Thursday, January 28, 2010

Speaking of being frozen...


 Why is food so much work?

SACRED & MUNDANE
From Ocean to Plate, a Posthumous Migration

BY SARAH MURRAY

Published in the November/December 2007 issue of Orion magazine

For ordinary humans, the extraordinary migration of salmon is difficult to imagine. Take Chinook salmon. Some of these fish swim from the Columbia River up to Canada and beyond, covering up to sixteen miles a day. Calculated as body lengths per second, that would be the equivalent of a human swimming more than 160 miles a day—fast enough to circumnavigate the equator in 150 days. Migrating fish also cover vast distances. In its trans-Pacific migration, a tagged bluefin tuna was found to have covered an amazing twenty-five thousand miles—a distance greater than the Earth’s circumference.

If the mileage clocked by these fish sounds impressive, it is nothing compared to the journeys some of them take after their death. In the case of salmon, it is all because of their pin bones—dozens of tiny bones not connected to the rest of the fish’s skeleton that cannot be dealt with by filleting machines. Pin bones must be extracted by hand using tweezers or small pliers. It is a laborious process that when carried out in North America or Europe is costly. Not in China, though, with its low wages and high productivity.

Here is a typical journey for a Norwegian salmon destined for sale in a supermarket in America or Europe: Once harvested, the fish is frozen and packed into boxes that are loaded onto a small feeder vessel in a Norwegian fishing harbor. From here, the fish sails to Rotterdam or Hamburg, where it will change ships and end up on a large international container vessel bound for China, traveling at a temperature of minus twenty-three degrees Celsius all the way.

Thousands of miles and about a month later, the fish arrives in China, often ending up in Qingdao, a large port city on the tip of the Shandong Peninsula of China’s northeast coast that is home to several hundred fish-processing centers. After being unloaded from the vessel, the “raw material” is trucked to a fish-processing center on an industrial park. At this smart new facility with vast cold storage, the salmon is defrosted and moved out to the factory floor. In a large, neon-lit industrial space are ranks of tables, each with dozens of brightly colored plastic trays on top of them. Standing at the tables, dressed in white coats and caps and wearing latex gloves and cotton masks, are hundreds of factory workers—most of them young women from rural villages. Using nimble fingers and small scalpels, they swiftly skin the salmon, remove its bones, and cut it into the exact portions specified by a Western supermarket chain on the other side of the world. Once the fish is filleted and in pieces, it is refrozen, packed onto a ship, and sent back to Europe or the United States. By the time it reaches the supermarket, our “fresh” salmon may have been traveling for an astonishing two months.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Fun Things to Do in Winter (Besides eat cheese)



1. Check the blog of the snow groomer guy for the Iowa City environs to see where he's been lately/what the conditions are

2. Put on as many layers as it takes to cover up every body part except eyeballs and nostrils (don't forget a sweat-wicking base layer!)

3.  Drive to the Recreation Area next to frozen-over (!) Lake Macbride

4.  Step into ridiculously long and flimsy cross-country skis

5. Shove off!

6. Go 3 feet, fall down, and start walking as if you're on the elliptical machine at the gym

Cross country skiing is such a workout! But I love being able to "ski uphill." And to be outside for a good stretch of time and not only not be cold but be sweaty!  Here's to another good dusting of snow this week and heading out on the trails this weekend!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Why Wisconsin is Great = Cheese

I spent 4 days in Wisconsin last weekend, and probably consumed over a pound of cheese - all by myself.  They just do so much with it!! And WI cheeses are literally among the best in the world -- I tasted one that is the only cheese to win the National Cheese Championship twice. It rocked, of course.  Thus before I can document all of the fun things I did in Madison besides gorge on gorgeous cow, sheep and goat cheese, I must elaborate all of the ways in which WI satisfied my cheese-o-phile needs.


#1 Cheesiest Moment: Fromagination in Madison, WI 
THE source for all things artisan, stanky and local in Wisconsin Cheese.  This shop had sooo much good stuff - and they let me try everything.  And I did.  I walked out of there with these six wax-paper-wrapped beauties, which are currently still aging in my fridge. Craziest cheese I tried: Cocoa Cardona from Carr Valley Cheese - a firm goat cheese rubbed with cocoa. Best cheese I tried: Bandaged Billy from Carr Valley Cheese - aged goat cheddar wrapped in a cloth while it ripens - oh so stanky!


2nd Cheesiest Moment: The lovely dairy farms tucked into every nook and cranny of southern WI's rolling hills
Even covered in snow in chilly January, it was gorgeous.




3rd Cheesiest Moment: Competing cheese emporiums in the Madison environs
The Cheese Chalet and Mouse House each had their unique cheese with strange additions to offer, plus soo much cheese/cow/Swiss paraphenalia.  Best sample = leek and morel mushroom jack, worst = chocolate fudge cheese (weirrrrd)











4th Cheesiest Moment: Visiting the Cheese Pirates
...'nuff said.


5th Cheesiest Moment: Visiting the Cedar Grove cheese factory in Plain, WI
 They were kind enough to show me their curds, and their cheese vats, and their samples! This is a picture of their milk tanks.