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Smithsonian magazine staff writer Abigail Tucker is our guest blogger today.

Coho salmon spawning in Issaquah Creek, WA, courtesy Flickr user "Soggydan" Dan Bennett

I have avoided eating salmon since the spring of 2008, when I reported on a die-off of West Coast chinooks that shut down much of the California fishery. Unfortunately for me, salmon was the only fish I knew how to cook (in my toaster oven, with teriyaki sauce. Mmmm.) But I felt guilty after learning about the wild fish’s plight–problems range from dams to pollution to ravenous sea lions–and whenever I spotted wild salmon on a menu, I envisioned shimmering chinooks valiantly flinging themselves up rapids with no thought of landing on my dinner plate.

The less photogenic alternative, of course, is farmed salmon, the source of most of our fresh salmon meat. The farmed fish, while typically less expensive than wild varieties, are reportedly bad for the environment, may contain more contaminants and look a bit scary to boot – the flesh is naturally gray, due to a lack of krill in the fishes’ diet, so the meat is dyed pink. Not too appetizing.

But this month, the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch–whose guidelines are gospel to the sustainable seafood crowd–announced its support for a new salmon-farming technique, the first it has ever endorsed. Most fish farms raise salmon in vast ocean net pens; the fish can escape and spread disease to wild populations. But at AquaSeed Corp., an aquaculture company based in Rochester, Washington, salmon are bred to be kept in freshwater tanks on land, which reduces pollution and the spread of sea lice and other maladies. The fish receive special feed, requiring less wild-caught fishmeal than the salmon at traditional farms. Furthermore, their meat contains plentiful omega-3 fatty acids and low enough levels of PCBs to land it squarely–cue the heavenly chorus!—on the Seafood Watch’s “Best Choices” and “Super Green” lists.

AquaSeed raises Pacific coho (silver) salmon, which is said to be a bit milder in flavor than sockeye or chinook but, with an artful slathering of teriyaki sauce and a steady hand at the toaster oven, still very tasty. Though production is relatively modest and you won’t find it in stores yet, AquaSeed is reportedly working with big chains like Whole Foods and is selling salmon eggs to Asian fish farms.

“This is extremely exciting,” Geoffrey Shester, senior science manager for Seafood Watch, told Scientific American. “It’s not an experimental science project. It is mature to the point where there is real potential to scale it up.” (We like that pun.)

A few weeks ago, I wrote about making sushi at home and mentioned that I was upset when all I could find at the grocery store was imitation wasabi. I decided to look up a little more information about the green stuff and found out that it has some interesting characteristics I wasn’t expecting.

Fresh wasabi root, courtesy Flickr user dnak

Wasabi (wasabia japonica) is a cousin of horseradish; both are rhizomes (root-like stems) in the mustard family. Fresh wasabi is extremely perishable, which accounts for the popularity of imitations. (The version we bought was a mix of horseradish, mustard and food coloring.) It’s also very expensive.

Further research revealed that although wasabi is hot, it isn’t the same spiciness that results from capsaicin, the source of the heat in chili peppers. While capsaicin produces a burning sensation on the tongue and in the mouth when it’s eaten, the active ingredients in wasabi, isothiocyanates, affect the nasal passages more.

It turns out that wasabi is more than just a sushi flavoring. Its place in sushi culture is rooted in the fact that wasabi is believed to have antimicrobial properties that can reduce the risk of food poisoning—a nice perk when eating raw fish. Studies have shown that wasabi root as well as the leaves can prohibit the growth of bacteria that cause food poisoning.

Compounds in wasabi might also help scientists develop a new treatment for pain. Researchers at the University of California at San Francisco studied isothiocynates in wasabi that trigger a reaction in the TRP receptors in nerve cells in our tongues and mouths. These receptors are ultimately responsible for sending a pain signal to the brain. One of the scientists, David Julius, bred mice that lacked one type of TRP receptor and found that the mice didn’t react to compounds that contained isothiocynates. Julius also has evidence that the receptor is responsible for to inflammation. A drug that blocked that receptor could conceivably be a powerful painkiller.

But wasabi’s potential usefulness doesn’t stop there. Japanese scientists harnessed its pungent smell to create a prototype of a smoke alarm for the hearing impaired. The alarm sprays a wasabi extract into the room when smoke is detected. In a preliminary study, 13 out of 14 test subjects awoke within two minutes of the alarm being triggered—one woke up in 10 seconds. Another participant said the alarm reminded him of a bad sushi experience.

I met a new vegetable recently, and I’m totally infatuated: fennel.

Florence fennel, courtesy Flickr user quinn.anya

I’d heard of fennel, but had never eaten it until I visited my husband’s family for Thanksgiving a couple of years ago. The appetizers included a veggie tray with familiar snacks like peppers, cucumbers, broccoli and baby carrots. But there were also some curved, pale pieces I didn’t recognize, with a celery-like crunch and a pleasant licorice taste.

My husband told me this was called anise (pronounced “ann-iss,” although when they were younger he and his brothers preferred a grosser pronunciation), and that was that. I didn’t realize until later, perusing the produce aisles, that I’d actually eaten fennel! (It’s sometimes mislabeled as anise, a different plant whose seeds are also redolent of licorice.)

I’ve incorporated fresh fennel into many recipes since then, and found it wonderfully versatile. Here are a few ways to use it:

1. Soup: Roughly following this recipe, I made a very simple tomato-fennel soup by sauteeing some chopped fennel (preparation tips here) with onion and garlic in the bottom of a stockpot for 5 minutes, then adding a large can of crushed tomatoes and about 3 cups of water. I let the soup simmer (covered) for 40 minutes or so while preparing the rest of dinner, then used the immersion blender to puree it. I stirred in 1/3 cup of heavy cream right before serving, and garnished each bowl with fennel fronds. With some rustic sourdough bread, it made a delicious appetizer for our dinner. Next, I plan to try Sweet Amandine’s carrot-fennel soup.

2. Salad: I’ve made two variations on fresh salads with fennel so far, and both were big hits. Basically, when you combine slivers of fresh fennel with citrus segments (grapefruits, oranges, and/or clementines) and fresh herbs (including the fennel fronds), you’re on to something great. I also love fresh roasted beets, so I added these in quarters (both red and golden), along with some baby spinach (arugula’s good, too). I tossed this combination with a light dressing made by combining a few tablespoons of the following ingredients to taste: fig-infused vinegar, olive oil, maple syrup, and spicy maple mustard. If you prefer actual recipes, look to Sassy Radish’s fennel tangerine salad or this roasted beet and fennel salad.

3. Gratin: Depending on what ingredients you have, riff off recipes like Ina Gartin’s potato-fennel gratin and Smitten Kitchen’s swiss chard and sweet potato gratin. I had a small yam and a white potato to use up, so I peeled and sliced both, then layered them in a casserole dish with some cooked Swiss chard (chopped and sauteed with garlic, then squeeze-dried a bit) grated Gruyere and fontinella, and a basic bechamel sauce. I topped it all with a few slices of fresh mozzarella, and baked it (covered in foil) for 45 minutes. It was so good that just writing about it makes me want to run home and make more!

4. Roasted: Couldn’t be simpler! Cut a fresh fennel bulb into quarters or eighths, depending on size, toss with olive oil and vinegar, and roast on a baking sheet until tender (try 20 minutes at 400 for starters). Top with grated fresh parmesan and enjoy as a snack or a side dish.

5. Dessert: There aren’t too many vegetables that work well in desserts, but like I said, this one’s versatile. The Washington Post’s recipe finder offers up fennel panna cotta (though you’d probably have to skip the grilled strawberries this time of year), and the blog My French Cooking suggests a mouth-watering candied fennel sponge cake.

The world is my oyster, or so a Shakespearean character once said. That old saying, still alive in modern English, makes oysters a metaphor for ”something from which a person may extract or derive advantage.”

And oh, how true that turns out to be in a literal sense.

Humans have been extracting advantages from the humble oyster for centuries, as writer Rowan Jacobsen’s insightful new book, “The Living Shore: Rediscovering a Lost World,” points out.

Courtesy Flickr user Allerina & Glen MacLarty

Oysters are vitally important “ecosystem engineers” in several ways. They act as water filters that keep estuaries from becoming algae-choked dead zones, their reefs act as breakwaters that help reduce shoreline erosion, and their shells form the infrastructure for seagrass and many other species to thrive.

Jacobsen puts it this way:

More than 300 species have been counted on oyster reefs. You couldn’t design better habitat….Oysters create the condos, streets, schools, restaurants, parks, and even the water treatment plants of thriving undersea communities, and the great conversation of life begins.

And yet humans seem bent on destroying them—about 85 percent of the world’s oyster reef populations have vanished since the late 1800s, according to a Nature Conservancy study published last year. After crunching these and other disheartening numbers, the study’s authors concluded that “oysters reefs are one of, and likely the most, imperiled marine habitat on earth.”

Part of the problem, as you might have deduced, is that oysters are tasty. Darn tasty. Native populations in America’s Pacific Northwest have known that for millennia, says Jacobsen, who calls oysters “the ham sandwich of 1000 B.C.” (Salmon were a more prized entree, but clams and oysters were plentiful and easy to get.) He points to the evidence of huge mounds of discarded shells—called middens—that date back at least four thousand years. The size of the shells tends to diminish as the height of the pile rises, suggesting that even native populations weren’t exactly sustainable eaters.

They still followed the usual trend of eating their way through a shellfish community faster than the community could replenish itself. But for thousands of years, human populations on the coast were small enough to simply move on to the next, unexploited beds, allowing the exhausted beds to recover.

And then came the Gold Rush, and a rush of settlers with mighty appetites, and you can guess what happened next. The native Olympia oyster population in San Francisco Bay was utterly exhausted by 1910, according to Jacobsen.

When he turns to the East Coast, the news gets even worse. In a bleakly terse chapter titled “How to Kill A Bay,” he explains how pollution, over-development and over-harvesting combined to destroy both the Chesapeake Bay and its oyster population.

But for all the depressing news, it’s actually a gorgeous little book, anchored to the narrative of Jacobsen’s journey with a group of marine scientists searching for the remnants of what was once a thriving population of Olympia oysters off the coast of British Columbia. He includes an appendix listing several groups that are working to restore and conserve oyster reefs; a hopeful ending.

As a consumer, this doesn’t mean you must avoid oysters—even Jacobsen still eats plenty of them. In fact, farmed oysters (95 percent of what’s available these days) are considered a “best choice” on the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s sustainable seafood guide. Turns out the farms are good for coastal ecology (unlike many salmon farms). But if you’re concerned, you could go the extra mile by buying only from fisheries which have been certified as sustainable.

Cupcakes courtesy of flickr/makeshiftlove

I read the other day that Kellogg’s is teaming up with an Irish publisher and a bookstore to give away free books to children there who buy Rice Krispies cereal. I’m all for free books, and any effort to get children to read. The books they chose don’t appear to have anything to do with food, but it got me thinking about the books I read growing up, and what culinary lessons they held.

Here are just a few that came to mind:

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Probably the first book I ever read about food, with gorgeous illustrations of plums, pears and cherry pie. Lesson: If you eat until you have a stomachache, you will transform into a beautiful creature. Hmm.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
My mouth watered at the descriptions of Wonka bars and Everlasting Gobstoppers, and I shivered at the fates of Veruca Salt and Augustus Gloop. Lesson: Greedy people always get their comeuppance. If only.

Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White
Who didn’t love this tender tale of friendship between a girl, a pig and a spider? And how many became vegetarians as a result? Lesson: That BLT you’re eating may have been someone’s friend.

Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
Sam-I-Am harangues his skeptical friend into trying the title dish by annoying him with rhymes. Lesson: Don’t knock it till you try it.

Geraldine Belinda by Marguerite Henry
My mother gave me a collection of books from her childhood that included this little gem from 1942. Geraldine Belinda comes into a fortune (a nickel, I think) and goes on a shopping spree for candy and toys. Not wanting to share, she snubs her friends, but is holding her nose so high in the air she doesn’t notice that all her treasures fall out of her package. Lesson: Friends are more valuable than things—even candy. And a nickel went a lot farther in 1942.

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle
I was never a big fan of science fiction, but this time-travel mystery blew my little mind. In one scene, the protagonist, a young boy, is served what appears to be a turkey dinner, but to him it tastes like sand because it is actually synthetic. Lesson: Looks can be deceiving. Well, it was probably deeper than that, but it’s been decades since I read the book.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Caroll
The original  yo-yo diet—Alice grows bigger and smaller according to the foods (labeled “eat me” and “drink me”) she ingests after falling through the rabbit hole. Lesson: Beware of enticing food labels.

I’m sure there are many more. Can you think of any?