How to Fillet a Fish

How to Fillet a Fish

So you've got a dead fish, a knife, and, well, you should have some gloves for this. Here's what comes next.

Step 1

Tools: Fillet knife, fillet gloves

Rinse the dead fish using ocean or purified water — tap makes it taste funky — and if you're going to cook it with the skin on, descale it using the dull edge of the fillet knife, scraping against the grain until the surface is smooth.

Step 2

Place the fish on its side on a sturdy table or board. Insert your knife near the top of the dorsal fin, just behind the head, stopping when you hit backbone. Then slice along the dorsal fin, holding the blade edge tight against the backbone, until you reach the tail. Turn the fish over on its other side and repeat.

Step 3

Starting just behind the head, slide your blade part of the way up the rib cage (at a slight upward angle) and cut through the skin while pulling the fillet away from the fish. Do not cut the skin where it is attached to the tail. Flip the fillet over so it lies flat on top of the tail (skin side down) and at the edge of your table.

Step 4

With your knife parallel to the top of the table, slide the blade along the bottom of the fillet using downward pressure and separate the meat from the skin. Remove as much of the red meat as possible without destroying the white meat (i.e., the part you eat). Repeat with the other side.

How to Fell a Tree

How to Fell a Tree

Because we love the environment, but sometimes nature blocks your view — and sometimes trees die. Just make sure your standing in the right place when axe comes to wood.

Tools: Chain saw, protective eyewear, comfortable shoes

1. Determine the direction of fall, remembering that a leaning tree gives you no choice in the matter. Plan a path of retreat for when the tree begins to come down and clear any obstacles in that path. Make your first cut parallel to the ground, a third of the way into the tree on the side facing the direction of fall.

2. Make a second cut downward from above at a 60-degree angle, stopping when you meet the first cut. Remove the wedge of wood thus formed. This is the face cut, and it will guide the tree as it topples.

3. Move to the opposite side of the trunk. With your blade parallel to the ground and positioned one to two inches above the bottom of the face cut, saw horizontally into the trunk but not all the way. Your aim is to leave a "hinge" — a strip of uncut trunk about an inch thick and parallel to the back of the face cut. The hinge keeps the tree from twisting and kicking back as it falls.

4. As you complete the hinge, the tree will likely begin to topple. Switch off the saw and make your retreat. Don't run and don't turn around to watch. Once you hear the thud, it's safe to stop and look.

How to Give Her the Most Spectacular Foot Massage Ever

How to Give Her the Most Spectacular Foot Massage Ever

Master this toe-curling, nine-step process and she'll be yours forever.

Considering that a massage from our expert, massage therapist Trista Thorp of the Golden Door Spa in California, takes over an hour, there was no way we could capture all of her techniques in the magazine. We can't do it here, either, but at least we can offer you a few more.

1. Make her a Thai footbath. Slice up half a lime and put it in a bowl of warm water. Rest her feet in the water while you rub the bottoms of them with the other half of the lime, using it as a scrubber. The acid helps extract toxins, and the warm water will soften her feet and help her relax.

2. Take a hand towel and soak it in the footbath. Hold the towel above her knee, and, without letting it touch her leg, let the water drip down her calf and foot. Pat dry after one of you gets bored.

3. Gently holding her feet, rotate her ankles clockwise and then counterclockwise. Rotate each toe the same way, pulling gently on each.

4. After applying lotion, take one foot in both hands and walk your thumbs back and forth over the soles of her feet. Push deep with your thumbs, working the pressure points.

5. Directly beneath the ball of her foot, move your thumbs in semicircles, working back and forth horizontally.

6. Starting with your thumbs on opposite sides of her sole, slide them toward each other and to the opposite side of her foot. Move slightly down and bring them back. Continue until you reach her heel.

7. Interlace your fingers, resting them on the top of her foot with your thumbs on her sole. Slide your hands up and down over the whole foot, applying pressure with your thumbs.

8. Place your fingertips in the channels between each metatarsal (those are the long bones on the top of the foot), gently sliding all four fingers up and down between them.

9. Starting at the outside of her ankle, find where the muscle meets the bone. Glide your thumb along this line all the way up her shin, applying slight pressure.

How to Give a Good Massage

How to Give a Good Massage

Forget the two-minute guilt-trip massage. She deserves a full forty-five minutes of pleasure. So says a woman who knows.

• Squeeze a dime-sized amount of oil into your palm, warming it by rubbing it between your hands. (Repeat as needed.) Start at the shoulders, squeezing them and the back of the neck before working down each arm, all the way to the fingertips, massaging the skin and muscles by kneading, squeezing, and gently pinching between your thumb and fingers.

• After the arms, start back at the neck and work your way down the lower back in horizontal blocks. Make circular, clockwise motions, using the same massage techniques as on the arms but adding the heel of your hand for larger areas.

• Finish up by using the palm of your hand to work the entire buttock area. The whole thing should ideally take about forty-five minutes, not counting any eventual reciprocity.

How to Bet the Horses

How to Bet the Horses

On the eve of the Kentucky Derby, take some well-earned lessons from veteran gambler Tom Chiarella, the whole Clive-Owen-spent-all-my-money thing aside

As my long-lost friend Hambo told me on my first trip to Saratoga, New York, in August of 1982: "Every time you go to the track, learn two things you never forget.

" Lesson 1: Keep it simple. If you don't understand a bet, block it out. Avoid the Pick 4, the Pick 6, the wheels, the boxes, even the relatively tame daily doubles. And forget reading the racing form, which is too brilliantly ornate and dense with competing information for the apprentice mind. Buy a tip sheet instead and study it until something clicks.

Lesson 2: Make two simple bets. A twenty-dollar "straight bet" on a single horse (say, the 6 horse — bet your horses by number, not names) to win.

It's the classiest bet you can make, emanating confidence and sure-handedness.

Then try an exacta, in which you pick two horses to finish first and second. Do this for two bucks. And try not to care too much when you win ninety bucks on a 3 — 6 exacta.

Just relax and remember that getting lucky is not in any way a lesson in itself.

How to Hit a Wild Animal

How to Hit a Wild Animal

1. If it's a deer, hit it. You're more likely to be hurt if you accidentally veer into oncoming traffic or a tree.

2. Aim carefully. Slam on the brakes and aim for where it's coming from, not where it's going. Right before impact, ease up on the brakes, raising the front of your car slightly.

3. If it's a moose, duck. A twelve-hundred-pound moose will wreck your car. If there's absolutely no safe place to swerve, hunker down as low as possible, because a hit moose will often crash down on your roof.

How to Skin a Moose

How to Skin a Moose

Here's how to make a butcher's shop out of your backyard in four easy steps.

Tools: Hunting knife, block and tackle with spreader bar and butcher’s hooks

1. Track, kill, gut, and behead the animal.

2. Hang your block and tackle from a very sturdy tree. With your hunting knife, pierce the animal’s rear legs just above the hocks and behind the sturdy tendon. Thread the hooks through the holes, attach them to the spreader bar, and hoist the carcass just high enough that it’s completely off the ground.

3. Make a single, shallow cut through the skin of each rear leg, trying not to cut into the muscle, from the pelvic region up to the hock. Make a circular cut around the leg at that point; then, working down the leg, peel off the skin like a sock, scraping with the knife and pushing with your fists.

4. Next, loosen the skin from the body, working from the belly toward the spine. Then skin the front legs as you did the rear ones. Lastly, free the skin from the neck with a firm downward pull.