How to Greet the Wild Salmon Season

Fresh buds spring from limbs/

Robins and woodpeckers sing/

My debut cookbook!

~Japanese haiku

As the release date for Salmon From Market To Plate nears and the 2016 wild Alaska salmon season approaches this May, I feel excited but anxious, confident but vulnerable.

In times like these, I read how others write about seafood and the changing landscape of our planet and the oceans.

For instance, in 1937, the eloquent and formidable food writer, M.F.K. Fisher, wrote about honest fish in How To Cook A Wolf. She began the chapter, “How to Greet The Spring,” with a Japanese hokku (her spelling) just as I have written here. Fisher continued, “Now, however, with all the waters of the earth redoubled and suspect, fish as a food has become a rarity.”

Today in 2016, we call honest fish, sustainable fish. And still, our oceans are in trouble. Plastic and pollution, over-fishing and ocean acidification plague our waters and fisheries.

In reading Fisher, I do not compare myself to her in any form. Quite the contrary. I am inspired by her words and style so I simply borrowed from her structure to try to find my own voice. To try to write about what is happening in our world. In my world. To write about why I believe in my forthcoming title, Salmon. As if in writing the words on my processor, I can affirm what I have created.

But back to fish. There’s this:

Plus les choses changent plus elles restent les mêmes.

So what is going on with my insecurity?

One of my fears about the Salmon release is that my peers, those advocates who encourage eating other seafood species, will reject my work, my way of thinking. They say, and rightly so, not to eat the big three — tuna, shrimp, and salmon. I believe that too. I support the eating of other less popular or under-loved fish.

But. When you live nowhere near the ocean, when your protein choices are limited by not just geography, but also by budget constraints and cooking experiences, you make the best choices you can.

And so that’s why I wrote Salmon From Market To Plate. Why I believe in what I wrote — so that when you go to the market to buy salmon, the choices you make are sustainable, deliberate, and informed.

Salmon From Market to Plate when you want to eat salmon that is good for you and the oceans is available April 13, 2016, on Amazon.