We’re on Holidays, but the Blog Is Not
AUGUST 19, 2007 - I just finished an absolute frenzy of food preparation, given that Alisa and I will be doing events all through this weekend, then taking our brief holiday to northern British Columbia. Normally we go for a month, but this time just 10 days is all we can manage. This 100-mile thing keeps us hopping!
The blog will still refresh every day - we've lined up a series of (hopefully) interesting items, including lots of good stuff from 100-milers all over the place.
Anyway, I spent the afternoon freezing blueberries, tomatilloes, spot prawns, a huge pink salmon, and pesto. I also decided that, no matter how busy I was, our first full batch of fresh garden pesto had to be eaten on homemade pasta. Alisa claimed she could feel the nutrients flooding her system . . . in fact, we both felt a little high, but it might just have been the stress of getting ready to get out of town.
Once again in B.C., the salmon situation is dire. The sockeye salmon fishery in the Fraser - one of the great salmon rivers of the world - will be completely shut down due to poor spawning returns. The good news is that the general public is feeling the loss more than usual - many people have spoken to me about the way eating locally has heightened their awareness of the fading salmon runs.
The bad news is, the business-as-usual approach continues to conceal the salmon crisis from many people. Prices are expected to rise, but the sockeye will still be in the fish shops - they'll just be coming from far away. And rather than curb their appetite for fish, many will simply shift to other fish stocks - what some fisheries scientists have called "eating down the food chain."
Well, I'll live without sockeye this year and will hope for a good chum run in the fall. I also bought our one pink salmon from my fish pusher, Steve - I admit it came from just outside our 100-mile circle, but we do know exactly which river it comes from. The Conuma, on Vancouver Island, where Steve (who is a certified sustainable fisherman) caught it on Wednesday. It's part of a new effort to fish specific river stocks at a sustainable level rather than just send out the boats for general "openings" that can potentially hammer whatever rivers' salmon happen to be coming through that day.
We learn, slowly we learn.-JBM
