Squid Fishing in Seattle

A wonderful weekend in Seattle with the Swales. After months of waiting and one missed vacation (due to Jude's Swine flu episode), we finally got to meet little India Swales! What a doll with the cutest, biggest brown eyes! Friday night Sarah, David and Asha came over and Sarah cooked her famous Thai Curry for us, while Asha and Niall played and I goo-goo-ed over the baby.

Saturday was my long awaited trip to Pike's Place Market in down town Seattle. I had read about a couple of gourmet cooking stores in some of my Gluten Free Books and I had to go. The Chef Shop was closed for the weekend which was a big disappointment but I found another shop that may have been even better, DeLaurenti's. It was very difficult to narrow my selections but I finally walked out of the store with a bag full of a Fig & Meyer Lemon balsamic vinegar (that will make a wonderful vinaigrette), an aged Fig Balsamic Vinegar (that I plan to use in a reduction sauce over steaks), and a candied lemon and fig chutney that we spread on crackers with some goat cheese, WHOA MAN!! Do we see a theme here? I don't know what it is about figs lately.

Here is Jude and Niall admiring the ugly Monk Fish that "somehow" kept moving and scaring unsuspecting passers by.

The final adventure of the Seattle trip took us to the docks just up the road from Pike's Place, for some SQUID Fishing! Niall, Jude, David, Sara and I were the adventurers on this outing. How does one fish for squid one may ask? Well, let me enlighten you. 'Tis the season and squid are running. Squid are crepuscular animals which means they are very active at dusk. I too am crepuscular, so this worked into my schedule nicely. A quick trip to Fred Meyer for some $13 fishing poles and squid jigs armed us with supplies. Unfortunatley they were the wrong supplies. Since our jigs were bigger than some of the squid our would be squid were high tailing it for the jigs 3 feet up stream. Our dock neighbors were pulling squid up as fast as they could cast out. Luckily David had a jig that was somewhere in the middle size and hooked two that we were able to use later in the night. The most entertaining part of the fishing experience is when the squid is being lifted out of the water. It goes into either attack mode or scared mode and sprays impressive amounts of ink and water aoubt 5 feet from its little body. Jude got hit once.

Sara and Niall pre-squid fishing.

Sara and Jude tying on our gigantic jigs. David showing off his prize catch of the night!

Then we had a FEAST! The little rings you see in our monster pan of Paella is the squid. More of a decoration really, essence of squid paella. Luckily Carol had stocked up on cod and salmon as well.

Carol's GF Cup Cake Masterpiece!

I am warning you now, the rest of this blog is more like Biology class so if you aren't up for it keep the vision of cupcakes in your head, instead of scrolling any further.

The first pic is of the two squid that David caught and we cooked up for our paella. The second is what our bucket of squid could have looked like if we had the correct jigs!


Squid tentacles. Squid spine, looks like a clear plastic leaf.

And last but not least the squid beak, yep I said beak! This is how they eat. Should I mention that, that night I had a nightmare about some human sized creatures with beaks that liked to eat humans!