Redneck Seafood Dinner

I never liked fish as a kid, not because of the flavour (kids can cover anything in tartare sauce) but because of the bones. Gack! I wonder if it isn't the same way with other kids. I used to be able to hoover up a giant plate of deep fried prawns in no time at all.....no bones!

I've often wondered about the fish bone thing. Are kids (and many adults) paranoiac about the bones because of all the horror stories pounded into their craniums by their parents? It's really pretty easy to strip most, if not all, bones from fish. And if you get one in your mouth, you can take it out. Just curious.

Except for the fastidious few, kids tend to be stokers rather than nibblers, and the food tends to go into the gaping maw in large chunks, to be chewed in greater or lesser degree depending on the perceived urgency of the pastime the meal is keeping them from.

Hitting a fish bone is akin to chomping down on a moutfull of tacks - a feeling of betrayal second only to the discovery that Christmas might not be quite what it was made out to be.

I don't know if it's the fishbone thing...my kiddos have never come across any fishbones (I pick through their fish very carefully, just for that purpose.) I don't ever remember coming across any bones in my fish growing up (we caught everything we ate and filleted it, and my Dad was very careful to remove any/all bones ...even in the eel!). I do remeber getting sand in some of the quahogs when we ate them in our clam sauce...I didn't like it, but I still prefered clams to fish. To this day, I still prefer shellfish. I am not sure why.

I do hate getting bones in fish, or grizzle in meat, or sand in shellfish or veggies!

Grizzle in meat would scare me, too.