By Rachel Shulman •
October 26, 2009
My dog taught me to make better seafood choices.
Weird, I know.
You see, my dog has a lot of, er… issues. By the time I adopted her, she had lived on the streets of East St. Louis for three months, bounced through eight different foster homes, and had one failed adoption - all before her first birthday.
Dealing with her emotional baggage has become a big part of my life. Since she doesn’t find pets, praise, or ordinary dog treats very motivating, I’ve had to get more creative in my training. One food she finds really motivating are canned sardines.
Before I got this dog, I had never eaten a sardine. Once my pantry was stocked with at least a dozen tins of sardines - an option I knew was more sustainable and lower in mercury than the neighboring cans of tuna - it was inevitable that I would get curious.
I’ve since become a convert, and it looks I’m not the only one focusing on the sardine as a greener seafood option.
By edfblog •
June 12, 2009
Today’s post is by Kristen Honey, EDF Lorry Lokey Fellow.
Are sardines making a sustainable and sumptuous comeback? The Washington Post attempted to address this very question yesterday in a provocative article about the self-proclaimed “Sardinistas.” According to this group of nutritionists, environmentalists and foodie revolutionaries, the answer is a resounding “yes!” Sardine advocates and cutting-edge green chefs like Dean Gold and David Myers are bringing this smelly canned food out of the cob-webbed cabinet corner and back into the kitchen in innovative new ways. Or they are trying to, at least.
Just recently, I had the privilege of attending a private luncheon with the Sardinistas at filmmaker Mark Shelley’s Sea Studios Foundation on Monterey’s Cannery Row. The purpose of this luncheon was to highlight their recent efforts to promote sardines as a delicious and sustainable seafood choice. What struck me was their point that while Americans love eating tuna and other steak-like fish, we need to eat fish farther down the food chain (like sardines) to help alleviate pressure at the top.
After talking shop, we had the chance to eat delectable canned, frozen and fresh sardine dishes by renowned chef Alton Brown of The Food Network! If you don’t take my word for how tasty these creatures can be, try out for yourself these sardine-centric recipes for Sarde Arrosto (Griddle Roasted Sardines), Stuffed Sardines and Vuido (widowed potatoes).
Researchers with Scripps Institution of Oceanography believe they may have found the answer to the mystifying collapse of Pacific sardine fisheries in the middle of the last century: a shift in wind patterns that drastically reduced the upwelling of plankton, the fish’s primary food source. The discovery has implications for future climate change as well.
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My dog taught me to make better seafood choices.
