Failing Science, Eating Salamanders, and Seahawk Fever vs. Avian Flu

We’re not going to change the world, for the better we hope, if we don’t use best available science. And let’s not consider endangered species as delicacies for fat cat palates. And, oh, go ‘Hawks but wash your hands.

Nope, nobody’s going to change the world for the better as long as there’s this big difference between how scientists and citizens see science and society. A Pew Research Center poll finds scientists highly esteemed by citizens but that scientists and citizens hold differing views on genetically modified foods, pesticide use, nuclear power, evolution, overpopulation, childhood vaccinations, and human-causes of global warming. According to almost all scientist polled, there’s a problem: people don’t know what they’re talking about.

On the food front, add to the plight of the white rhino, the wolf and the elephant, the rare Chinese giant salamander. The BBC reports that that senior security officials ate a critically endangered giant salamander, also considered a

delicacy, at a lavish banquet. The salamander, which can grow to nearly six feet, was allegedly feasted on in the southern city of Shenzhen. Photographers taking pictures of the attendees were reportedly beaten by police.

Seahawk fever reaches its peak on Super Bowl Sunday and backyard poultry growers around Agnew on the Olympic Peninsula can rest easy that their flocks tested negative for the spreading avian flu virus. There are several subtypes infecting commercial and wild bird populations, including the subtype A(H7N9) which

has infected two people in British Columbia. The virus passes from bird-to-bird much easier than to humans and human-to-human transmittal doesn’t happen easily. Call the health department if you find dead birds. Meanwhile, go ‘Hawks.

--Mike Sato

A Braille Lego Printer, United Nations Food, and “A Few Stupid Extremists”

Yes, let’s change the world: Last week it was Bill Gates drinking water purified from sewage, this week it’s a 13-year old’s prototype of a simple Braille printer built from Legos.  California teenager Shubham Banerjee, with encouragement and investment from his parents, developed a low-cost machine to print the tactile writing system used by the visually impaired. Intel Corp. is interested enough to invest in his startup, Braigo Lab . Brialle printers currently cost about $2,000. Says Shubham, “I just thought that price should not be there. I know that there is a simpler way to do this." (Boy, 13, builds Braille printer with Legos, starts company) Write on!

I’ve always believed if we’d share and eat each other’s food, we’d fight less. To that end, I’ve been savoring the pages of Lonely Planet’s Food Lover’s Guide to the World. This week, public radio reported on Jesse Friedman and Laura Hadden’s New York City project to have dinner parties featuring the foods of each of the 193 United Nations member states. “As they cooked food from Algeria to Djibouti to Guyana, United Noshes hosted dinners that ranged from just a few friends gathered around a living room table, to dozens of guests assembled in a banquet hall. And the ingredients have ranged as well — from cashew juice to French charcuterie to fermented corn flour.” (United Noshes: Dinner Party Aims To Eat Its Way Through Global Cuisine). Eat on!

And, thus far in 2015 public health, there were “a few stupid extremists” who “handled their firearms unsafely.” French murderers at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish deli? Nope, Second Amendment gun rights advocates in the state legislature’s public gallery. The quote is from Alan Gottlieb of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms who was working hard to distance the “stupid” from other gun rights protesters. (House bans openly carried weapons in public gallery)

At the same time, sounding not much different than extremist Islamists, legislator Brian Blake (D-Aberdeen) was proclaiming: “This is a culture war, folks. They don't like what we do, and they want to control what we do." (Hundreds of gun-rights activists rally at Washington Capitol)

Brian, Alan! Eat first, talk later!

--Mike Sato

Having A Drink With Bill Gates

Bill Gates

Starting out a new year writing with a blank sheet of paper requires examining the kinds of things I’d enjoy writing about. Oh, there’s the obligatory flogging of elected officials and regulators, black-hatted oil and coal and railroad guys, obscene profit-taking developers and bankers. But we’ll save that for another time because today, at the end of the first week of our national Congressional session and our state legislative session, here are three stories I’d rather tell you about:

What a great photo op: Bill Gates drinking a glass of water which five minutes earlier contained raw sewage which had been converted to clean water, electricity and ash. Thanks to the Gates Foundation and to the engineering prowess of Janicki Bioenergy  (in Sedro Wooley!), here’s technology that can literally change the world. Hello, Victoria! Peter Janicki explains all.

Leila and Miles Landis

This past month I spent time with my cousin who has been hospitalized because of complications arising from renal failure and dialysis. I came to appreciate how difficult life is with failing kidneys and on Wednesday happened upon a rebroadcast of KPLU reporter Gabriel Spitzer’s  Sound Effect interview, What It’s Like To Spend Your Late 20s On Dialysis, Then Be Saved By A Gift . I swear, after you listen to Leila Mirhaydari tell her story, you will feel so full of her energy, happiness, her joie de vivre that you will want to hug someone. I did.

And on Thursday morning I got an email asking whether I’d heard the “Chinese food” story about General Tso chicken. I had not but found a TED Radio interview from this past November with Jennifer 8.

Lee, Where Does General Tso Chicken Actually Come From?  Then by Thursday afternoon, Florangela Davila’s story, How The Non-Chinese History Of General Tso's Chicken Helps Explain Life As A Second-Gen American, had been posted, featuring a preview of Jennifer’s upcoming documentary, The Search for General Tso .

Now, that’s the kind of stuff I want to be writing about: food, healing, changing the world...

Great way to start out the news year. Much more interesting than Congress and the Legislature, don’t you think?

--Mike Sato

What Does It Mean To Be Hawaiian?

Laksa at Panya Bistro

The best part of thinking about what it meant to be Canadian was to be in Montreal during St-Jean Baptist Day eating hand-pulled Nouilles de Lan zhou in a large bowl, spicy, surrounded by people speaking Chinese.

Over the last couple of weeks, the best part of thinking about what it means to be Hawaiian was to be in Honolulu eating the laksa at Panya Bistro and the Belly Bowl ramen at Lucky Belly restaurant and driving my mother to hula lessons at the Alama Sisters’ hula studio.

My great-grandparents and grandparent emigrated to Hawaii from Japan, which makes me Japanese. But people who live in Hawaii are Hawaiian, like I guess I’m a Washingtonian when I’m living here along the Salish Sea. Sometimes my being Hawaiian when I’m Japanese gets confusing, especially when Polynesians in Hawaii speak for their native Hawaiian sovereignty.

Representatives of the U.S. Department of the Interior the last few weeks were holding public listening sessions with native Hawaiians on all the islands about if and how the federal government should approach recognition of native rights and claims. They listened and heard a long list of grievances from people who spoke of the injustice suffered from the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and the subsequent annexation of the islands by the U.S. government in 1898. According to news accounts, passions ran high and any proposed recognition with government-to-government relations similar to Native American tribal relations would be rejected. Restoration of the Hawaiian Kingdom seemed to be the rallying cry.

True, unlike Native American treaty tribes, no treaties were signed ceding land and rights in supposed exchange for federal protection. Land was taken when the monarchy was overthrown and land became private and federal when the islands were annexed. Who are the legitimate heirs to the land unjustly seized and what would restoration of a sovereign Hawaiian government look like in the 50th state of the union?

Ironies in Hawaii abound. Native American culture hasn’t penetrated Northwest living except for place names and maybe the ambiance of Ivar’s Salmon House and the opportunistic faux-Salish logo motifs. Whereas in Hawaii, you can fly to and fro on Hawaiian Airlines, get your electricity from Hawaiian Electric, watch Mormons dance and sing at the Polynesian Cultural Center and imagine yourself at a broadcast of “Hawaii Calls” from the Moana Hotel (the First Lady of Waikiki), if you didn’t want to join the other tourists at the “Pink Lady,” the Royal Hawaiian Hotel.

But there’s also too much of the faux-”A-looow-ha” and ugly his-and-her matching prints, badly mixed mai tais, rip-off coral jewelry; you know, the tourist stuff. But hula continues to be very popular, as is Hawaiian music, and my mother, as fully Japanese and as Hawaiian as when I’m in Hawaii, still goes to Saturday hula lessons taught by Puanani Alama (sister Leilani recently passed away) and Miss Yamauchi (Makaleka). Not far away at Yama’s Fish Market, you can get more good Hawaiian laulau, kalua pig, poki, poi, lomi lomi salmon and haupia than you can eat. And go deep into Hawaiian Art Deco, currently the major exhibit at the Honolulu Art Museum, or get lost in the Hawaiian and Polynesian exhibits at the Bishop Museum, or listen to the Royal Hawaiian Band on Fridays in the park for free....

If we are what we eat, then in Hawaii I was Hawaiian, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Mexican, Chinese. Didn’t get to Italian or Filipino this time.  On the Fourth of July, the flags were unfurled, the editorials written, the fireworks shot off. I made a bowl of baked beans, roasted some hot dogs and mixed up a potato salad for the family. I guess we were Americans that day.

Which brings me back to the bowls of noodles. To the laksa, the traditional Singaporean/Malaysian/Chinese dish made any number of ways with noodles, egg, shrimp, fish cake, beef strips, bean sprouts in a broth of beef stock, coconut milk, curry, fish sauce. "Noodle dishes are important in all cultures," Alice, the co-owner, says in a news interview, calling the food at Panya “comfort food.”

Belly Bowl at Lucky Belly

And the artisan ramen at Lucky Belly goes somewhere beyond all cultures. The Belly Bowl features in its broth belly bacon and sausage with bean sprouts, soft egg, wakame (seaweed), sesame seeds, green onion and ginger. Oh, and the noodles.

Next time we have something hard to talk about, we start with a bowl of noodles.

--Mike Sato

What Does It Mean To Be Canadian?

Nouilles de Lan zhou

I ask that having being in Montreal these last three days, reading signs in French, conversing with bartenders in English and having a great bowl of Nouilles de Lan zhou in a tiny restaurant in Chinatown where everyone was speaking Chinese.

And today is Saint-Jean-Baptist Day, a provincial holiday looked upon by the politically-motivated as an annual reminder that Quebec is French, not English, by others as a day off to party, and by others as a day somewhere in between. I did not meet anyone today agitating for an independent French Quebec; it rained today so I didn’t go the big parade or the music festival in the evening; I did go to Chinatown to have that wonderful bowl of hand-pulled noodles, beef slices, green onions, cilantro, white radish rounds, garlic and red chili oil in a broth of “30 natural  spices and Chinese medicinal herbs,” according to the colorful placemat given only to me, the only ‘foreigner’ in the place.

I’ve never asked my British Columbia colleagues what it means to be Canadian. If anything, they’ve stressed that they are not Americans. And anyway, those of us who inhabit the Salish Sea north and south of the border probably have more in common with each other and the Salish Sea than with the rest of our respective countrymen and women.

Except in rare instances, we do speak the same language. I don’t have to practice my French (poorly) when I go to Vancouver. I did before going to Montreal, the same way I practiced (poorly) before going to Brussels. But in Montreal,  the taxi driver from the airport spoke English and listened to gypsy jazz and broke into French when I ask if he spoke French. He also gave us a demonstration of Louisiana French, along with a brief linguistic analysis. You have to go to Quebec City, he said, if you want to hear only French— but even there, if you speak English, they will want to speak and practice their English.

But on the streets of Montreal I hear French: elderly gentlemen, young ladies, children, women in headscarves, black man with dreadlocks, even some Chinese. Carlos the Air Canada flight attendant announced in English, then French, en route to Trudeau Airport.

But the English-speaking bartender who grew up in Montreal shrugged when I asked him about Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day. Oh, he said, that’s something bigger in Quebec City.

French is the official language of Quebec and Canada’s official languages are French and English. Language has been both the flash point and the proxy for political and cultural battles in Quebec and between Quebec and the Canadian government. Today, if you believe the man on the radio talking this morning about what Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day means, to be a Quebecer is to be the best of both French and English. He said he was proud to be Canadian.

I’m not Canadian but I think it would be great if being French and English and Hispanic and Native American and Chinese were what it meant to be Canadian. Americans usually don’t think they can learn anything from another country. We might from our northern neighbor.

--Mike Sato

On The Subject of Herring

Pacific herring roe (Herring School)

There’s a new website from Herring School that will tell you almost everything you need to know about Pacific herring. Well, almost everything.

Pacific Herring Past, Present and Future will show you why herring is important in the ecosystem, in culture, in the economy— and how climate, harvest and habitat determine the species’ future.

“Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii) is a small, but hugely important fish to the ecology and the cultures of the Pacific coast.  Fish, sea mammals, and birds rely on this fish and its eggs for food. For thousands of years, this once abundant fish has been central to the social, cultural, and economic relations of coastal indigenous communities.”

Atlantic herring are found in the historical record going back 3,000 years. Called “forage fish” by some, females lay masses of herring eggs on kelp and sea grasses in the nearshore and males fertilize the eggs en mass often turning the water white. Different stocks of herring spawn at different times of the year in customary areas.

Nature’s fecundity ensures that enough eggs and fry survive to provide what must seem like an inexhaustible supply of fish for birds, larger fish, marine mammals, humans— and further reproduction. A Pacific herring can live for 19 years.

Being around in abundance for as long as they have, herring have provided every coastal culture with something to eat. My wife worked as a reporter covering the monthly meeting of the Poulsbo Chamber of Commerce at Viking House and how the luncheon smorgasbord was festooned with many varieties of pickled and preserved herring.

Special foods marks the Japanese New Year’s Day meal and one acquired a taste for (or at least tolerated) herring roe, kazunoko, symbolizing fertility for the coming year. More recently available and more palatable is the prevalence of herring eggs on seaweed, komochi kombu.

Then there’s kippered herring (split, gutted and cold smoked) and bloaters (whole gutted and cold smoked) and buckling herring (whole, gutter apart and hot smoked. (Wikipedia/herring/food)

There’s Filipino dried herring, Swedish herring soup, and Tilingit herring eggs collected on hemlock boughs during the spawn and boiled and eaten plain or in herring salad. Nigel Slater gets fancy with Swedish matjes (soused herring) and Jamie Oliver cooks herring linguine.

I’d gone salmon fishing once, cutting perfect plugs from frozen salmon but managing to catch nothing. I went home and, not wanting to waste the bait, fried it and ate it.

Like the orca whale, we’re at the top of the food chain supposedly eating down to the bottom. But I learned that herring, too, feeds down,  growing up feeding on plankton like copepods, tiny crustaceans swimming the world’s oceans. And I learned that ocean acidification dissolves crustacean shells. No herring food, no herring, pickled or otherwise; no herring roe, no fertility, no fecundity.

--Mike Sato

On The Subject of Frogs

From the film: "Kung Fu Hustle"

I’m still sad thinking about the frog populations crashing, as described by Elizabeth Kobert in the opening chapter of The Sixth Extinction. But on spring nights that have finally arrived, it’s heartening to hear the frogs croaking away in the retention pond across the way.

Laurie MacBride in her Eye on Environment blog treats us to a photo and some observations about the Pacific Chorus frogs (aka Pacific Tree frogs) that serenade her at her British Columbia home. She provides a link for those who might live in and amongst concrete to experience what the frogs sound like.

On the Big Island of Hawaii, friends asked me to wait until dark to get the full experience of hearing the cacophony of the coqui frogs which have invaded the islands of Hawaii and Maui and now are considered invasive pests. Here’s how one looks and sounds like which seems innocuous enough but can achieve a din when magnified by the tens of hundreds. The irritation comes from the randomness of the calls, the arhythmic din which never approaches soothing chirps but have been known to drive calm people to conduct nighttime extermination hunts and to sell houses and return to where concrete prevails.

These last few weeks have put frogs for various reasons in the pages of the local news.

As described in an article in The Herald, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is working with organizations to restore native Oregon spotted frogs, listed as an endangered species in this state since 1997. The agency collects egg masses, and the partners raise the tadpoles to adult frogs in a safe environment before they are released. (A helping hand for endangered frogs)

Meanwhile, the Globe and Mail reports that municipal officials in and around Victoria are warned to be ready for American bullfrogs, “dinner-plate-sized” invaders with mouths nearly as wide as their bodies who will gobble down anything they can, including bugs, birds and fish. (Brace for amphibian predator invasion, B.C. warned)

That last item brought a comment from Helen Engle who recalls:

“... during the ’great depression’ people hunted down bullfrogs and cooked and ate their muscular parts as quite a delicacy. Is my memory correct on that? Are they still being eaten by humans? That animal is a menace in most wetland places (including gardens) — he eats everything that moves with an appetite that would scare one.”

And a comment by Tony Angell who wrote:

“Bull Frogs? With all the focus on celebrity chefs (Tom Douglas ad nausea) and our indulgent duty to eat while "Rome Burns" why not send out a recipe for frog legs? I was whoppin them (you had to knock them out rather than spear them) in the lakes of Michigan in the late l940s and they have a season on them there. We ate frog legs for dinner night after night and they were delicious. Who knows, with the revenue from bull frog harvesting licenses we might restore a wetland for waterfowl and perch.”

And now we sing: “Frog went a-courtin' and he did ride, uh-huh...”

--Mike Sato

No, You Shouldn’t Eat The Fish—Not Yet

Fish-consumption rates in Washington state— which has a lot to do with how much toxic pollution in fish people can safely consume— are back in the news, thanks to conservation and commercial fishing groups.  As of today, the state estimates that people consumer on average about 7 oz. of fish a month, about two servings, and has been very slowly considering revisions. On Friday, Earthjustice sued the Environmental Protection Agency to prompt the federal government to require the state to update consumption rates and better protect human health. ( EPA sued over Washington fish-consumption estimates )

This issue applies to ‘resident’ fish that inhabit our bays and estuaries year-round living in the toxic chemicals from our modern lifestyles— not the salmon that pass through our marine waters and estuaries. Everybody has known for years the consumption levels are too low, especially for Native Americans and subsistence fishers. The problem in raising the consumption levels to protect fish eaters is that it would also require tightening pollution standards governing the disposal of toxic chemical into our Puget Sound bays and estuaries.

On one hand, people are at risk eating contaminated fish. On the other hand? According to the spokesperson for the Association of Washington Business in the news article above, it’s a competitiveness issue for industries who care about health and human safety but need to consider regulations that might not allow them to “keep their doors open and people employed.”

As for the state regulator’s point of view, I heard Ecology staff Josh Baldi tell the Puget Sound Partnership’s Leadership Council that it’s not a simple matter because saying people eat more fish than two servings a month would mean that less industrial pollutants would be allowed to be discharged— and discharges are already so tightly controlled that it might not be cost-efficient to require industry to control more.

According to Boeing in a story filed by Ashley Ahearn of EarthFix, a higher fish consumption rate would cost the company hundreds of millions of dollars in upgrades at its facilities to lower pollution discharges into Washington waterways. ( Enviros and Fish Groups File Lawsuit To Raise Fish Consumption Standards http://earthfix.kcts9.org/water/article/enviros-and-fish-groups-file-lawsuit-to-raise-fish/ )

So, do we have to choose? The health of Indians and subsistence fishers or airplanes and jobs? Industries and corporations would like to make it a choice because I’d bet people would choose airplanes and jobs.

But should we have to choose? It’s hard to believe that smart people who run places like Boeing cannot engineer ways to reduce and eliminate pollution to the Sound. After all, they do a pretty good job with airplanes.

Would it cost “hundreds of millions”? I don’t know and I don’t think they do either, and maybe it would create, not eliminate jobs.

But the best part of reducing and eliminating toxic pollution going into our waterways isn’t for the benefit of Indians and subsistence fishers— it’s for all of us who live and work and recreate in the waterways of Puget Sound. The real choice is a cleaner Sound and ensuring healthy human lives.

Let's keep it as simple as possible by thinking about corporations the way they like to be thought of— as individuals, people like you and me. No individual, no matter how rich or powerful,  is above the law. So, if I see an individual putting toxic chemicals into the waterway, I’d say stop and expect the government to do its job to stop the pollution. If the individual didn’t stop, I guess we’d see everyone in court— which seems to be where things are heading now.

--Mike Sato

Godzilla’s Revenge

On Wednesday BBC News  reported that radiation levels around tanks storing contaminated water at Japan's crippled Fukushima nuclear plant have risen by a fifth to a new high. I don’t know what millisieverts are but Tuesday’s reading near one set of tanks was 2,200 (mSv), a rise from the weekend’s 1,800 mSv reading. ( Radiation levels hit new high near Fukushima water tanks )

The problem is that the fuel rods in the plant have to be cooled with water but the radioactive water stored on site cannot be contained from entering the sea.

The same day as the BBC news item was posted, m colleague Laurie MacBride forwarded to me a pretty alarming commentary by Gary Stamper in Collapsing into Consciousness titled, “At the Very Least, Your Days of Eating Pacific Ocean Fish Are Over”.

“The heart-breaking news from Fukushima just keeps getting worse…a LOT worse…it is, quite simply, an out-of-control flow of death and destruction,” writes Stamper. “It now appears that anywhere from 300 to possibly over 450 tons of contaminated water that contains radioactive iodone, cesium, and strontium-89 and 90, is flooding into the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima Daichi site everyday. To give you an idea of how bad that actually is, Japanese experts estimate Fukushima’s fallout at 20-30 times as high as as the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings in 1945.”

I can’t judge how much of his alarm is justified but it is alarming: seal and polar bear deformities, dead and starving sea lions, increased thyroid problems, elevated radioactivity levels in U.S. waters, radioactive plankton, a precaution against eating Pacific seafood.

Laurie need not have apologized for sending such horridly depressing news. But, she said, “It puts everything else into a rather different perspective....and makes me wonder what the heck to make for dinner (tonight or for the rest of my life).”

It is depressing news and not being covered well by the media. On the other hand, I follow the news enough to know what is happening but, unlike most of the other things I get involved in, I feel pretty powerless to do anything about the situation.

I’m old enough to have grown up “in the shadow of the bomb” and learned about cow’s milk contaminated by radioactivity from atmospheric testing carried aloft and deposited on pastures grazed by dairy cattle. People demanded “Ban the Bomb” and governments didn’t but they did stop testing in the atmosphere and, finally, stopped testing all together.

I don’t know how Fukushima’s radioactivity will be stabilized and how the radioactive water will be contained and kept out of the Pacific ecosystem. I do know that we humans may not be very wise in some of the things we do but we are very good at engineering solutions: the only hope I see is for an engineering solution to stop the leakage to keep the radiation from becoming any more harmful.

Every since the first time I saw the Japanese science fiction movie Godzilla, I’ve cheered for the monster. He arose out of Tokyo Bay as a result of radiation and mutation and wreaked havoc on man and his civilization. This time, at Fukushima, I’m going to cheer on the engineers. Get the best minds together, spare no expense, stop the destruction.

--Mike Sato

Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Herring

A flock of seagulls squawked excitedly the other day in San Juan Channel off the tip of the Fisherman Bay peninsula, probably around a school of baitfish brought to the surface by feeding salmon or a seal. Maybe it’s just my rose-colored recollection of the past but it seems to me that there used to be more times when I’d see those flocks of sea birds feeding.

I never have seen the herring or baitfish below the surface forced up by a predator into protecting themselves by forming a ball, the idea being that those on the outside would be eaten before those on the inside. The “ball” would wind to the surface where the sea birds would dive from above, screeching and squawking in their frenzy.

When fishing, that’s when your heart starts to thumpin’, your feet start to jumpin’-- and you want to get as close to the action and move your plug bait or killer lure around the frenzy.

Maybe there aren’t as many herring these days or maybe there aren’t as many salmon or maybe I don’t spend as much time looking across the water. The last time I was out fishing, the daybreak on the water was spectacular, the fish finder gear fascinated me, and it didn’t matter that we didn’t catch anything.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve baited a double-hook array just right so that the herring looks like the live bait it’s supposed to be when it’s dropped over the side and slowly trailed at the proper depth behind the boat. The last time I did that maybe the salmon weren’t there that day or maybe the hooks just weren’t baited right; I took the herring home and fried them up.

Getting a fish meal that way was simpler and a lot less trouble— but surely not as much fun.

A bit more elaborate but certainly festive is a whole different kind of herring ball made of herring, potatoes, onions, pepper, and olives and garnished with all kinds of good stuff. Enjoy.

--Mike Sato

Adventures in Bunnyland

It’s the first of July and in years past the wild rabbits have been eaten by the coyotes that howl in the woods at night. This year the coyotes have been silent and the rabbits are still around, living in the bushes and behind the woodpile, emerging in the morning and the evening to eat the yard’s clover and the planted beds’ succulent shoots.

Rabbits’ Guy says these are wild cottontails and that the rabbit-coyote populations fluctuate back and forth. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife on their Living With Wildlife website says these were introduced in the 1930s as a game animal. They begin breeding— like rabbits— from mid-February through the summer with a 30-day gestation period. On any given morning or evening there are big ones and little ones in the yard and around the neighborhood and one can probably surmise what the others are doing in the bushes.

My old dog knows he can’t play the catch-me-if-you-can game: the last time he chased one he came back limping so now he chases after those pellets they poop on the lawn and gets yelled at. The neighbors call them “bunnies” because they look cute. Cuteness is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve read Richard Adams’s Watership Down and watched the killer rabbit segment of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. These are not wild animals to be trifled with, despite “bunny” being an American colloquialism deriving from the Scottish bun for buttocks. Heh, heh, the neighbors said, “Bunny.”

The first summer I lived on Lopez in the early ‘70s, the roads at night were filled with the Belgian hares that had been introduced in the islands at the start of the century. Jim Lawrence in his book Callused Hands, Hungry Heart writes about the blessing of “road kill stews” bestowed on the young, poor and hungry during those days on San Juan Island.

“There was so much protein crossing the country roads in little bunny suits, it was always just a matter of time before you or the car in front of you knocked one in the head without destroying the flesh. With a quick swerve to the side of the road, I’d lean out the driver’s door and throw the limp carcass behind the front seat, only to cook it for dinner a few hours later. Saved a 22 bullet.”

My mother tells the story of my uncle serving fried rabbit without telling his niece, who thought it was chicken. “What’s up, doc?” he said to her— repeatedly— until she figured out what he was getting at. He stopped preparing rabbit, however, after one had its front paws up, trembling, before he killed it. “It looked like it was praying,” he said.

Ruth Reichl tells Michael Pollan a story in the article “No Reservations” in the June issue of Smithsonian about publishing a profile in Gourmet Magazine about chef Thomas Keller killing a rabbit:

“So there’s this scene where Keller wanted to make rabbits and kill them himself. And he does a really inept job. He manages to break this rabbit’s leg as he’s trying to kill it and he says rabbits scream really loud. It’s gruesome.And we thought long and hard about whether we were going to put this in the story. And I said: ‘It’s going in because he concludes that if he’s alone in the kitchen and he’s finally killed this rabbit, it’s going to be the best rabbit anybody ever ate because he finally understood in that kitchen with this screaming rabbit that meat was life itself.’”

So, here’s to life itself hopping around in my yard.

--Mike Sato

Eat More Fish— Live Longer or Die Sooner

Eat Fish (Wikimedia Commons)

We have a problem here: scientists and doctors tell us that eating seafood high in omega-3 fatty acids can extend our lives— while reporter Robert McClure tells us the state of Washington is failing to deal with toxic chemicals in seafood which can shorten our lives.

First the good news: As reported in Science Daily ( Eating Fish Associated With Lower Risk of Dying Among Older Adults: Risk of Dying from Heart Disease Significantly Lowered ), a new study by Harvard School of Public Health and University of Washington researchers found that older adults who had the highest blood levels of the fatty acids found in fish lived, on average, 2.2 years longer than those with lower levels.

On the other hand, Robert McClure at InvestigateWest reported last week ( Business Interests Trump Health Concerns in Fish Consumption Fight ) that state efforts to protect the health of Washington residents who regularly consume dangerous amounts of toxic chemicals in fish from local waterways has been stymied by Boeing and other business interests.

"The problem," McClure writes, “lies in Ecology’s estimate of how much fish people eat. The lower the amount, the more water pollution Ecology can legally allow. So by assuming that people eat the equivalent of just one fish meal per month, Ecology is able to set less stringent pollution limits.”

But: “(T)he state Department of Health advises people to eat fish twice a week, eight times as often as the official estimate of actual consumption. The state knows that some members of Indian tribes, immigrants and other fishermen consume locally caught seafood even more often than that and are therefore at greater risk of cancer, neurological damage and other maladies.:

Does it matter? Of course it does. Will anyone in a position of leadership do anything about re-calibrating these scales of environmental justice? We’ll have to wait to see-- or we can start making more of a ruckus demanding action.

--Mike Sato

Eating ‘Local’

I’ve been eating at several different tables these last few months and paying more attention to how menus have become rather elaborate in their descriptions and highlighting their ‘local’ ingredients.

Unfortunately, most of this is lost on me, just like when nice wait staff recite the day’s specials in wonderful detail and lose me after the second item.

I’m happy that we are all cooking with more local ingredients, period. But I wonder if it makes any difference if I know that the mushrooms are Hamakua wild mushrooms, the pork is Shinsato Farm pork, the short ribs are Maui Cattle Co. meat, the oysters are Blau oysters, the steak from Skagit River Ranch?

It does help define your brand and distinguish you from the greasy spoon diners and fast food joints. But if all the big kids are cooking ‘local,’ then it’s the same as nobody cooking local— as far as branding is concerned.

Where can we go from here?

There’s local— and there’s fresh.

There are Chinese restaurants where you can choose for your meal the rockfish fish or the Dungeness crabs still swimming in their tanks. There are sushi restaurants where the fresh water eel is gutted and prepared on the spot-- very local, very fresh.

I grew up skin diving and some of the best times were had coming out of the water, building a fire, and throwing the day’s catch of fish and octopus on the grill at the beach. Local and fresh.

I’m sure I’ll end up one day in a restaurant where I’ll be invited to go out to the hen house in back to collect my three eggs for my omelet and maybe even the basil, parsley and rosemary from the herb garden.

But I think I’ll draw the line if it came to knowing the name of the lamb whose rack of ribs I was eating, although it didn’t stop me from slaughtering two young buck goats a long time ago and eating ‘Gray Goat’ and “Brown Goat.” Never a good idea to name an animal you’re going to eat.

What are you eating these days?

--Mike Sato

Otto Cake Light and Dark

(Photo: Rid Sevilla)

I got treated on my birthday to the best piece of cheesecake I’ve ever had— a piece of haupia cheesecake baked by the one-named cheesecake baker Otto who does business on the edge of Honolulu’s Chinatown as Otto Cake. Not light. It was like eating light.

Otto moved from New York and gets nearly perfect Yelp and Urban Spoon ratings after opening his small storefront on Smith Street in 2009.

Otto Cake turned out to be near the small underground parking garage between Nuuanu and Smith streets I usually park in when going to Chinatown. It’s a pretty sketchy neighborhood, with an open area playground facing Otto Cake and a corner taken up by the Trinity Broadcasting Network where street people sleep in the building’s shade.

The dark part of Otto Cake is when Otto got beaten up a little over a year ago when he confronted a drug dealer transacting a sale outside his shop. For a while, fearing retaliation, he continued baking but locked his door, asking customers to call in advance or to knock to be allowed in.

Otto Cake’s door was open for business when I visited; on the windows were pasted handwritten letters from kids saying “We love you, Otto.”

Great cheesecake, Otto Cake. Good man, Otto. I love you, too.

--Mike Sato

They Eat Horses, Don’t They?

When I lived in Portland, Oregon, in the ‘60s, I bought horse meat at what I am trying to recall was called “The Horse Meat Market” downtown near the “The Buttermilk Corner.”

I hadn’t thought about that all these years— until last week’s breaking news that horse meat was found in European countries in what was had been thought to be mixtures of beef and pork. And —is nothing sacred?-- found in Ikea meatballs.

One can’t necessarily vouch for the veracity of anything recalled about the ‘60s but I do recall buying a “round steak,” absolutely red, with absolutely no fat. At the Horse Meat Market. I cooked it and ate it. As my father used to ask me: do you do things because you want to save money or because you want to go back a hundred years? I think I bought horse meat because it was cheap and because — if I were going to eat red meat — I heard it was good for me.

I still try to save money and I still try to eat wisely but I haven’t seen horse meat on the butcher racks since the ‘60s. Why not?

According to Eric Niler, writing on “Why Are Americans Squeamish About Horse Meat?”, “Mongolians love it. So do Bulgarians, Swiss, Belgians and French. But Americans -- no way. Eating horse meat is a culinary taboo that started early in our nation's history and continues today. Food experts say it's a distaste that is part emotional and part economic: we love our horses and even if we didn't, we're a wealthy country that can afford to eat choicer cuts of meat.”

Is it hard to think about eating or to actually eat Mr. Ed, Black Beauty, Silver, Trigger...? I’m sure some people have the same problem with Bugs, Daffy, Donald, Porky and Bambi.

Back to horse meat: According to Wikipedia, Mexico was or is the second largest producer of horse meat in the world.

There is a thriving horse meat business in Quebec, and horse meat found in Vancouver, B.C., was described by a Time Magazine reviewer as “sweet, rich, superlean, oddly soft meat, closer to beef than venison."

In Japan, order it as basashi, thinly sliced raw pieces dipped in soy sauce with ginger and onions.

And in England, Alex Renton in The Guardian blogs on “How Britain got a taste for horsemeat”:

“Restaurants and pubs up and down the country are serving up horse steaks. So where should you go for yours? Could horse catch on? It is half the price of beef and undeniably delicious. I went to a steak tasting at Edinburgh's L'Escargot Bleu bistro at the height of the scandal. Chef and patron Fred Berkmillar had packed in 12 Scottish foodies, cooks and meat suppliers and gave us rump steaks to try. One was the best 30-day-aged Orkney beef, the other Comtois horse, farmed in the Dordogne.

“You could have confused the horse with beef, but its steak – juicy, tender, just slightly gamey – won the fry-off by 12 votes to none. And we were all the better for it: horse has lots of  iron, little fat and lots of omega-3. It is healthier than beef, so long as you're not eating an old steeplechaser laced with phenylbutazone. It is not true, by the way, that "bute" is one of those horse painkillers with recreational possibilities.”

I was going to go on about d-o-g but Joe Spike my d-o-g sitting next to me is growling so I’ll stop with horse.

-- Mike Sato

Some Things Settled: Thanksgiving Turkey, Black Friday

First of all, the standoff between my granddaughter and the turkey was called a draw before Thanksgiving Day.

The turkey that did lose was a 22-pounder brined externally by channeling Molly Stevens, two days before Thursday and left to season in the refrigerator. Two hours to room temperature, four-and-a-half hours at 350-degrees after an initial singe at 450, then an hour’s rest before deboning and carving deli style— all in all, a pretty good eating bird. The only leftover by the weekend was a small portion of turkey soup.

So it’s settled: It is possible to have a simple, tasty turkey...

Despite what Mark Bittman claims is an annual culinary disaster:

“At the hands of all but the most experienced, careful or lucky cooks, the more than 700 million pounds of turkey we’ll buy this week will wind up with breast meat that’s cottony-dry and leg meat that is underdone, tough, stringy or all three. And although a friend of mine claims that this is how people like it — “it’s exactly how our grandmothers did it, and it’s what we grew up with,” he says — I believe this explains why we waste an estimated $282 million worth of turkey each year, enough to feed each food-insecure American with 11 servings.” All Hail the Sweet Potato  

Before going on to extol the virtues of the sweet potato, Bittman concedes: “Thanksgiving is a celebratory feast that has little to do with the harvest or the brilliance of the food but rather family and memories and, usually, obligations.”

His contention that we don’t get together to eat good food on Thanksgiving but are basically celebrating a tradition made me rethink all the messages I got encouraging me to take part in Black Friday and those I got dissing Black Friday.

“It’s a family tradition,” a Black Friday shopper said in one news account.

So that settles it for me about Black Friday.

It’s not one of my family traditions like eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I’d give a polite ‘no thank you’ to an offer to join in a tofukey meal or to join you on Black Friday--- but if tofukey or Black Friday are part of your traditions, go to it. I simply suggest we be polite in going about our traditions. After all, customs are the rocks upon which our societies are erected, but there’s little gained by throwing them at each other.

--Mike Sato

Toro, Poke and Ceviche

Last weekend I enjoyed a piece of a toro nigiri sushi. Toro is from the fatty belly of the bluefin tuna. I know, I know— eating any part of a bluefin tuna should get me 50 lashes with a wasabi root-- but it was an incredible taste experience.



I promise that’s the first and last time I’ll eat toro sushi or sashimi.


In my ordinary life, I’ve limited my appetite for raw fish to ahi, or yellowtail tuna, even though Greenpeace in 2010 red flagged the catch as unsustainably harvested. Yellowfin as sashimi is a ceremonial dish and an expensive indulgence in Hawaii at New Year’s meals but It’s also a more affordable, year-round treat prepared as poki, a raw dish prepared with cubed ahi, sweet onion, green onion, soy sauce and sesame oil. That’s the basic recipe but there are variations adding kukui nut, Hawaiian seaweeds, hot peppers and more.

(Last weekend’s San Francisco-style poke came with bits of chopped pineapple. Ugh.)


There’s no excuse for eating bluefin tuna, thank you, but I think I can assuage the shame of eating yellowtail which might be endangered, threatened or unsustainably harvested by eating cerviche, bits of fresh raw fish marinated in lemon or lime juice and spiced with chilli peppers, onion, salt, cilantro, and pepper. The amount of fish to the total volume of the dish is relatively modest and the fresh taste sensational.

I had my samplers of cerviche at Fresca, a Peruvian restaurant on Fillmore. I’ve might be tempted to try it at home but it sure was a lot more fun eating it in San Francisco.


 
--Mike Sato