My Writing Wednesdays #3: Something Fishy...

A cold and blustery weekend, with ice (and 12" of snow last Thursday & Friday), made for a good "indoors" weekend... so I returned to one of my favorite families, Hans Dreper and Maritie Pieters. Maritie had a reputation for "petty quarreling." [1] She also said what was on her mind, and apparently didn't candy coat her opinions either - a tendency that occasionally placed her in a courtroom. So pigs weren't the only thing that gave Hans and Maritie headaches... on at least one occasion, fish did too!

Maritie evidently had been shopping for herring on a warm spring day (plankton eaters, herrings tend to be plentiful in the cool northern waters from May through August, a time when they are high in fat yet before mating season... the herring were caught in nets and and salt bine-cured in large barrels, sometimes with the addition of spices - the exact recipes were, of course, secret...). With different recipes for curing herring, obviously, herring purchased from one vender or another might be more or less to a given individual's liking.