Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you may die

Boy, I'm a lucky fellow. I'm really getting to enjoy having three-day weekends since I decided to take Fridays off a few months ago.

For dinner tonight we had fresh trout. It's early in the season so they were smallish (under a pound each - just enough to serve one fish per person) and were baked whole with just the guts removed and replaced with some sliced onion, garlic, butter, salt and pepper. When they're served, it only takes about five minutes to remove the skin and lift the delicate flesh from the bones. All it needs is a squeeze of lime.

We had it with pasta and pesto, asparagus (we've had two harvests already this year) and a loaf of warm crusty pugliese bread all washed down with a bottle of Oak Knoll Oregon chardonnay - a feast fit for kings. (Note to people who don't like fish - like Right Wing Prof - trout does not have a fishy smell and is not muddy-tasting like catfish.)

Now I'm just taking a break while the boys wash dishes and feed the dogs and then we'll have a dessert of fresh pears, strawberries, whipped cream and rich buttery Umpquah ice-cream with Andy's home-made oat cookies. He makes them with a very buttery dough where half the flour has been replace with ground walnuts and they're chock full of dark chocolate chips, raisins and dried cranberries with a smidgen of orange zest. It's time to break out the KWV 1985 vintage South African port.