TracyFood

Foto Friday: the last time I ate tuna. 30 October 2009 3:32 pm

Posted by Tracy in : Holland,Marion Nestle,Netherlands,books,consumerism,eating,environment,fish,food safety,food snobbery,health,not even vegetarian,photos,pictures,restaurants,sustainability,tuna , View Comments

It has been exactly four months since I last ate tuna. I believe this may be some kind of personal record; at the very least, it is the longest I can remember going without tuna since I cared to keep track of such things. Let me explain.

I love tuna; I think it’s incredibly delicious. Unfortunately, since because of that deliciousness it’s effectively an endangered fricken species, I try not to eat it too often, on account of how I’ll be a very cranky old lady indeed if large ocean fish are extinct in the next 40 to 50 years and I’m trying to do my part to reduce demand and all that. (Because I eat it so rarely, I’m not freaking out about the whole methylmercury problem, but it is horrific and I am eternally grateful to Marion Nestle’s What to Eat for the revelation that it’s not bioaccumulative.) Anyway.

I’ve been reading a bunch about tuna farming this week — real tuna farming, not “catch baby tuna in the wild and raise them in captivity” tuna ranching, but actual farming, baby fish hatched in captivity and everything, and my personal jury is still out, to put it mildly. I wanted to come to some kind of conclusion about this latest development in time to add it to this post, but it will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, I will continue my tuna-free streak. Luckily, the last time I ate tuna was so fantastic that it’s given me an even better motivation not to crack open the canned stuff — simply put, it’s going to be very hard to find another tuna meal this good. Behold:

I’m guessing that’s a good quarter kilo of fish, at least.

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Gastro-culinary highlights of the long weekend. 23 September 2009 3:33 pm

Posted by Tracy in : breakfast,consumerism,cookies,dessert,eating,events,fish,food snobbery,not even vegetarian,nyc,restaurants,seasonality,summer,sundance,travel,vegetarian , View Comments

For the purposes of this post, the long weekend ended about fifteen minutes ago, because I’m a big slacker. Peter and I got up unholy early on Friday morning for a visit to the not-yet-frozen north, by which I mean his parents’ cabin on Osgood Pond, which is in Paul Smiths, NY, outside Saranac Lake, not far past Lake Placid — and if you haven’t heard of any of those places, that’s okay: the whole point of this expedition was to hang out with friends on a nice mini-vacation in the middle of nowhere.

In my opinion, we succeeded mightily. There was paddling — both canoe and Adirondack guide boat — and relaxing in front of a wood-burning stove, both with and without games. Also there was tasty food. (more…)

Monkey Monday: feeling fishy 3 November 2008 2:27 pm

Posted by Tracy in : fish,geekery,local food,news,school , View Comments

So I broke open a browser tab to start writing this Monkey Monday post in response to this fascinating Wall Street Journal article about the use of canned mackerel as currency in U.S. prisons. I mean, dudes. There’s a food geek paper to be written there for sure.

Unfortunately, I can’t use it as my final research paper topic for Comparative Cuisines: I’m allowed to write about pretty much anything as long as it’s contemporary and outside the U.S. So today I’m rocking the NYU library once more, letting my geek flag fly, as it were… and I think I’ve stumbled into something really good! I call it…