Slow Fish 2016 Guest Post Series!!

by Spencer Montgomery
This is one in a series of stories from some of the people attending Slow Fish 2016.

There's less than a week to go until we're all together in New Orleans for Slow Fish 2016: Gateway to the Americas! I'll be road trippin' it down in a 12-passenger van, with seats still available, in case there are any last-minute takers!

If you can't make it to Slow Fish this year, then please consider making a last-minute donation to our crowd-sourcing campaign to help cover the registration cost of a fisherman to attend.

Slow Fish has become a central theme of my life. So much so that I am now working as a part-time, commercial hand gear fisherman on the F/V Finlander out of Eliot, ME.

For me, it began a couple years ago, when I distributed surveys to 44 members of our local campus Slow Food chapter at the University of New Hampshire. The survey's purpose was to help guide our efforts as a group, since we had grown so quickly. Surprisingly, more than half of the students expressed a strong interest in learning more about 'seafood sustainability'.

I realized that I knew nothing of the subject.

Together with my peers, I began exploring what it meant to be a sustainable eater in the realm of seafood. I reached out to gain perspective from local fishermen, chefs, professors and community organizations. Eventually, I discovered the Slow Fish campaign and was hooked!

Our group decided to host a Slow Fish Workshop and a Seafood Throwdown to begin exploring the seasonality and biodiversity of fish as food. 

Working with local fishermen, we were able to procure seven different species of fish for the workshop. These included beautiful, whole specimens of monkfish, white hake, Acadian redfish, winter flounder, whiting, Atlantic pollock, and dogfish.

Twenty eager students showed up, ready to learn how to fillet and cook with each of the species. We crafted everything from monkfish stew to dogfish ceviche. We even used leftover fish heads and bones to make culinary stocks. Our workshop was even featured on tv! Click here to watch.

Moving Markets

Given its hands on approach, our Slow Fish Workshop served as a gateway for us to learn more about 'sustainable seafood'. We were hungry for more. Within one semester, our Slow Food group collaborated with the University to get more than 2,000 pounds of local seafood into our dining halls! Read about the case study here.

The Slow Fish Workshop was a huge success at UNH and the concept has since spread to four other U.S. States, including Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and even Vermont! Each workshop's story is wholly unique, given its local watershed and the fishing community it serves to embrace.

So, feast your eyes my friends! Slow Fish is going to college!

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY

Led by Margaret Wittier-Ferguson, students at Northeastern University partnered with a local community supported fishery (CSF), Cape Ann Fresh Catch, to source the freshest Atlantic pollock for their Slow Fish Workshop! Over 15 students had their first experience butchering a whole fish.

Whole fish food culture

Whole animal utilization is a core concept of Slow Fish. As consumers, our ability to accept whole fish can greatly enhance the success of CSFs and other forms of direct marketing. Plus, there's great value in cooking with the whole animal! (i.e. you get fresh fish collars, and leftover fish heads & bones can make delicious fish stocks for risotto, bouillabaisse, ètouffèe, gumbo, grits & more!)

UNIVERSITY OF RHODE ISLAND

At the University of Rhode Island (URI), student leaders, Kayleigh Hill and Emily Desrochers, hosted a Slow Fish workshop to increase their community's appetite for locally-abundant, underutilized and invasive species of seafood.

Students partnered with Sarah Schumann, a Rhode Island commercial shellfish harvester and president of Eating with the Ecosystem, to source periwinkles (Littorina littorea) and invasive green crabs (Carcinus maenas) for the workshop. Green crabs are quickly destroying native shellfish beds from Cape Ann to Nova Scotia. One green crab can devour 40 small clams and 30 oysters, in a single day! Green crabs are also notorious for mowing down vital eelgrass beds, which provide crucial habitat for species like the Nantucket bay scallop.

The solution? If you can't beat 'em, eat 'em!

Eating with the Ecosystem

Biodiversity is an essential ingredient for eating with the ecosystem, which requires a balanced selection of seafood from all trophic levels.

Silver hake (Merluccius bilinearis) and Atlantic butterfish (Peprilus triacanthus) were among other species at the URI workshop. Students filleted the hake and used it to make ceviche with rhubarb, lemon & pink peppercorn. You can read more here.

"It's my hope that this workshop will spark interest in getting RI-cuaght seafood into our dining halls at URI" says Kayleigh Hill.

Last Man Fishing

Students at URI were also joined by J.D. Schuyler, director of the upcoming documentary Last Man Fishing. J.D. and film producer, Kelley Jordan will both be attending Slow Fish in New Orleans. For a glimpse of their work, check out this short video they made about the Slow Fish Workshop at URI.

COLLEGE OF THE ATLANTIC

Student leader, Marlene Nuart, organized a Slow Fish workshop at the College of the Atlantic.

At the workshop, students heard real-time stories of indigenous food sovereignty struggles from Vera Francis of the Passamaquoddy tribe. Here's an article that highlights the importance of the indigenous oversight of marine resources in Maine.

Students collaborated with Paul Molyneaux, journalist and fisherman, to procure species native to Down East Maine. The menu included fresh, whole smelts and "bloaters". "Bloaters", traditional to the area, refer to whole, cold-smoked alewives. The preparation involves alewives that have been salted and lightly-smoked with the guts still intact to yield a unique, gamey flavor.

Once the meal was composed, everyone gathered around a big dinner table that directly overlooked the Atlantic Ocean.

UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT

What does a vibrant seafood culture look like for land-locked territories?

Most recently, the Slow Fish campaign docked at the University of Vermont. At the helm, student leaders, Olivia Percoco and Katharine Nash, sourced invasive marine species while also working to shift the perception & culture around eating fresh-water species from Lake Champlain.

Incredibly, UVM students were able to procure 10 different species from the Gulf of Maine and Lake Champlain!

Local Burlington chef, Doug Paine, has been using his menu to transform the lingering stigma around eating fish from Lake Champlain. For the Slow Fish Workshop, he donated several fresh-water species, including: rock bass, yellow perch, pumpkinseed, and blue gills.

Students also sourced native & invasive crabs from Wells Harbor, Maine, including: Jonah crabs, rock crabs, and invasive European green crabs. The crabs were submerged in boiling water and melded with aromatics to produce a flavorful crab stock - which became a central component of the students' crab risotto.

Offshore offerings included Atlantic pollock and mackerel, which students procured directly from Eliot, Maine fisherman, Tim Rider of the F/V Finlander.

Know Your Fisherman

Nationwide, farmers' markets serve as platforms for local producers. We can go and shake the hand of the person who grew our tomatoes. We can ask a farmer where and how they produced our honey. Farmers have become local celebrities (and for very good reason!)

But, for fishermen, similar infrastructure fails to exist.

The Slow Fish campaign seeks to build a similar culture of support for fishermen. By procuring fish directly from community-based fishermen, we can better discern our role as co-producers of the seafood we eat.

See you in New Orleans!

I am excited to share more Slow Fish stories with you in New Orleans! Watershed storytelling will be a central theme of Slow Fish 2016: Gateway to the Americas, given its potential for galvanizing relationships and honing our narrative. 

Thank you, Spencer Montgomery and Amanda Parks for putting this very important issue in the context of college students and more!

EcoGastronomy Dual Major Students Attend the World’s Fair in Milan

University of New Hampshire EcoGastronomy Dual Major students visited the World’s Fair in Milan, Italy this past week.  For the first time in its 164-year history, the world exposition has a theme: How to nourish a future world population of nine billion people (“Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”).   The Milan expo confronts a daunting series of issues seen from many lenses. The common theme is awareness and being an informed participant in our food system.  

EcoGastronomy students were thrilled at the prospect of seeing the world’s ideas about sustainability and agricultural innovations that are changing the world's farming processes and cutting down hunger and malnutrition.  Some of the countries represented excelled at the theme, while others may have used the expo as more of a marketing venture, and some were very good at feeding you.

53 countries built unique pavilions to display their products, host events and more. The other participating countries set up spaces in groups by specific foods such as coffee, cacao, rice, spices and fruits, or by specific sub-categories of the Expo’s main theme, such as islands, the sea and food; food and nutrition in dry zones; or bio-Mediterranean.  The United Nations pavilion had the challenge to eliminate hunger in a world where so much food is wasted.   

From there the global ideas ranged from the McDonalds pavilion stating that it feeds more people a day than any other institution in the world, to the small scale Italian farmers of the Slow Food movement advocating biodiversity and the importance of regional and local products.  The Belgian Pavilion pushed the food envelope with an exhibit examining the notion of insects as food, a concept foreign to the western world.  I asked Alexander Harling, an Economics and EcoGastronomy student at UNH, who spent the summer as an intern at the U.S.A Pavilion, whether or not the Expo would push the sustainable food movement forward.  “Everyone that visited the expo got the message that there is a problem, and everyone needs to be at the table to discuss it,” remarked Alexander.

U.S.A. Pavilion Vertical Gardens

Visiting the Disney World of Food - Milan Expo 2015

In a few weeks, our UNH-in-Italy students will be visiting the World's Fair in Milan, Italy.  After having interned at the fair for three months, Alexander Harling gave students an orientation on "seeing the world through the fair".  While 120 countries are represented, the perspectives on feeding the world is infinite or at least as many as the 20 million people from around the world expected to visit through October 30th.

Students marveled as Alexander explained that the fair brings together the "whole world and all its food scape variations".  Is the fair for gawking and staring at all the food and ideas represented?  Absolutely not!  It is for interacting with your fellow human beings while enjoying one of life's greatest treasures with them.  It's also about feeding our planet together, which is where EcoGastronomy students love to delve.

This is what Alexander recommends to get the most out of your experience.

LOOK ONLINE  http://www.milanworldsfair.com/  to begin.  Check out the map.  It's huge!  Find out what's happening the days you visit.  Each country's pavilion has a schedule, so you definitely want to ask around to see if there's anything you shouldn't miss. You can subscribe to the USA pavilion's schedule here.  Every day there's events from Cirque du Soleil to Famous Chef Demonstrations.

TALK WITH EVEYONE Take your time.  Ask for samples!

ORGANIZE your day but be flexible.   Start at the "back of the fair".  When you go in through the main gate by the trains, walk all the way down Main St. (Decumano).  Think Disney.  That way it's less crowded.

MAKE SURE YOU VISIT Japan, South Korea, Qatar (All the Middle Eastern Pavilions are over the top) and, of course, USA!  USA has a rooftop terrace and café with a stunning view of the Milan Expo grounds where you can get a good feel for the fair layout.

LOOK FOR FAMOUS PEOPLE Ha, ha! You never know if you'll see Beyonce.  

STAY LATE  7 PM there's lots of parties and 8:30 PM the restaurants open.  Ask volunteers and staff what's going on.

FRIEND Alexander Harling on Facebook and message him any questions.  He can also introduce you the the USA interns there.

If you want to stay longer than the EcoG trip, Alexander recommends looking NOW for a place to say.  Try airbnb,  make sure you read reviews.

 

Awww!!! I'm so excited for you!  Have a great time!

A Thoughtful Perspective on Living Abroad by Alexander Harling

Twenty years in Durham, NH. A town I know all too well. I had no shortage of compassion for the area that raised me and is home to countless memories; but there was a growing spite for my familiarity and routineness that had my life.

Freshman year at UNH felt too close to a fifth year of high school. Same town, similar faces, the regular parties. Although I felt ready to leave and start a new life in a fresh town, staying was worth it.

 Two large suitcases and a backpack was all I had. Everything that was important and of value I was holding. The walls were white and bare. The bed was no more than a futon mattress, or as the French say, a “click-clack.” The room was empty except for the bed, night-stand and bookshelf. It would have felt lonelier when I first entered, but it was starting to fill with the countless possibilities and experiences that were surfacing with each passing moment.

I won’t say this has been the greatest time of my life. My life has been blessed with many amazing experiences. Albeit, this has most certainly been my biggest adventure. Life changing and perspective altering. Americans are quite sheltered. We are all blessed to be living in a free country full of countless opportunities. Our nation of 330 million is powerful and safe. Our shear largeness, occupying a quarter of the world, has made some of us blind to the rest of the world.

In comparison with the rest of the world, Americans take relatively short vacations.
Europeans believe it takes time, meaning more than a weekend to a week, to truly see a place. Marcel Proust, a French writer, once wrote… The journey of discovery lies not with seeing new places, but with seeing with new eyes. 

How long does it take to see? It has taken me four months and an absence of the culture I have known for 20 years.

To see new shores you have to look away from yours for some time.

I am five months in to my seven month journey. Thirteen countries and more to come.
Culture shock is not exclusively seeing unfamiliar things and being completely shocked. More often it is observing something unfamiliar, and learning how to understand its cultural importance as well as how it can be embraced.

Adjusting to French lifestyle was very difficult. Schedules and discipline are an important part of my life. Not every French person feels the same. Learning to adjust to French life was not just about me learning a new culture, but learning how to keep my values and understanding their practices.

Smoking, the late nights, and regularly drinking did not fit into my lifestyle. This is a big part of French culture. Eventually I realized these practices were just a part of the French’s passion for social life and leisure. After realizing this and learning how to participate, in a manner that matched my values, I began to see and feel differently. Comfortable in my skin. Ready to take on new challenges. More willing to learn. I was changing.

The US news commonly reports on a growing disdain for Americans. The western lifestyle and diet is feared. We appear to lack culture and tradition. American television and music are saturating foreign media outlets, eclipsing domestic art. I thought everybody hated Americans.

Europeans love us. Yes they are aware of the stereotypes. Our obesity rates, eating practices, and disappointing comprehension skills are well known. My roommates and I joked about all this regularly. What was shocking was how much the younger generations had embraced our culture. They viewed America as large and powerful. New and exciting. It was still the land of opportunity in their eyes. Everyone wanted to visit New York City or see the beaches of California. Some people were reticent initially coming out, but eventually their interest was expressed and wanted to talk and learn about the US.

Many Americans, including myself, when embarking on a living abroad experience, expect to immediately fall in love with the new area and to hate the culture that raised them. The opposite happened. I became very proud to be an American. With all the surprisingly kind words about our culture, I began to see home differently; even miss it.

People often say how small the world is. Relatively speaking and in the context of certain comparisons within our universe, us, the earth is quite small. I began to see things differently. The more I traveled, the bigger the world got. I kept learning about new places I wanted to see and meeting new people who had so many experiences and interesting stories. There is so much out there to be felt and seen. I had only experienced the tip of the iceberg.

The world didn't feel small; but more accessible. As though anything was possible. You could go anywhere. It was easy traveling to a nearby country only a few hundred miles away. I truly realized this after mustering the courage to travel to Asia. I decided to go to Vietnam and China. One of my greatest adventures. Humbling and eye opening. Visiting two communist countries will alter your life.

I am currently working in Italy at the World Expo in Milan. 20 million people are expected to visit. I interact with 100s of people a day. I am missing home but I do not want to deny myself the experiences and opportunities still happening every day.

There is so much to see and learn out here. For the first time I have seen who I am. Learned who I want to be. I will continue to travel and learn right up till when I head home in two months.

Traveling is valuable. Few people will contest that. The value depends on you. Opportunities are more apparent now. Challenges less difficult. My values have become more meaningful.