Eat Local

For eight glorious days spent in the Last Frontier of Alaska, I indulged in one of the state's many splendors: fresh fish.  Living in the Midwest for all of my life, I adopted the practices of eating what I could see (and when the winds were right, what I could smell).  So in the summer this meant a bounty of fresh vegetables and the meats of cows, swine, chicken, and so on.

But for eight days, I most likely ate as much fish as I had eaten in the last five years.  Yes, this rightly acknowledges problems with my diet, but fish in the Midwest is generally fried and I am not much of a fan of said preparation.  And farm-raised salmon sucks with its oily bites and pale-pink color.  And for the rest of the ocean, well, I have had fish far too many times when I was near its capture that I cannot stand the taste once it arrives in the cornfields.

But for those eight days, I ate fish for lunch and dinner every day.  We had it grilled, poached, blackened, sauteed, and yes even fried bites for an appetizer.  It is the best eating I have enjoyed in many moons.  Below is a filet of sockeye salmon, I hope the color captures the deep red color and excites your tastebuds.  The second is a part of our last night feast, where I indulged another great joy: cooking.  I long to return to such a culinary bounty.