What are you watching these days?

[serious crayons]

Someone who lives near me posted this on Nextdoor. Sounds like it could be pretty good:

Need a cheer up?  Try the BBC "Farm" series.

Hi neighbors!

If you need a charming, free, historically accurate series on YouTube with some Christmas themed episodes, may I share the gift of the BBC "Farm" series? A historian and two archaeologists "live" for a year in the style and custom of a past era.  It has seriously cheered me up to see three friends in period clothing living and working together on a farm using traditional methods, as well as partaking in all the old school customs, food, drinks, and celebrations.   

Pick your era - Wartime (WWII), Edwardian, Victorian, or Tudor.  These will make you very grateful for all our modern conveniences,  in awe at how those from our human family tree did things in the face of adversity, and maybe even inspire your holidays this year.   

Example:
Victorian Christmas

Wartime Christmas

[Front-Ranger]

Thanks, I will check that out!

Regarding fish and seafood, since I'm from the Midwest, you would think I don't like fish, maybe excepting the fried catfish my mother used to make on Fridays. But I am also a contrarian, so I love most fish and seafood. Oddly, Denver gets frequent air deliveries of fresh fish for sushi. That's one of the things I miss so much--not being able to go to sushi restaurants. Raw oysters are very nice but I did have a problem once when attending a sales conference in Boston. I had oysters and German Chocolate Cake at the Quincy Market, and then I got on a bus to go to my hotel up north. Well, the cake and the oysters fought with each other all the way.

These days I just buy cod to make fish tacos and I haven't made those in a long while. Thank you for reminding me that I need to make fish tacos again!

[serious crayons]

Regarding fish and seafood, since I'm from the Midwest, you would think I don't like fish, maybe excepting the fried catfish my mother used to make on Fridays. But I am also a contrarian, so I love most fish and seafood.

Quick defense of the Midwest: I currently live there and have also lived in several other parts of the country, and I don't see a huge difference in appetite for fish aside from the fact that oysters are much cheaper in New Orleans, lobster is much cheaper in Maine, crab is much cheaper in Maryland, and similar economics apply to all ocean-dwelling creatures. Until the pandemic, my son was working as a waiter at a fancy seafood restaurant and made good tips, so apparently there are plenty of contrarians here (who are/were also supporting numerous other fish and seafood restaurants besides that one).

Oddly, Denver gets frequent air deliveries of fresh fish for sushi.

They must do the same here, because sushi is plentiful. Or maybe it arrives frozen? Come to think of it, I don't really know. Most grocery stores have a sushi chef on site, which is where I often get it because it's more convenient than ordering from a restaurant, though some would probably consider that just a step up from truck stop sushi.  But maybe that's what distinguishes a good sushi restaurant from a store. (Good sushi restaurants are located even in smallish suburban towns.) Back when I worked downtown, I frequently got sushi from the two nearby takeout sushi places, and once from a food truck. All were pretty good.

I had oysters and German Chocolate Cake at the Quincy Market, and then I got on a bus to go to my hotel up north. Well, the cake and the oysters fought with each other all the way.

Once in New Orleans my husband and I went to kind of a dive but beloved restaurant (another example of how almost every restaurant in NOLA is good). He ordered half a dozen cooked oysters and half of them had gone bad. The restaurant took half off his bill.    Very generous for potentially exposing a customer to food poisoning.

These days I just buy cod to make fish tacos and I haven't made those in a long while. Thank you for reminding me that I need to make fish tacos again!

I'm remembering how initially our friendship formed around a mutual love of fish tacos! 

 

[Front-Ranger]

The Midwest is better these days regarding seafood, but back when I was growing up, you'd be lucky to find even frozen fish, except for Gorton's fish sticks. Canned tuna was also available and that was about it. If you wanted to eat seafood, you had to go to a restaurant. My family's favorite was the Hickory House. There was always a line to get in, even though you had to make a reservation. So, the line formed inside the front door, and there was a lobster tank. I would watch the lobsters clambering all over each other. There were colorful golf tees wedged in their wrists so they could not pinch each other or the handlers with their claws.

[brianr]

My sister always tells the story that soon after they were married (they will have their 60th anniversary next year so a long time ago), she wanted to impress her husband by cooking a lobster. She went to the Fish Markets and it was alive and she had a 40 minute drive home with it on the seat beside her thrashing about in the bag. Then she put it in the freezer and could hear it knocking.
Her husband never got fresh lobster again.

[Jeff Wrangler]

The Midwest is better these days regarding seafood, but back when I was growing up, you'd be lucky to find even frozen fish, except for Gorton's fish sticks. ot pinch each other or the handlers with their claws.

How could I forget fish sticks, and fish filets!    The Mrs. Paul's brand was big where I grew up, or maybe that's just the brand my mother bought. I didn't hear of Gorton's until I was grown up.

But fish sticks are good! I actually get hungry for them every now and then. Put catsup on them and eat them with mac and cheese. 

An old friend once told me that was what his Catholic mother served every Friday, fish sticks and mac and cheese.

[southendmd]

An old friend once told me that was what his Catholic mother served every Friday, fish sticks and mac and cheese.

Same here!  Except we had Mrs. Paul's with frozen french fries. 

We alternated this with Stouffer's mac and cheese during Lent. 

[CellarDweller]

I can remember being served fish sticks for a little while on Fridays, and then one night mom served the fish sticks, and I bit into one, and it was green inside.



Everyone freaked out and they were collected and thrown out, and that was the last time we had fish sticks. 


The only time we had fish after that was when we went out to a local Arthur Treature's Fish & Chips restaurant.





Of course, after I grew up, I went back to eating seafood, usually when I go out.  I do have some frozen shrimp, sticks and scallops in my freezer as we speak.

[CellarDweller]

While this may make some people shudder, I've been watching Hallmark Christmas movies since the day after Thanksgiving.

I don't get to see very many of them, and since I'm working from home, I am able to watch a lot more, and I've seen 44 so far.

[serious crayons]

The Midwest is better these days regarding seafood, but back when I was growing up, you'd be lucky to find even frozen fish, except for Gorton's fish sticks. Canned tuna was also available and that was about it. If you wanted to eat seafood, you had to go to a restaurant.

I sometimes think your experience of the Midwest was somewhat different from mine. But I bet fish sticks were the main form of seafood in them days anywhere in the country that wasn't near an ocean. Quick shipping might not have been available, and I don't think Americans in general were very sophisticated eaters in general. Thank goodness for Julia Child and Alice Waters!

Every spring my parents would get a big bag of smelt -- little fish that rushed through northern rivers in the spring, cooked breaded and fried. I never hear of them now, so maybe they were overfished. We ate fish, like walleye, caught by people who fished, like my aunt and her partner. My mom sometimes made scallops but I didn't like them (not until recently, in fact). When I was about 18, my friends and I started going to what I then regarded as fancy (chain) seafood restaurants, and those all-you-can-eat crab leg places became a trend.

But food everywhere is more sophisticated these days. The only place I've been that stands out as being much more sophisticated than other cities is New Orleans. In regard to food, that is, not necessarily anything else.

I also think Catholics may have a different experience of fish. My friend who spit out the smoked fish spread grew up Catholic and I think hated fish for that reason. My folks was atheists (or agnostics, or Unitarians or whatever), so we didn't even do Lent, let alone fish on Fridays.

Oh, I just remembered one thing, though. When I lived in Duluth, MN, in the '80s, an upscale Italian restaurant opened with interesting food like carpaccio. But they had a billboard that -- I can't remember the exact wording but it was meant to reassure potential customers that not all their food was weird and foreign. So they had a picture of a steak. But the weird and foreign Italian food was ... spaghetti and meatballs. 

Sorry, Chuck. I think even Duluth residents of the '80s were pretty familiar with spaghetti, if only thanks to Chef Boyardee!