foodperson.com

I’m fascinated by Mark Bittman’s Summer Express: 101 Simple Meals Ready in 10 Minutes or Less, which appeared earlier this week in the NY Times.

The Times’ primary audience, of course, is New Yorkers, but I nevertheless couldn’t help but read Bittman’s list in the context of a midcontinent denizen. About 35 percent of his meals, by my reckoning, aren’t suitable for preparation in these parts because they require ingredients available only from distant suppliers. Those ingredients, primarily seafood, must be transported long distances and, usually, frozen or canned to reach us here in the heartland. And if they aren’t frozen or canned, they generally aren’t too good by the time they arrive in the supermarket fish department.

Then there’s my growing “food miles” consciousness. Is shrimp something someone in Kansas ought to be eating? I don’t think so. Ditto for mussels, flounder, lobster, littlenecks, tuna, salmon, crab, flounder. Reading Bittman’s list made me want to come up with my own summer express meals. I’ll work on it.

In the meantime, I wondered about local or regional fish that might make for quick meals. The Kansas Aquaculture Association website lists the following fish available for food: channel catfish, largemouth bass, bluegill, crappie, walleye, buffalo, trout, grass carp/white amus and redear sunfish. Of those, only catfish have appeared in my local fish cases, at least when I was looking. I’ve seen trout, but I don’t think it is from regional sources (let’s say Kansas, Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma).

Here in Kansas, we want “local” fish to be farm-raised (and catfish is one of the few farm-raised fish types to be viewed as environmentally acceptable), because fish pulled from our rivers is too full of PCBs, atrazine and the like to be eaten with any regularity.

Most locally raised fish, I’m pretty sure, winds up being trucked to and deposited in ponds and lakes in the state.

Does this mean Plains people can’t eat fish? Not at all, but it’s unlikely that 35 percent of our quick meals will come from fish or some of the other foods on the list. If anyone know where someone can buy freshwater fish in these parts, I’d be interested to hear about it. Meanwhile, I guess I’ll start on my list of 101 quick meals. Suggestions welcome.