It was a unique week.  And it's only now as I type, wreaking of putrid fish guts, that I understand the moral.

When I got to my restaurant today, I went to the walk-in cooler to check on things after the weekend. Something smelled off.  Really off.  I asked a few of our chefs what it was.  Turns out “it” was the bones and heads of giant sea bass that they wanted to turn into a fish stock. I felt strange about turning any of it into a consumable product with it all smelling the way it did.  But the bones were only two days old, so I spent an hour rinsing them, lovingly removing gills, then putting the fish carcasses into stock pots to boil.

As they simmered, the smell didn't improve.  So I added lemon.  Still they stunk. I added white wine. And they stunk.  I added thyme, garlic, onion, fennel, dill, salt, pepper, and basil. Stink stank stunk.  I tried spoonful after spoonful.  And all I ended up with was a sour stomach.  I threw it all out.  

In the end, I wasted my whole morning trying to improve something my gut told me was bad from the start.

Reader, all week long, I largely ignored my gut and instead tried to outsmart it.  I made some choices I knew were bad, working in directions I knew weren't right.  And I also ignored some good choices because my cynical mind was too loud to allow me to believe they could be true.  So this week, I'm learning from my mistakes and going with my gut.  Because when your gut says the bass is rotten, the bass is rotten.

I leave you with one of the bright spots of my week: trusting my gut when it told me to take the kids into nature this weekend.  Here they are having the time of their lives on the beach in Milwaukee.  Thank heavens I listened.  Wishing you a week of believing in yourself and your instincts. See you next Monday. -Em