Smithsonian.com

It sounds a bit counterintuitive to eat as much of a species as possible, doesn’t it? But as I was reminded at the recent Sustainable Seafood program organized by the Smithsonian Resident Associates, sustainability is all about balance. And although many of our ocean’s tastiest species are being harvested to the brink of endangerment (or, in the case of bluefin tuna, imminent extinction), sometimes the scales tip in the opposite direction. Occasionally, the fish are the bad guys.

Lionfish, courtesy of Flickr user ah zut

Enter the lionfish, stage left. This native of the South Pacific and Indian Oceans showed up in the Atlantic and Caribbean a decade or two ago, probably an escapee from a tropical aquarium. It’s a prickly character, not the type that usually inspires dinner invitations, but sustainability-sensitive chefs like Barton Seaver want to introduce lionfish to the American table.

“This is an invasive species with no natural predator, so let’s turn the most efficient predator of all on it—humans,” says Seaver. “I mean, if Red Lobster would have a lionfish festival, it would be approximately three months before the problem is gone.”

The problem, you see, is that lionfish don’t play well with others. They eat many of their marine neighbors, hog the food supply, and scare off snorkeling tourists with their venomous spines. It’s a particular problem in coral reef ecosystems, where the introduction of a single lionfish can kill off as much as 80 percent of small or juvenile native species within weeks. That’s bad news for biodiversity, but it’s also bad news for human seafood eaters.

As Anika Gupta explained in a Smithsonian article last year:

In the Western Atlantic, samples of lionfish stomach contents show that they consume more than 50 different species, including shrimp and juvenile grouper and parrotfish, species that humans also enjoy. A lionfish’s stomach can expand up to 30 times its normal size after a meal. Their appetite is what makes lionfish such frightening invaders… Lab studies have shown that many native fish would rather starve than attack a lionfish.

Since other methods of controlling or eradicating invasive lionfish populations have largely failed, scientists and U.S. fisheries experts are launching an “Eat Lionfish” campaign, and it’s begun to attract interest from chefs in cities like New York and Chicago.

At the recent Smithsonian event, Seaver served up a tasty lionfish ceviche accented with almonds and endive. He compared the fish’s flavor and firm texture to something “between snapper and grouper,” which happen to be two of the species threatened by lionfish invasions.

You probably won’t find lionfish at your local fish market, says Seaver, but keep asking for it to create a demand. (His supply was donated by the group Sea 2 Table.) And if you do come across a source, check out these recipes on Lionfish Hunter‘s site.

Sometimes, food is so good you’ve just got to sing about it.

When I was younger, I convinced my mother that my younger brothers and I should have “singing dinners,” which would require everyone to sing anything we would normally speak until we were excused from the table. For some reason she agreed. Overcome with joy, I launched into a jubilant ode to my turkey burger (or whatever I was eating) and engaged in a lively call and response about green beans with my brothers.

My mother only let this go on occasionally, as one of my brothers always seemed to confuse singing with screaming at the top of his lungs. But I still find myself singing sometimes as I’m preparing food (in my defense, I was a music major in college).

Thankfully, I’m not alone. There are hundreds of artists who have produced hits with food as their muse, whether they sing about the food itself or a memory associated with it. Here are some of the songs about food that come to my mind, compiled with the help of this list.

“Suppertime,” You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown, The Musical: Once upon a time when I was an aspiring thespian, I was the lead dancer in this musical, which meant I got to star with Snoopy in this song as he bemoans the fact that Charlie Brown has forgotten to feed him. Despite the horrible memory of my horrendous costume, I still appreciate Snoopy’s enthusiasm in this song—the dog just wants to eat. “So what’s wrong with making mealtime a joyous occasion?” he asks Charlie, who can’t seem to understand why Snoopy won’t just eat his meal and quit whining already.

“C is for Cookie,” The Cookie Monster, Sesame Street: Though I also think C is for chocolate, I used to love watching cookie monster dive head first into a pile of the treats after he finished singing “C is for cookie, and cookie is for me.” But since then, the song has been changed to “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me,” and he now reminds viewers that “cookies are a sometime treat.”  Apparently some producers were concerned about what messages the song were sending about selfishness or obesity (one commenter on a discussion board even called our beloved cookie monster the “evil puppet demon of obesity”). I think Cookie just likes his cookies, and a lot of other people do, too.

“That’s Amore,” Dean Martin: I guarantee if you walk into a restaurant or bar with an older crowd and begin to sing “Whennn theee moon hits your eye like a big-a pizza pie,” your fellow patrons will be able to finish the line of lyrics with “that’s amore.” The food in this song (pizza, wine, pasta) is romantic; the scenery (Napoli, the streets of Italy) is romantic; and the ting-a-ling-a-ling of accompanying bells is romantic (or maybe just charming, but play along with me here). I can’t guarantee that you’ll make women swoon like Dean Martin did, though.

“Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk,“Rufus Wainwright: One of those songs that explores (in the beginning, anyway) how food and cravings make us feel. The sound of cigarettes and chocolate milk together sounds rather unappealing to me, but then again, I’m not a smoker or a famous lyricist. I think most of us can relate to what Wainwright says about jelly beans, though: “If I should buy jellybeans, have to eat them all in just one sitting. Everything it seems I like’s a little bit sweeter, a little bit fatter, a little bit harmful for me.”

“Peaches,” Presidents of the United States: Some people have mixed interpretations of this song, but it always reminds me of summer and my favorite farming stands. If I were “movin’ to the country,” I’d eat a lot of peaches too. Sadly, the song also forecasts the only way I’ll be able to find peaches when the weather moves toward winter: “Peaches come from a can, they were put there by a man in a factory downtown.” This song, like a peach, is addicting, in part because it repeats “gonna eat me a lot of peaches” about 16 times, in one form or another.

What’s your favorite song about food? Though the Turkey Burger serenade is among my best work, I’ve been singing another original composition as I make oatmeal-to-go for my morning commute: “Oats in a Jar” sung to the tune of another original composition, “Pants On The Ground,” made famous by a man auditioning for the most recent season of American Idol. I have no explanation for why that happens, but who knows. If people can sing about cookies and peaches, who’s to say a song about oats won’t go viral?

Last week, I asked you to send in your stories about memorable picnics. You know, I thought this would be our most popular Inviting Writing theme yet, but so far the response has been underwhelming. Are you all on summer vacation out there? Harumph. I mean…we hope you’re enjoying the beach!

Speaking of beaches, this theme did inspire one of my colleagues, Surprising Science blogger Sarah Zielinski. Here’s her picnic story, which gives you all another week to send in yours! Thanks, Sarah.

Don’t Picnic on the Beach
By Sarah Zielinski

Now that's fast food. Courtesy of Flickr user Nathan (San Diego Shooter).

Since Amanda thinks you are all away at the beach this month—unlike we poor bloggers who remain attached to our desks and computers, pounding out words for your enjoyment—I thought I would tell you how I learned that picnicking at the beach is a bad idea.

I remember a trip to the beach back when I was nine or ten. I can’t recall where we were, but the huge flocks of seagulls made an impression. As my family settled in for lunch, the birds circled above, squawking and screaming and terrifying my younger brother, an adorable little five-year-old. We munched on sandwiches (of course) and tried to ignore the avian predators overhead.

My mother assured my brother that he really had nothing to worry about. Those birds wouldn’t go anywhere near him.

The next thing you know, a gull swooped down towards us and made for the most vulnerable target, snatching my little brother’s sandwich right out of his hands.

We all stared in shock for a moment, unable to believe what we had just seen. And then, in perfect big sister fashion, I started to laugh.

Funny, I don’t remember any beach picnics after that.

What are the best and worst picnic foods? Courtesy of Flickr user 19melissa68

I’ve had picnics in the fall, spring, and even, like Amanda, in the dead of winter. (In college, my friends and I tried to make “blizzard s’mores” outside on a charcoal grill. It wasn’t our finest moment.) But I’ve always associated my best picnics with that carefree, summer feeling: a shining sun, running barefoot in the grass, and sipping on lemonade (or sangria) under a large, shady tree.

There’s almost no wrong time to have a picnic, but there are several food items that never feel quite right: foods that will spoil; foods that are meant to be cold, or piping hot, since you can rarely guarantee either; and foods that require labor-intensive eating methods.

Keeping those guidelines in mind, here  are, in no particular order, some of the best and worst picnic foods, based on my own experience and some informal polling on Twitter.

Worst:

1. Ice Cream/ Ice Cream Sandwiches: While picnicking last week, I actually saw a mother pull a box of these out of her cooler and give them to her children. There was a lot of crying, sticky hands and vanilla- and chocolate-stained clothing. I understand the nostalgia surrounding ice cream and summertime. But even if you’re driving straight from home to your picnic site, odds are it won’t make it. Save it for a special stop on the way home.

2. Potato or Egg Salad: This may be biased, since I’ve always been scared of mayonnaise, but eating something covered in mayonnaise that has been out of the refrigerator for a few hours doesn’t sound very appealing. It’s the same kind of reaction people have to warm milk, or that cream cheese your coworker left sitting out in the office kitchen from the morning until you leave at night. Just don’t do it. I have, though, had success with roasting red or sweet potatoes the night before, and serving them with heat-friendly dipping sauces (ketchup, honey mustard) the next day.

3. Chocolate: Chocolate is the siren of picnic foods. It calls to you with sweet promises of happiness and no mess, but when you get to the picnic with M&Ms and thumbprint peanut butter cookies with Hershey Kisses, it rears its ugly head: your package of M&Ms feel like one of those first aid heat packs, and your beautiful, sugar-encrusted cookies look like a pile of poo. Your brother will tell you so, in even less eloquent words.

4. Fried Chicken: Aside from the dangers associated with cooking meat, cooling it down and letting it sit in the sun for a few hours, fried chicken is just plain messy. Your guests might seem excited when you show up with a bunch of fried wings or drumsticks, but it’s only because they’ve temporarily forgotten what eating those things entails: a whole lot of napkins; discarded, gooey bones; and at least two grease stains on your favorite shirt.

5. Anything you have to cut with a knife: This was the overwhelming “worst picnic food” response in my informal Twitter poll. Cutting food when you’re eating on your lap is hard. Cutting on a paper plate is hard. If it’s windy, even having a paper plate is hard. And cutting with a plastic knife is almost impossible.

Best:

1. Pasta or Bean Salad: Despite my rant against potato salad earlier, there are a lot of great salads that make perfect picnic foods. Toss some pasta with pesto, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or salad dressing, and then add some vegetables and fresh herbs. There are endless possibilities. (For inspiration: My favorite bean salad is a combination of pinto, black and kidney beans, corn, tomatoes, onion, lime juice, cilantro and salt. Anyone else want to share their favorites?)

2. Cheese and Crackers or Chips and Dip: Another set of perfect marriages. And if you buy individually packaged cheese like babybel (which my colleague Abby also recommends for backpacking food), it’s even easier.

3. Sandwiches: Tuna, egg or chicken salad probably won’t make the cut. But vegetables, hummus and the classic peanut butter and jelly can all be unrefrigerated for a while. They’re easy to make, pack and transport and even easier to eat. Add in fun things like basil, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, or pesto if you’re looking for something a little more classy. If you’re serving a group, make a few different kinds of sandwiches and cut them into small squares. Finger food at its finest.

4. Vegetable Crudites: Vegetable platters are fairly easy to make. If you don’t have time, pre-made platters are also pretty easy to buy. You can also have fun with different dipping options.

5 Watermelon: Fruit salad deserves to be on this list, but everyone who responded to our little Twitter poll listed watermelon as the best picnic food. Cut at home, it’s easy to serve and eat and is refreshing even if it’s a little bit warm. Plus, then you can have a seed-spitting contest. Just make sure you aren’t too close to other picnickers.

What foods would be on your best and worst list?

The International Whaling Commission talks being held in Morocco this week have fallen apart. The 88 member nations have been discussing the possibility of softening a 24-year-old moratorium on whaling, one of the first and most important international protection treaties. Despite the ban, people in some countries—most notably Japan—still eat whales, which are hunted under the guise of research.

Continuing yesterday’s theme of controversial food, here’s what I learned about different ways in which people consume the hulking marine creatures:

Whale steak at a Reykjavik restaurant. Courtesy of Flickr user ChrisGoldNY

In Japan, some restaurants serve whale (mostly minke) so many ways it make me think of Forrest Gump. Fried whale, smoked whale, boiled whale, baked whale, barbecued whale, whale with cheese, whale steak, whale soup, whale sashimi…anyway you want it, you got whale. Slate contributor Seth Stevenson visited such a restaurant in 2003, and tried whale steak. “Most of us already eat mammal, and I find it difficult to rank whales and cows in a hierarchy of edibleness,” Stevenson wrote, comparing the taste to a fishy beef.

Whale is often served in Japan as nigiri—placed atop a little brick of rice and topped with a dab of minced green onion and ginger—or wrapped in rolls of seaweed with a quail egg and a sprinkle of sesame seeds. Rumor has it you can even procure slices of raw whale heart in some restaurants. Stores sell canned whale meat, and TV commercials advertise whale bacon.

However, the gamey sea meat is apparently not as popular among the Japanese as all that might lead you to think. In 2007, Time reported that Japan’s government had purchased tons of unused whale meat to turn into fish sticks and burgers for public-school lunch programs. Fearing declines in whale consumption, the Japanese Fisheries Association began promoting whale noshing with food trucks.

Whale has also made appearances on menus in the other two main whaling nations, Iceland and Norway. On a 2008 trip to Reykjavik, a Wall Street Journal reporter encountered whale on the menu at both a fine restaurant—in the form of sashimi with a wasabi crust and a ginger tea shooter—and a seafood shack (“Moby Dick on a stick,” anyone?). In Oslo, a restaurant called Alex Sushi serves dishes like whale nigiri.

Attitudes about eating whale are different in America, though. In March, federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Santa Monica’s The Hump for serving whale meat to their customers. The sushi bar, known for serving up exotic items, shut its doors in shame, closing the restaurant in a “self-imposed punishment.”

Perhaps the only place in the nation it’s considered acceptable is Alaska, where whaling is a tradition among indigenous people. Many of them enjoy a dish called muktuk, which consists of bricks of frozen whale meat (generally bowheads, gray whales or beluga whales) with the blubber still attached, generally eaten raw in thin slices.

Yesterday, Amanda asked if you would eat lion meat, and some of you said yes. How about whale meat?

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I’ll admit, my mouth watered a little when writing this post. I don’t think I’ll ever eat whale, but it certainly does look like it could be delicious. That deep, rich red… perhaps it’s just been a little too long since lunch.

One person in our office actually has eaten whale. Last April, Smithsonian’s Abigail Tucker shared her story of eating mattak, a variant of muktuk, on a reporting trip to Greenland:

It was tough as rubber, with a taste like congealed gravy. But the hunter’s eyes were upon me; I could not spit it out. In my head a chant began: Chew! Chew! Chew! Somehow, I downed the lump. “Delicious,” I murmured; the hunter beamed. The scientists mercifully helped me finish the rest.

Maybe I’ll stick with land cows for now.

Guest writer Brandon Springer is spending the summer at Smithsonian magazine through an American Society of Magazine Editors internship.