18 Simple Steps to Storing Slain Tuna

They always say that you should write what you know, so I’m here tonight to share an simple 18-step process for what to do if your Child goes out as a deckhand on a fishing charter and disembarks with 9 assorted fish and an enormous tuna that nobody else wants to take home.

Step 1: Drive to the riverside filleting station because experience has taught you that you do NOT want to be dealing with all those fish scales at home. Hand said Child a lethally sharp knife and say, “I don’t have your filleting gloves, so just be extra careful and remember you’re using the super sharp knife, not the bait knife.“ Ignore the fact that every other adult within hearing range will look up in sudden alarm. They have no idea that Child is far more qualified to fillet an enormous tuna than you are and that you judge that this is a risk worth taking because… “live and learn.”

Step 2: Scale all nine of the other fish yourself, because although Child said he would do them too he is completely engrossed in butchering the tuna, and it’s already 1:15pm, and Child hasn’t eaten lunch, and this is not going to end well if you don’t move the process along. So ignore the fact that you changed into clean clothes just before you left the house and use the bait knife to scale the damn fish.

Step 3: Pile a small mountain of tuna fillets into a bait bucket and take them home. 

Step 4: Once you get home, resist the impulse to argue with Child when he says he wants to eat some of that tuna. You will want to say, “it’s a mack tuna, Fozzie said they’re not good eating and we should make dog food out of it.” Don’t say it. Instead, let him carve off and keep as much tuna as he thinks he wants to eat.

Step 5: Put all the rest of the tuna into a large pot on the stove, add some water, and set it to simmer. Put the stovetop fan on but resign yourself to the fact that your entire house is shortly going to smell like fish anyway.

Step 6: After the tuna seems cooked take it off the heat and leave it to cool while you make dinner.

Step 7: After you have cooked dinner for everybody, lift the lid off the cooling tuna, realize it is still too hot to touch and reach the end of your rope (after all, you have had a migraine all day and are feeling decidedly out of sorts). Say, “I’m done. I just cannot even.“ Walk away from the fish-stinky kitchen and leave Husband to clean up after dinner and put the cooling tuna in the fridge.

Step 8: Go upstairs, lie down, and read an apocalyptic novel for a while. Think briefly about how much the survivors of this fictional cataclysm would have loved to have access to a gigantic tuna—to feed to the dog or otherwise—and feel guilty for not being more grateful for your many blessings. Take more painkillers for your headache.

Step 9: Half an hour later, realize that you should get up and tell the kids to get ready for bed (after all, Child is in the garage spooling new line onto one of his rods, and left to his own devices may never go to sleep). Then think, “I’m done. I just cannot even.” And read for another twenty minutes before going to coax Child out of the garage.

When Child says he wants to go on another fishing charter tomorrow, don’t say anything except, “it’s been such a good day, now it’s time to do teeth.”

Step 10: The next afternoon, when Child comes to you with the raw tuna he carved off for himself and says he wants to cook it, tell him to go right ahead.

“How should I cook it?” he will ask. “Should I marinade it in soy sauce and, you know, garlic and oyster sauce and stuff?”

You STILL have a headache, and you have just made a phone call to a dear friend you don’t speak with often enough, and you definitely do not want to chop garlic to marinade tuna that is supposed to be sub-par eating. So say: “I’d divide it in half, and try dipping the first half in seasoned flour and cook it that way, and see if you like it.”

Then walk out of the house and leave him to it. Because… “live and learn.”

Step 11: Pace the yard and watch through the splashback window over the stove to see what’s happening while talking to your friend about some of the challenges and conundrums that come with the parenting journey.

Step 12: Flash an enthusiastic thumbs up when Child comes out of the house twenty minutes later while you are still on the phone, triumphant and waving his plate of cooked tuna. He says it’s the best fish he’s ever eaten.

When you peek in the kitchen door you realize that to achieve this result Child mixed together about 8 times more flour than he needed with brown sugar, half a jar of chipotle seasoning, and “16 twists of the salt shaker.” Then he cooked it in half a stick of butter.

Remind yourself that it is good to foster creativity and independence and that by not micro-managing him in the kitchen you just helped Child learn that—in an apocalypse—he is perfectly capable of feeding himself with tuna.

Step 13: Eat some tuna when Child urges you to try it. Proclaim it “thoroughly seasoned” and “quite something.”

Step 14: After you hang up the phone with your friend, open the fridge to pour yourself a glass of white wine (it’s the weekend, yay!) and see an enormous stash of cold, cooked, tuna sitting on the middle shelf. Pour the glass of wine, pull the container of fish out of the fridge, and start pawing through it flake by flake to search out and remove any bones.

Step 15: Package up the de-boned tuna in takeaway containers you have sitting in the cupboard and that you never use, and ask Child to put them in the “bait and dog food freezer” in the garage.

Step 17: Pour yourself another glass of white wine and leave the mess in the kitchen for Husband to clean up after he comes inside from the caravan, where he has been holed up for the better part of three days on a team coaching course.

Step 18: When Child bounds back into the kitchen having stashed away four containers of dog food and shrieks longingly, “another fishing charter TOMORROW!!!!” take a deep tuna-scented breath, stay silent, and smile.