My wife and I were talking over dinner the other night about what we had as kids, and the kinds of things we liked and disliked. We also noted some of the food that was common place back then, but now is not as readily available. I’m sure that you can get anything you want if you shop at specialized stores, like seafood stands and butchers, but I do the shopping and I go to the closest store and get everything in one fell swoop.
One item I noticed that is no longer displayed in the meat section of the grocery store I most frequent is liver. It was always a staple in our house when growing up, and something that we have with regularity to this day. (You either love it, or hate it, and I believe that we’re in the 25% that enjoys liver…with bacon of course.)
I had to ask during a recent shopping trip where beef liver was…they had some pre-packaged and hidden away in the frozen food section. In the past, you could find fresh calves liver as well as beef and pork liver displayed in the meat area. Chicken livers...that’s it for the unfrozen stuff.
You just don’t see a stewing chicken these days either. While it’s never been a bird I’ve sought out, I remember seeing them at the store. Now all you see is just a thing called “a chicken”. My mom used to lament that she could no longer find “stewers” for her chicken and dumplings she liked (put that on my “meh” list). There is a variety of chickens: Roasters, Stewers, Fryers, etc. I don’t see chicken labeled as such… Maybe I’m not paying attention. I just go the basic, generic chicken… Julia Child will introduce us to the “Chicken Sisters” here. The variety…who knew?
Another item that isn’t found much these days is smelt…the fish, not the refining process. These migratory fish swarm up rivers in the more temperate areas of the world every year around this time of year.
They would be cheap! I remember buying them last at 39 cents a pound. They were one of the things my wife would like to cook, she’d fry them whole, and we’d eat the tails, fins and all. While I have never done so, it is a popular sports activity to go smelt “dipping” when the runs come.
But some 25 years ago, they became a lot less plentiful as noted in 2008…
…The oily 6-inch fish once swarmed so thick that a single dip with a net or bucket was enough to land a person's daily limit. No one tallied the recreational catch, and the commercial harvest was as much as 6 million pounds and an average of 2 million pounds a year until 1993… No such luck these days. Smelt dippers now often come away without so much as a single fish.
…Reasons for the decline are unclear.Wright said it could reflect climate-related changes in the chemical composition of the ocean that affect the availability of microscopic plants and animals that smelt eat….
…Today, smelt have vanished from the Sacramento River in California, the Klamath in California and Oregon and the Rogue in Oregon.The Columbia River system, including the Cowlitz, is now the last watershed south of the Canadian border with any smelt runs.
So smelt are off the supper table now.
But it’s the decline of razor clams that bothers me the most. Growing up on the Washington Coast, I spend plenty of early mornings clam-digging with my family. My dad loved it, a cheap resource, easily obtained. So when the minus tides came in the spring, we would take a 15 minute drive out of town and hit the beach. It was tough getting out of a nice, warm car at zero-dark-30 (why were the tides in the morning?) with the cold wind blowing sand in your face as you dragged your gunny sack down to the surf. Getting in touch initially with the cold sea water was a shock…but once wet, it was all good. That’s how I learned to drink black coffee…out of the thermos once we dug our limit and returned to the car, shivering.
In my childhood, the limit was 18. And with 4 of us digging…that’s 72 clams, averaging each about 5 inches long. Free food you could prepare in many ways…from chowder to fritters. We would go several times a year, mostly at the lowest tides, but there was no season. We all loved them eating them, pretty much a staple, frozen in the freezer for use throughout the year.
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The mighty razor clam!
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The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife official how-to video...
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...and the short version. Digging with a shovel...the only way to do it!
...
This natural bounty was not destined to last forever as the beaches became more crowded. The last time we went digging, I was about 25. The limit had been reduced to 15 and you needed to buy a license to pin on your clothes. It was a small price to protect the clam beds and preserve that unique sporting opportunity...
...But soon, tragedy struck.
Domoic acid, a toxin produced by a certain type of phytoplankton and toxic to humans was found in the clams in 1991, and things haven’t been the same since. While that was the worst outbreak of the contamination, the state must still test for this toxin.
With that monitoring, as well as to protect the stock, the state will now only allow recreational digging at specified periods throughout the year, depending on the coastal area. It’s a location to location...day by day...hour by hour season, one that varies yearly.
Those days of plenty are over...A bit of the culture I shared is too.
Are there foods you like that are harder to find?
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