Today, the light in my office shined brighter than the light from my window. It's due to rain clouds but it's the mode from November onward, arriving to the office under a dark sky. Maybe you know my formula for these daily declarations. I note seasonal signs. I noticed the idea of St. Patrick's in September catching on, observed September 17th. Akin to Christmas in July, which even has a movie from 1940, St. Patrick's in September is a good time to hold an Irish Music Festival. This is the first year I haven't attended out of three, making the festival in 2010 & 2009. I wasn't planning to stay all night, and half the fun of the Michigan Irish Music Festival is standing on the green, drinking a pint of Cider, hearing music from two tents as night falls, and smelling all that grass crushed by thousands of dancing feet.
I visited Salmon Festival along our Grand River estuary, downtown Grand Haven, and loved the art exhibits. It's probably not a good idea to suggest using a jewelry maker's earrings for Salmon lures. But what if it worked? A little bit of bending and sanitizing and gift wrapping, it's a present for ones true love again. Plus, there's a fish to eat or smoke. I walked around the Salmon Festival tent and enclosed paddock, and a band entertained and nice people sampled wine from all over Michigan and chefs served up a score of ways to prepare Salmon. Not a bad deal for twenty dollars, and that included admission to that evening's beer tent, music and meet-ups all night, until Midnight. If it weren't so late in the afternoon by time I made it to downtown Grand Haven. The chefs and the wineries finished serving at Five, and I was planning a trip across Michigan. So I took advantage of the next best action. I asked for Melissa at Theater Bar to pour me a glass of wine and I promised to buy myself a pound of smoked salmon, around ten dollars, from my favorite smokehouse, Doug Borns. I see that Borns is up for sale and Raymor's Fish Market in Roosevelt Park closed business, so I wonder what is happening in our West Michigan food scene?
Salmon has come up in my conversation many times this week. I should drop everything to see them coming up the Muskegon River. I chatted with a recently married chef at the Muskegon Country Club, and he had fishing lure decals all over his red truck. So we talked fishing. He recommended visiting the Ottawa Street bridge at the Muskegon River, where it is easy to see the Salmon swimming up the river in groups of five or seven. The newspaper is happy to report that the Salmon are heavier this year. I was talking about the salmon run to my mom, for whom I fished for every summer to put protein on the table. I've probably filleted as many fish as crew-members from the Deadliest Catch. I had a Rapala fish knife I loved to use, with a nice flexible blade, a razor sharp tip. My mother probably could set a hook, but I'm not so sure about casting and retrieving. I'm sure she'll enjoy a day watching the water flow by, as time is flowing by, letting her kin bring in the bounty. My brother-in-law mentioned that his father taught him to catch salmon with bare hands, the way bears catch them. His father is a postman now, but he has a sterling record as a marine sharpshooter too. Certainly a man with a list of survival skills. Even my sister got excited about the idea of fresh salmon, and she doesn't really get excited about too much. So I invited them out. We're so busy, blah, blah, blah. Hey, times passing and the Salmon are rising, my kinfolk When did gathering food for the winter become a secondary task to administrivia?
Okay, so we have St. Patrick's in September. We have Christmas in July. Would Halloween in April be April 30, 2012. Umm, we already have Easter and Holy Week making good use of those days.
Can you smoke it? Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah.
Grand Haven Salmon Festival:
Michigan Irish Music Festival in Muskegon, Michigan takes place on St. Patrick's in September.
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