A man in a hurry stepped right in front of my moving car in the Fred Meyer parking lot the other day. He didn't even know I was there. Either that, or he figured the risk of being killed was worth the four seconds he saved by darting in front of me.

That guy was on a mission, and he wasn't alone. It happens every year about this time on the central Kenai Peninsula. The sockeye salmon are running.

If you're one of those people who can put on a pound just by walking past a plate of deviled eggs, the challenge of deciding what and how much to eat is daunting, especially if you like food as much as I do.

Besides liking to eat food, I like to catch it, preserve it and shop for it. I spend two or three hours a day cooking, my favorite hobby. For an hour or two a day, I watch people cooking on television. When I socialize with friends, food is nearly always the featured attraction.

After 34 years of heating my house with wood, I'm having a gas furnace installed. This week, I was showing two guys where I wanted the gas line buried. In the process, we had to walk across what I call my "lawn," which is solid dandelions.

"Please don't walk on the dandelions," I said, only half kidding, because they were so beautiful. "I've got a good crop this year."

One of the guys, probably thinking I had fought the Dandelion Wars and lost, said, "Once they get started, it's hard to get rid of them."

"Get rid of them? I planted them!"

Something exciting happens when large fish come to the surface, where you can see them considering what you have to offer. I’m invariably astonished when one swims into sight.

Until a few years ago, I’d always thought of halibut as bottomfish. I assumed that all flatfish lived on the bottom, and that you had to fish on the bottom to catch them. Other than halibut on the end of a line, I’d never seen one on the surface. But then I went fishing with Emerald Pines Lodge, out of Homer.