Gone Fishin’
Last November, I set a goal to avoid takeout and eating out for an entire month. My goal was to eat at home and cook without eating any fast food for 30 days. Surprisingly, we accomplished that goal. My son even took his lunch to school every day. With the mad rush of the holidays and the new year, I quickly got out of the habit of cooking every day and we fell back into old habits.
I then set a goal for 2008 to only eat out once a week. I have been keeping this goal but with summer approaching, I want to go back to cooking more often and also eating more locally grown food. I have been lucky to have had gardeners in my family and I have grown up around farmers and a lot of women who were awesome cooks. A reunion in my family probably rivals some of the Roman orgy feasts from ancient times. Tables 10-20 feet long were set up in rows to hold all the food, and there was just no way you could even taste everything. I wish now I had asked more of my great-aunts for their recipes while they were still alive.
My grandmother always had a huge garden and spent every summer canning vegetables. No visit to her house was complete without my grandfather insisting that we go out to the garden and get whatever was ripe to take home. When I was a kid, it was annoying because I cared nothing about dirty mustard greens or snap peas. Now that I am an adult, I wish my grandmother was still around to give me carte blanche to her garden and I would probably fill up my car with fresh corn, potatoes and green beans.
This summer, I want to focus more on eating locally, and contributing to the local economy. However, instead of just buying produce locally and cooking a meal, I want to also try some new recipes, find some new ways of eating things and explore some of the various options of getting other things locally, like meat, eggs and cheese.
Living on the Gulf Coast has always been an advantage as well, to always having local seafood. Yesterday, my neighbor was pulling in his driveway from his weekly Saturday fishing trip and asked me if I wanted some catfish he had caught that morning. “Of course I did,” I told him, then I wondered if I could enjoy catfish another way than fried. I seasoned it with olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt and pepper and put it on the grill with my daily fix of fresh corn and it turned out great. I was surprised, because I had always thought that catfish was the sort of fish that tasted too “fishy” if grilled, or wasn’t bulky enough to sit on the grill without falling apart. However, as you can see from the picture, it held together quite nicely and turned out great. The catfish was definitely a local item, along with the corn and green beans, so that was actually a very easy start to an eating local summer.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:07 am
[…] Surprisingly, we accomplished that goal. My son even took his lunch to school every day. With thttp://lonesophist.com/jane/2008/05/18/gone-fishin/Primary Questions The Glasgow Daily TimesDavid P. GivensHorace F. JohnsonSteve NewberryJohn […]
May 19th, 2008 at 11:58 am
The seafood/fishing is one of the things my husband misses most about Texas. Not sure if I ever told you - he’s from Rockport, kinda near Corpus. But he’s told me about times when they had no money, that they lived for a week on what they could catch in the gulf, which was across the street from his mom’s house.
We’ve been trying to buy more local produce as well. Unfortunately, in Nebraska in May, there isn’t much. We hit up a farmer’s market Saturday, and the only thing they really had besides plants and “organic” beef was hydroponic tomatoes. Not really what I was hoping for.
We’re trying to eat at home more too. It’s amazing how much that does for our budget, and I just feel good knowing what is going into everything the kids are eating.
May 19th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I have never had catfish but have always wanted to try it. It’s not native to MN. We seem to have every other kind of fish in our “Land of 10,000 Lakes” but not catfish. I had a girlfriend from Illinois and she loves it. I’m going to look at getting some. I love your new food plan and love getting new ideas for food.
August 16th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
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