Congratulations to the Cape Ann Fresh Catch Community Supported Fisheries folks. The first-ever Boston area CSF is kicking off with 1,000 subscribers. That’s amazing. (We talked about this before — it’s like a vegetable CSA, except with fish. From Gloucester. Like this fine cod specimen to our right).
So there will be drop-off points in Cambridge (Morse School at Memorial Drive + Harvard Farmer’s Market) and in JP (Farmer’s Market on Centre Street). Also, there are drop-offs in Acton, Lincoln, Marblehead, Gloucester + Ipswich. Several of my coworkers have joined, which means there will be much fish gossip around the office. On the list of possible species we may find in our share is dabs and we are all super curious about what dabs will look like. I’m secretly hoping it’s not like monkfish.
Also, I went to the Davis Square Farmer’s Market today. Nantucket Wild Gourmet & Smokehouse out of Chatham was there. I bought Hot Smoked Wild Bluefish (East Coast caught). It looks pretty tasty. The dude manning the booth said that all their fish was wild caught with lines (Not trawls. Trawling is bad news). And I have read about them in the past. The chief smoker is an Irish fellow who has, according to his bio “mastered the traditional Irish/Scottish art of slowly, cold-smoking seafood.” OK!
Here’s the part where some of you might roll your eyes:
Kristi has recently articulated something that is resonating very strongly for me, and I want to share it in the hopes that it resonates similarly for someone out there. I haven’t eaten factory farmed meat in a long time (alright, a little bit. But I avoid it by and large). I do, however, eat ethically, locally, sustainably raised meat often enough. My reasons for not eating the confinement stuff are that it’s A). inhumane B). disgusting (see: ammonia in ground beef to kill the E. coli) C). bad for the communities + environment and D). sad, backbreaking work for the workers. But Kristi points out that if we are, indeed, what we eat, then we are literally consuming the suffering of those animals when we indulge. Like in a New Age-y, spiritual energy kind of way.
But, fuck it, I’m coming out right here as buying that.