Business, Food, Nature, Science, The Future, Uncategorized

Shrimp Harbor

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I don’t like shrimp. They are bottom feeders. Harvesting them in the wild is destructive for the ocean floor. I don’t like their taste or texture.

Now I find that 150,000,000 shrimp will be raised annually in my home town in southwest Minnesota, in an ecofriendly “shrimp harbor”.  They will fatten on local corn and soybeans in a covered, 9 acre factory that will use less water than the old meat packing plant did in its heyday. The harbor won’t smell. It won’t pollute. The shrimp will be free of disease and antibiotics.  I hope all the promises made by the company are true.  I wonder  if we can call such shrimp “sea food” or if we will need to find a different descriptive phrase for it.

I am amazed at the technology behind this, and glad for the positive economic impact it will bring to the town.  I still won’t eat shrimp, though.  I can’t get past the texture.

How do you like your sea food?

42 thoughts on “Shrimp Harbor”

  1. Occasionally I do eat shrimp…but I often think of them as a food many culture will absolutely not eat because they are ‘bottom feeders’ and eat the slime and refuse of sea creatures. I had not thought of their harvest as destroying the ocean floor….but I will now and that is enough for me to never consume one again.

    I’m not a seafood eater other than halibut or cod a few times a year. I don’t like the taste of seafood…but those two fish are very mild (bland?) and fine when tempura fried. I do require salt and lemon…and then a heap of napkins to blot grease as i don’t digest it well.

    I’m a real wimp with seafood, rarely eat chicken and don’t eat meats. Lucky for me protein comes in other sources which I do like.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    I love seafood when I am sitting on a seaside restaurant. Either coast will do. That close to the source, everything tastes good. When I am in a self-indulgent mood, I even have it fried, not grilled. It may be bad for me, but it tastes so good.

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    1. I never liked walleye as a child because of the little bones. Of course, it didn’t help when my mother hovered over me when I ate walleye warning me to be careful and not choke on a bone.

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  4. I believe that this new facility is expected to ultimately produce up to half of the shrimp consumed in the US. 80% of shrimp currently consumed in the US comes from southeast Asia.

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  5. I was raised by a Midwest mother whose tastes had been formed in The Great Depression and were limited. She said only rich people ate seafood. We obviously weren’t rich, so we didn’t eat seafood (unless you count the ubiquitous tunafish casserole.

    I once found myself on a boat off the Dry Tortugas. I was given the choice of eating fish or fasting for four days. I ate fish. They were wonderful, but I’ve not eaten seafood since that time. They might have been so good because they were so fresh . . . they had been swimming in the ocean fifteen minutes before swimming in hot butter in a skillet.

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      1. Good question. Since I’ve never had seafood that appealed to me except for that experience, I didn’t know how to duplicate it. Was there something about the species we ate? Was there something about the cooking? Or was it that the fish were so good because they were so fresh? Since seafood is expensive (or seems so to me) I haven’t wanted to gamble by trying to duplicate the food on that boat in a restaurant.

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  6. Daughter doesn’t like fish at all, and lives in Tacoma. I hope she learns to like it, since she is in a great place for great sea food.

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  7. I like most seafood if it’s well prepared, but I love love love scallops. No idea why, and I first had them when out on a date at age 18, no less. But oddly enough I do not buy them and try them at home – afraid I’ll ruin it, I guess.

    The other one I love is the boxed salt cod we get to accompany lefse at Christmas. I’ve collected other recipes using it, but it’s awfully pricey so they’ve never been tried, either.

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  8. I love some seafood but not all. Tuna should be medium rare at the most. Salmon not quite medium. Scallops the same. Lobster! mmmm. Love shrimp, didn’t know harvesting them damages the ocean. Will rethink my purchases. Most other seafood, meh. Fresh caught freshwater fish like walleye, lake trout, bring it on! 🙂 Fried in bacon grease and coated with cracker crumbs on the shore of a remote lake Up North… nothing better.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  9. I make a Portugese sea food stew with a variety of firm fish like haddock, halibut, sea bass, and salmon, with scallops if we have any, along with white wine, garlic, shellout beans from the garden, and our tomatoes.

    The arrival of droves of oil workers in our town from Louisiana and other gulf states resulted in the local grocery stores ramping up their fresh fish sections. Fresh Crawfish and oysters are in plentiful supply, along with fresh frog legs.

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    2. There are Asian markets in St. Paul that have bins of live crawfish. I’m a little unsettled by food that is still moving when you buy it.

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  10. My mother didn’t care for fish of any kind so I never had shrimp prior to becoming a vegetarian. I do remember once when I was in third grade my grandmother came from out of town for Thanksgiving and for some strange reason my mother decided she would do shrimp along with everything else. I still remember the horrible smell that permeated the house and I also have a memory of sitting out on the front steps in what must have been fairly cold weather to avoid how bad the house smelled. 4 hours.

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  11. I didn’t eat shrimp 50 years ago before I became a veggie. the smell got me
    plus biting the heads off had a thing that ticked in my brain
    mom liked lobster but was far from a gourmet cook. we got tails and butter 1 or 2 times a year.
    by the time I started going to good joints I was a veggie and it was off the table.
    then someone asked about stone crab. they simply pull one claw then put it back. I love stone crab. im not killing them im harvesting delicacies

    I am hoping to look into doing a stone crab farm some day. its a great idea. I have met the guys behind the shrimp farm and am impressed with their vision

    ot I have 1 ticket to daughters performance at the latte da theater tonight at 730 345 13th ave ne
    anyone want to go. its a really well done high school musical about sex and youth. daughter has a song but the production is really good overall. 3 or 4 superstars

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  12. Sea food! Bring it on; I love almost all of it. From sushi, to gravlax and pickled herring, to smoked eel, and boiled cod, what’s not to love? I suppose my growing up so close to a plentiful supply of fresh fish and shrimp has shaped my taste for it, but I do recall as a small child not liking the bones in fish. One kind of fish that dad and I occasionally caught, the garfish, has green bones. I liked that as it made them easy to spot and avoid. Dad, forever trying to pull my leg, told me that the reason the garfish had green bones was that they ate German soldiers that had drowned d

    Living as far inland as we do, good fresh fish is expensive, and I suppose that becomes a deterrent to people developing a taste for it.

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  13. Mercury-free. And boneless…I really hate having to strain chewed food through my teeth before swallowing, to hunt for bones.

    I like shrimp. Family used to go for ‘all you can eat’ shrimp at the Anchor Inn, which used to be The Flame, in Duluth on the bay. My brothers actually tapped them out of shrimp one time. They brought out a large pan, put what was on it onto my brothers’ plates, handed us all a paper cup of after-dinner mints, and said, “That’s all we’ve got!”

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  14. Mostly I prefer my fish on someone else’s plate. I will eat torsk and cod (really one in the same, but names are different depending on what part of the sea it comes from). Torsk I prefer poached with a bit of lemon – cod can be fried or poached. There is a fish and chips place around the corner that does reasonably well with their cod – got the haddock once when they were out of cod and was not overly fond of it.

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  15. Fish stew

    1/2 pounds fresh shell out beans or cooked cannellini beans
    1 1/2 pounds small red potatoes
    1 large bell pepper seeded and chopped
    1/2 pound fresh tomatoes, cut in half
    1 small onion, chopped
    2 garlic cloves, minced
    1 bay leaf
    1 cup white wine
    1 cup water
    2 t. paprika
    1 t. salt
    1/2 c olive oil
    1 1/2 pounds of firm fish fillets, any combination. (I like haddock, salmon, halibut, sea bass, cod, or even scallops. I sometimes stir in a couple teaspoons of sea food base as a flavor boost. I use Penzeys).

    Put the beans, potatoes, bell pepper, tomatoes, onion garlic bay leaf, wine, water, soup base (if using) and spices, in a large heavy soup pot. Add the olive oil. Bring to a low boil over medium high heat, and then reduce heat to low, simmer, covered for about 30 minutes until the potatoes are nearly done.

    Add the whole fish fillets, and cook at a very low simmer for about 30 minutes, until the fish is flaking when forked. Serve immediately.

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  16. I love salmon. The best is supposed to be the wild-caught. But I like getting the fillets that come pre-marinated in a ginger sauce – you just pop them into the toaster oven and they’re so delicious. They’re Atlantic salmon, though, which means they’re farmed.

    I buy the better quality salmon fillets from time to time, and just douse them in olive oil and lemon juice and sprinkle on some salt and pepper.

    Never been a fan of shrimp.

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  17. In Kino, Mexico, we’d dig fresh clams at low tide. We’d fill a bucket with water from the Sea of Cortez and dump the clams in there as we’d dig them out of the sand. After hanging out for a couple of days in water that would be dumped out and refreshed a couple of times a day, the clams would have rid themselves of all the sand. A brief simmer in a pot of boiling water, followed by a gentle saute in olive oil and butter flavored with lots of garlic was all it took for a truly superb meal. Served over linguini with a handful or two of chopped fresh parsley and lots of freshly ground pepper, along with a chunk of a crisp baguette to soak up the sauce. Best enjoyed on the patio overlooking the sunset over the Sea of Cortez with a glass of chilled white wine. If you can manage to do this in February or March in the company of old friends, you are truly blessed.

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