Can I have my stuff yet?

While we moved a pallet of our most essential belongings over here, we left behind about twice that, scattered among our parents' homes, friends kitchens and backyards. I haven't yet bid my tearful "See you in six weeks." to my cast iron--I've got a farewell batch of cornbread planned for tomorrow night--but we're slowly whittling down to the wok, frying pan and saucepan that sustained us for our first month in the flat.

This makes my reader--and Mission: Professional Chef--a frustrating experience. I want to tick off brown stocks and sauces in my project book, try any of the awesome-looking grilling recipes in gourmet's June issue, make rhubarb mustard or try my hand at canning. When a chef finds herself unable to cook, stir-craziness can only ensue.

So here are some links. Try what's in them for me, won't you?

I want to try the sweetbreads, the chicken kebabs, and the pork roast NOW. I think that the rest can actually wait five minutes, but no more.

For foragers.

My quince mustard from the fall? Still awesome.

Canning in the NYT. Given the recession and the drive to minimize waste in the kitchen, tactics like preserving and foraging seem poised to become very popular, at least in the press. I loved curing bacon and making sausages; canning seems like a natural extension of the same ethos to make the most of what we have, and a great way for chefs to keep menus exciting by putting little whispers of last season's bounty on the plate.

This doesn't make me drool. But Nan helpfully reminded me of it in her comment to my last post. If you've got time on this Sunday, read about the challenges to our ocean life. If you just want to find out what to get for dinner, click on the seafood guide. If your fishmonger can't answer the necessary questions that you'll have about the source of your fish, don't buy. I know that the Dekalb farmers' market in Atlanta used to display lots of information about the fish that it sold.

I've really gotta get back to staring into space and dreaming of what I'll do with a charcoal grill, a smoker, and a giant stock pot.

POSTSCRIPT!

I nearly forgot--I will likely be in Hilton Head in the next few weeks. I usually try to find markets, exciting if inexpensive restaurants, and fun foodie things to do, and I have little luck finding these things on my own. I will not be there over the weekend. Any suggestions?

Piggybacking

A new blog that I'm following is Ecoculinaire, written primarily by Nan Kavanaugh, partner of Scotty Schwartz, the Chef at 29 South in Fernandina Beach, FL. When I was still in school, Scotty hooked me up with the chef at PLaE for a stage during my spring break, and then generously brought me down to 29 South to work for a week in his kitchen. We've kept in touch intermittently, and the last news that I heard was that he was going local, probably a little over a year ago.

There's local, of course, and there's planting a year-round garden out back to supply your restaurant. Nan is the garden manager, and started Ecoculinaire a couple of weeks ago. Her blog posts are focused and well-written, and she clearly loves writing about the restaurant, the garden, and larger food issues. Her most recent post, on markets, has me excited to get back to the first one I can in Atlanta.

Here in Coventry, and indeed throughout Warwickshire and the West Midlands, the farmers' market comes monthly. There's some good food available, but eating locally and sustainably has to be a hobby--even in the winter, most veg won't last a whole month. As someone who was pretty good at sourcing food, people who treated it like something that I did for fun, or something out of a pyramid scheme--"But how do you really know that the animal was raised humanely?"--had to be the most irritating response. When people view the responsible acquisition of their food as akin to a love of canoeing or needlepoint, they have no reason to examine what's in their refrigerators, how it got there, and at what cost.

As I was shopping at the supermarket yesterday, I was surprised twice: once when there was no garlic, which I didn't think was possible at a supermarket, and again when I saw wild Alaskan salmon on offer, for a price that, considering the exchange rate, was pretty competitive.

The state of English fish stocks is notoriously dismal; a cookbook I was reading this morning conjectured that soon the only fish that could be legally caught would be mackerel. Cod struggles, salmon has to be farmed, and fish like pollack and mackerel, which are actually abundant, are being roundly ignored by all but amateur fishers and responsible chefs. Wild salmon in America are faring little better, with the southern seasons getting shorter and shorter, or cut off altogether. The demand then turns to Alaskan stocks, which will, if history is any indicator, soon find themselves in the same situation. It's not responsible right now to fish too much Alaskan salmon, or to offer it in supermarkets over 6000 miles away.

The English are moaning at the moment: everyone loves salmon, and fish and chips apparently can't be made with any of the incredibly similar members of the cod family that have healthy populations. What are we to do?

Suck it up. Learn to eat more than two to three species of what the oceans produce. Encourage responsible fish farming or shelve your salmon recipes for the next five years or so. And then when you can eat it again, make it a treat, like anything that rare should be.