A fishy story

Ah, fish.
I grew up eating fresh striped bass, rock cod, sand dabs, flounder et cetera.

My family prepared fish in the simplest fashion, steamed and/or fried. Cantonese-style cooking, with accompanying sauces that were light - a bit of soy, ginger and peanut oil infused with ginger and garlic. Garnished with Chinese parsley, shavings of ginger root and slivers of green onion.
Sometimes Dad would prepare a tomato sauce'd version, with fresh tomatoes, yellow and green onions and sweet red and green peppers - sautéed together, then reduced to a fragrant, piquant sauce for over top of a perfectly cooked whole fish.
Delicious.

Dad usually bought fish (along with other fresh groceries) during his daily forays to Chinatown, though he often cast his fishing hook, line and sinker into San Francisco Bay during a striped bass run...

Dad taught me how to scale, gut and clean fish, a handy skill - considering how much fresh fish we consumed. When he caught one or more mongo-sized bass which didn't fit into the kitchen sink, he and I would spread thick layers of newspaper over the kitchen floor to clean them.
A fond memory: Dad and his young daughter on the kitchen floor - wrestling with the cleaning of huge stripers..fish scales a-flyin'....fish guts a-spillin'...

The man didn't settle for anything less than the freshest when it came to all food, particularly fish. If not his own catch, he'd get them at the fishmonger's in Chinatown, often netted live from the holding tanks right there in the shop.

Fish was on the dinner table at least twice a week. For the evening repast, a whole steamed fish or fillet of sand dabs (in black bean sauce) was served 'family-style' alongside a variety of other dishes.

Then -
fish in a whole new form entered our eating repertoire.
They came in a box and were small rectangular shaped bites of fish.
Fish sticks: Mrs. Paul's or Gorton's.

My fam-of-origin found fish sticks to be a most intriguing food:- pre-formed cooked fish meat. Breaded, fried, frozen and packaged. Ready for a quick re-heat in frying pan or oven.

We actually enjoyed eating fish sticks.
Mom and I ate them for lunch. My brothers and I had them for after school snack, liberally soused with catsup or dipped in a bit of Dad's homemade tartar sauce. Dad was a chef by profession, and went through the trouble of making fresh tartar sauce for a mealy snack of frozen fish sticks...I suppose he felt it necessary to provide something homemade to eat as the rest of us indulged in our fishy fast food fad (it must be mentioned here that Dad didn't partake much of fish sticks).

After a pre-fab fish snack, the lot of us would sit down to dinner, ready to descend with chopsticks-in-hand upon a delectable entreé of fresh fish ~ cooked to tasty, tender and delicate perfection...
topping off our bellies with the real deal.