I Ate THIS????!!!!

So a few months ago, Mr. and I were at a favorite restaurant of ours where I usually get the fish of the day special. That day's special was skate fish. I had never heard of skate fish before so I asked the waitress, "What kind of fish is that?" Her answer, "It's a kind of white fish. Light. It's really good." I love fish and was thinking it would be something like maybe a mahi mahi or corvena so I thought, "Hey, why not?" and ordered it. I was wrong. What was served to me was this half moon weirdo shaped fish. I took the first bite. Gross. I tried to force some of it down so as not to waste it and also forced Mr. to eat some. It really turned my stomach and I was like "Never again" afterwards. That would be the end of the story except recently on The Food Network, it seems skate fish is the new "It Fish". It keeps getting mentioned and last night on Chopped, it was one of the ingredients. When explaining what skate fish was, they said it was like a manta ray and the wings are the part you eat. (Pause so I can let you can absorb this.) My mouth dropped open and I was horrified. What? What did I eat??? EW..... Here is a visual.

I have a long and sordid history with the manta ray. When on our honeymoon, Mr. and I went on this shark and ray tour. Basically, they took on us on a boat in the middle of the ocean, made us get off, threw bloody meat into the water, and waited for the manta rays and sharks to come and eat it so we could view it. And no we were not in some kind of cage or something. Now, when we signed up for this tour, we thought we would be on a glass bottom boat and could view the sharks from the safety of our vessel. We were wrong. There was a rope in the water and they said we should stay on this side and the sharks knew not to cross it. Um ok. They do things differently outside of the U.S.

Now, at this time the Crocodile Hunter had recently been killed by a giant manta ray and at one point during our tour the manta rays started to swarm around me. I kind of freaked out a lot. I was screaming and got into the fetal position in the water so they couldn't stab me like they did to the Crocodile Hunter. Did Mr. help his new wife? No. Instead he took a picture:



Yes, that red arrow is pointing to a manta ray skimming my shoulder. So let's just say I lost about 10 years off my life and now hate the manta ray. So, ick. The fact that I ate its look-alike makes me sick. Ew. Maybe I should start wikipediaing my dishes before I dig in.