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Eating invasive species and using your produce from root to tip.
Dear Reader,
Years ago, Dot heard about an “if you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em” approach to invasive species, including various invasive species cook-offs around North America, where chefs cooked up meals featuring phragmites, green crab, and kudzu, sometimes referred to as the “plant that ate the south” due to its incredibly fast-growing invasion of roadsides and anywhere else it can gain a foothold. (Bluedot tackled the thorny issue of invasive species — are they all bad? — in a story from a few years ago.)
In a story on the website Reasons to Be Cheerful, writers talk about the dangers of the invasive Asian Carp: “Over the years, goals for controlling the fish have shifted from a dream of full extermination to a more pragmatic approach that aims to keep the fish out of the Great Lakes at all costs,” they wrote. “At the heart of that approach is a deceptively big challenge: creating a market for carp, which means convincing American consumers that carp are delicious.”
In other words, putting those fish on people’s plates.
It will be a heavy lift. The fish are notoriously bony and, while eaters in Asian countries are accustomed to fishing the bones out of their mouths as they eat, our North American palates are more finicky, though the rich, white meat is reportedly delicious. Now, various states are pushing hard to create a market for them, including Arkansas, which recently announced a pilot grant program to either bring processing plants to the state or make accessing out-of-state processing plants easier for Arkansan fishers.
Are you ready to eat invasives? (Maybe you already do! Bluedot offered up some recipes!) If so, tell Dot about it and share your own recipes — I’ll publish them for readers.
Palatably,
Dot
Whip up that waste-not, want-not pesto with this easy recipe.
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