October 14, 2022 – Inspiration takes many shapes. Sometimes it’s the shape of a giant psychedelic caterpillar dinosaur demon. Sometimes it’s the shape of a brothel-turned-juke-joint. Sometimes it’s the shape of a salmon hot dog.
Amid a flurry of compelling foodie intrigue that the Edible Institute 2022 threw at attendees—including ranch-flavored CBD peanuts and “bone-building + brain-boosting” mango turmeric marine collagen drinks—those hot dogs struck me as the most intriguing. (More on the caterpillar and brothel in a minute.)
They won me over with their flavor profile, which included a seaweed slaw and Sriracha mayo, with their ramifications for the important and ongoing debate around mindful aquaculture, and with their credentials.
Kvarøy Arctic Salmon is Seafood Watch-approved, time-tested and thoughtful around farming fish, which is a complicated undertaking to do right, but one they are doing as well as anyone.
My favorite thing about them (besides the crispy onions and lemon aioli on salmon dog number two) might be that they cohabitate lumpsuckers with their fish to clean parasites without antibiotics.
The main point of the hot dog, meanwhile, is to normalize everyday consumption of sustainable seafood, which feels particularly helpful given recent news of how us humans continue to ravage wild fisheries. (I see what you’re doing off South America, China.)
Plenty of other lessons emerged from the long weekend in Denver, and were promptly followed by one on the way to Seattle, Washington, where I headed next. (Orcas Island, northwest of Seattle, was calling. I’ll have updates on Orcas’ Monterey Bay connections soon.)
Here appear five of the most savory mile-high insights:
Sometimes a short thought goes a long way.
While it’s foolhardy to try to sum up all the takeaways from a loaded lineup of thoughtful food policy panels here, there were a few succinct zingers that bear repeating.
From Temple Grandin, scientist, academic and animal behaviorist known for her leadership around humane treatment of livestock: “Little [ag business] innovates and the big guys copy…but big ag is fragile—when it works it is very efficient, but when it breaks, you’re in trouble.”
From Kay Cornelius, GM at sustainable beef pioneers Panorama Meats: “Gen Z will be the first generation to ask, ‘Will this food harm my body?’ And ‘Will this food harm the planet?’”
From Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies, and public health at New York University: “The U.S. produces way more than enough food to feed the population but half of food goes to waste…there are 4,000 calories a day available for every man, woman and child in the [country], twice as much as needed.” (Bonus note on Nestle: The Food Tank collective she often writes for is an awesome resource I signed up for thanks to her talk.)
Smart collaborations are tasty.
Edible Monterey Bay’s editor-publisher Deborah Luhrman was invited to the stage in Denver to share some of our publication’s successful endeavors from the year gone by.
She highlighted a blitzkrieg of partnerships, including a new visitors guide in cahoots with Visit Santa Cruz County (ETA early 2023); the Motorlux Car Week kickoff event featuring EMB-curated chefs; the debut Monterey Bay Cocktail Week and EMB’s first-ever Cocktail Issue; and ongoing teamwork with Open Farm Tours, EcoFarm, The Homeless Garden Project and Farm Discovery at Live Earth Farm.
An additional collaboration that is near and dear to me: Friday Found Treasures with Jeff White and me every week on KRML Radio, with editions now archived and accessible with a click at Edible Monterey Bay’s website.
The right mixes deserve a boutique buy.
Not all schwag samples are created equal. Edible Denver helped unleash a tidal wave of worthy treats, including “upcycled” vanilla oat cookies from Fancypants Baking Co. that are made with okara, the nutritious pulp left over from tofu and soymilk production. Tasteful replaces wasteful.
EMB founding sales exec Shelby Lambert scoured the offerings as attentively as anyone. For her, best in show was two-fold: 1) The Real Dill Bloody Mary mix, a zesty and rich elixir she just ordered online for Christmas gifts; and 2) a habit-forming trail mix with an uplifting backstory: Its chef Andrea Murdoch, who focuses on native foods with her Four Directions Cuisine, recently published a book called #BringThemHome, about the abduction of indigenous children, with a portion of book sales will be donated to the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
Great photos help tell a great tale.
The international Edible family of magazines, which now number more than 80, include a wealth of striking publications.
Humble brag alert: We won two (!) best-of-the-year medals in Denver.
EMB earned best feature photography for my piece “Accessing Another Level: Fin + Forage aims to change perceptions of spearfishing and takes our intrepid reporter on a freediving adventure in Big Sur,” thanks big to images from Joe Platko and Glen McDowell, with Eric Keener deserving director cred.
Jamie Collins’ “What’s in Season” story on radicchio, with instructions on a salad by Ben Spungin, took home hardware for best recipe photography by Patrick Tregenza.
Cast iron skillets aren’t allowed in your carry-on.
One gleaming part of the gift bags given to award winners was a high-end cast iron skillet from Smithey Ironware Company that 1) I fell in love with; 2) prices out at about $80; and 3) TSA promptly confiscated at the Denver Airport.
But they couldn’t take memories of all sorts of mind-expanding stuff that happened in that same city.
One night the EMB team ate up Cuban-style “ropa vieja” worthy of Havana before a show at a brothel-turned-restaurant-music-venue called Ophelia’s Electric Jukebox—and Judith Hill sang and played with her parents in a way that honored the “electric” part of the place’s name in brave ways.
A few nights later we visited sister spot Linger, itself built out of an old mortuary, for inventive fare like rabbit arancini and fried chicken bao. Together those spots inspire rethinking how Monterey Bay could reimagine its own sorts of shared space.
Another time EMBers rolled through the RiNo art district and came away overwhelmed by the murals, craft beverages and sheer creative oomph.
On top of that, the first chance we had, Lambert and I plunged into immersive/insane art world Meow Wolf Denver, aka the Convergence Station, where the habitats created by 300 artists feel like the coolest love child Andy Warhol, Sylvia Plath, Steven Spielberg, Madonna, Pitbull and Salvador Dalí might conceive, with the aforementioned giant psychedelic caterpillar dinosaur demon out front.
As the teaser from the choose-your-own-odyssey spot puts it, “This 4-story immersive art exhibition… [tells] an unforgettable, cathartic tale of converged worlds. Arrive as you. Leave transformed.”
It’s a long way of saying this: I don’t know from whence you draw your inspiration. I try to get it from every possible outlet, through every possible pore.
More than anything, I’m glad you find some of it here, where I’ll keep searching for it myself.
About the author
Mark C. Anderson, Edible Monterey Bay's managing editor, appears on "Friday Found Treasures" via KRML 94.7 every week, a little after 12pm noon. Reach him via mark@ediblemontereybay.com.
