On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 11:07:56 -0700, "graham" > wrote:

>
>"Janet Bostwick" > wrote in message
.. .
>> On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 14:51:43 -0000, "Ophelia"
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>My family were great bakers and made wonderful bread, cakes, scones and
>>>pastries every week.
>>>
>>>A couple of my favourites which I still sometimes make today:
>>>snip
>>>What were your favourites? Not necessarily sweet thing btw!
>>>
>> I loved fried smelt. Great Lakes smelt are smaller than ocean smelt.
>> My BIL would catch them by the bushel-basket full in Lake Michigan. I
>> can't remember the time of year or what else we had with them. I
>> think we had sour cream cucumbers, but what I remember is this truly
>> heaping platter of fried smelt. (Heaped high enough that some would
>> always slide off) They were all golden and crusty. Mom fried them in
>> her big 'spider.' (I don't know why, but spider is/was a common term
>> for the big, black, cast iron skillet.) Since they are small, you
>> simply gutted them and took the heads off. Everything else got eaten.
>> We'd have the smelt for several days because we had a huge amount of
>> them, but I didn't mind. I just loved that time of year. I've since
>> had ocean smelt, but they are big enough to be "fish." and I didn't
>> enjoy them near as much.
>> Janet US
>
>In the depths of winter in East Anglia, my grandparents would by sprats
>(probably a bit bigger than your smelts) from longshore fishermen and Mum
>would dip them in flour and fry them.
>Graham
>
I looked them up and I think you're right. Simple but good.
Janet US