We haven’t made anything from 50 Chowders in too long, so I consulted Iris and we settled on New England Fish Chowder. We haven’t made it yet; it’s planned for Monday, when we’ll all head down to Pike Place Market and get the necessary ingredients at Pure Food Fish.

I do this with a hint of trepidation, because it will mean doing something I’ve never done before, which is to ask for fish frames for making stock. Whenever a cookbook says with confidence that you can ask your butcher to trim a roast or your fishmonger to filet a fish or something, I always convince myself that maybe this was true when the cookbook was written (which is usually in like 2002), or maybe it’s true only on the East Coast. When I ask, surely the fishmonger will say something like, “Kid, you think I keep a bucket of fish bones around waiting for you to come along?”

I’m going to call ahead.