bite after bite until there was nothing left of the thing but the bones.

Grandpa's catfish dinner came with the same sides every year for a reason. They were legendary. There was always corn on the cob, grandpa's potato salad, and grandma's green jello fluff. By the time I was ten, I began helping with the process of getting ready for the fish fry.

It's 5:00 a.m. and I'm up on a Saturday morning. That was until school let out for the summer. Fish have to come from somewhere, and it was time for grandpa to have some help catching them.

I'd have my gear ready the night before so all I had to do was stumble out of bed, brush my teeth, put a hat on over my hair, and when grandpa's blue Silverado pulled up with his boat in tow I'd be ready. As soon as I saw him pull up in front of the house, I'd grab my rod and tackle box and head out the front door for an adventure on the Mississippi or in many of the backwaters I would come to learn.

Months of fishing went into catching the fish for grandpa's fish fry. Somedays we'd catch more than our share. On other days, we might get "skunked" as he would call it. Before we were through we'd catch three to four hundred channel-cat, between mid-April and late July.

How would he cook them?

The Recipe

After a thorough cleaning, including getting to chop off the heads, peeling the skin away, and ripping out their guts (the fun part,) they'd be stored for the big day.

A bowl of flour came next. Then he'd melt a bowl of butter. The fish were dipped in the butter, then rolled in the flour. The flour, as I learned, was more than just flour.

3 oz Lemmon Pepper

3 oz Garlic Powder

2 oz Black Pepper

2 oz Italian Seasoning

1 oz Paprika

Grandpa put it all together once and let me watch. I got to watch it from start to finish. He even let me run the frier, for a few minutes, at the last fish fry he had before he passed away.

The first plate was always filled with that first piece of fish, my aunt's macaroni and cheese and I'd grab a second plate for grandpa's potato salad and grandma's baked beans because they'd go fast.

Some people will always favor things like watermelon, grilled brats, fried chicken, corn dogs, their dads' world-famous barbeque, or carnival foods. In the summertime, there'll never be any other food that tops my list of favorite summer dishes more than grandpa's fried catfish.