Fish gone wild
Sunday, February 21, 2010
For some time I've made it a point to only buy wild fish at the grocery store. You're less likely to get a fish stuffed with antibiotics, crappy fish food and pesticides, and more likely to get a better tasting fish with higher omega-3s.
So for me that usually means salmon. Anyone who shops at Publix is lucky, in that the grocery chain pretty much always has frozen wild coho salmon in the prepackaged seafood section.
But today I tried something different. Broadening my horizons, I picked up some wild cod that was on sale this week. (I also bought a piece of wild flounder.) I had always thought that cod was one of those stinky "fishy" fish but I was wrong. With just a dribble of olive oil and a dash of lemon pepper seasoning the cod was flaky and not stinky at all. (I think it was a bad experience with perch that turned me off of anything but salmon.)
I know wild salmon is a champion of health and eco-friendliness but I wasn't sure about my dinner choice tonight so I hopped over to the Environmental Defense Fund's Seafood Selector. Turns out, U.S. Pacific cod falls in the "OK" section. I'm not exactly sure where my fish came from, but I'm guessing it's Alaska.
Another fish I've been digging recently has been sardines (rated eco-best). Don't wrinkle your nose -- sardines are awesome! They're cheap, sky high in omega-3's and high in calcium (dem bones). They're also low in contaminants.
A new favorite snack is sardines on GG Scandinavian Bran Crispbread. This is a crazy hard-core healthy snack (and yeah, it's not pretty, but whatever).
A can of sardines in water is 150 calories and two GG's are 24 calories. Add a sprinkle of lemon pepper (I'm really into my bottle of Badia lemon pepper seasoning) and you're done. You get -- ready? -- 19 grams of protein, 25 percent of your calcium, 1.3 grams of omega-3's and 10 grams of fiber.
