Who Is Going To The Souper Bowl – My NFL Prediction Blog

At the beginning of the National Football League season I wrote a prediction blog that was somewhat tongue in cheek and somewhat based in fact or at least what I considered to be true. Only one of my final Super Bowl selections made it into the playoffs and they got bumped off in Round 1 with one of the most pathetic offensive displays on record. Not too shabby if I do say so myself. (what color is the sky in your world Doug ? Blue & Orange like a Tebow jersey I reply) So now that I have a whole season worth of games and two rounds of the playoffs behind me, I am ready to dive into my National Foodball League Playoff Predictions Blog to see who will make it to the Souper Bowl !

American Foodball Conference

Baltimore Ravens at New England Patriots – Sunday at 3pm eastern

The Ravens should have been one of my picks to make it to the Souper Bowl. They had an up & coming young quarterback who looked to be on the edge of stardom. A running back with a food related last name who could slip through cracks in the defensive line as well being a punisher. They had a receiving corp that while unspectacular at first glance could bring the ball in and finally they had a defense, led by alleged convict at linebacker, that was still among the most feared in the league.

The Patriots were the Patriots and they were not happy about their recent lack of playoff success. They were led by the Walking Talking Touchdown Tossing Ken Doll at quarterback. They had a running back with a name like a law firm. An undersized receiver that no one in the league wanted and now no one can stop. They had a pair of tight ends like no others ever seen in NFL history and let’s be honest, the less said about the defense, the better. I never thought they would get as far as they did (even though when I look back I see I had them losing in this round).

Now that the American Foodball Conference Championship game is here we have seen that little has changed. The Ravens quarterback, Joe Flacco, has been less than spectacular this year but it hasn’t mattered because the team has won. They played smash mouth football and dispatched the Texans in the Divisional Playoff round. They have beaten the Patriots before and are certainly capable of doing it again. The Patriots once again have an offense that scores in bunches. They seem to play with the old AFL philosophy of keep scoring & scoring and to hell with the defense (unless of course they are playing against Tebow & my Broncos – then they turn into 11 All Pro defensive players).

Now when I think of Baltimore I think of Crabs and when I think of New England I think of Chowder. It’s going to be cold in New England and what better way to get to the Souper Bowl than with a warm bowl of soup. So I decided for this round of the National Foodball League Playoffs, we would put up Soup vs Soup. For the Ravens I picked Old School Baltimore Crab Soup (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/old-school-baltimore-crab-soup/detail.aspx) – a relative newcomer to the AllRecipes family but one that has been accepted well. For the Patriots, rather than go with a basic New England Clam Chowder, I decided to give it a twist, much like the Patriots offense, and I chose Marilyn’s Cheesy Clam Chowder (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/Marilyns-Cheesy-Clam-Chowder/Detail.aspx?prop31=3). This was soup that my wife craved during two of her three pregnancies and those kids didn’t turn out so bad so I think it is still a solid though unconventional choice. In fact if I were just picking this game on food alone, I would probably pick New England but I am not picking it on food, I am picking it on football. So while the Patriots may be favored, I looking at Baltimore to make it to the big game in Indy on February 5.

National Foodball Conference

New York Giants vs San Francisco Giants – Sunday at 6:30pm

I’ll admit it. I dismissed both of these teams without a second thought at the beginning of the season. I compared the Giants to a lukewarm overrated hot dog and said the Forty Niners were more like ripple than chardonnay. Guess I got those two wrong but then again so did a lot of other supposed football experts. So let’s re-evaulate these teams and give them some food that is a little more to their credit.

The Giants have Eli Manning. Not a sentence that would usually strike fear into an opponent. At least not until the fourth quarter when Eli flips a switch and suddenly becomes the second coming of John Elway. No quarterback in the league led his team to more come from behind victories this year than Eli – not even Tebow. They also have a receiver with freakishly large hands and another one who seems to shimmy & salsa his way into the end zone whenever the team needs a big play. Let’s not forget that they have a defensive line that just crushes quarterbacks too.

The Forty Niners have a quarterback that most people assumed was a busted draft pick a few years back who played steadily all season and came into his own with a magical and unexpected 28 yard touchdown scamper last week against the Saints. His running backs produced, his receivers caught the ball and his tight end finally lived up to his hype. The defense didn’t give up a rushing touchdown until the second last week of the season and like the Giants, they know how to hit. The Niners also have a new coach who knows how and wants to win. They were the class of the NFC West from Week 1.

Now when I think of the Giants, I think of bagels, dirty water hot dogs and piles of pastrami but in keeping with the Souper Bowl theme, I am going to have to go with a classic Manhattan Style Clam Chowder (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/Manhattan-Style-Clam-Chowder/Detail.aspx?prop31=2). It’s bold, it’s zesty and it delivers. When I think of the Niners, I think of Fisherman’s Wharf and all of the excellent seafood you can get there so I was about to pick a Cioppino but seeing as how I think the Niners are going to beat the Giants, I picked San Francisco Sourdough Bread (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/San-Francisco-Sourdough-Bread/Detail.aspx?prop31=2) so the Niners and their fans can sop up the leftover Eli Chowder.

So there you have it, on February 5 it will be the Baltimore Ravens vs the San Francisco Forty Niners in Souper Bowl XLVI. Come back next time when we review how right or wrong I was with my predictions.

MT140 4.0 Commuting Characters

Evil Goatee
The Schlub
Veronica Lake
Milfwood Glamazon
Skitterbug
Sentry
Mary Sunshine
Lunch Lady
Boris & Natasha
Androgynous Hurley
Jimmy Durante
MetroZachual
Scrunchy the Walrus
Smokin Chick
Cell phone chick
Summit Wing Chick
Murray
Eggy
Vinny the Original Jersey ShoreBoy
The Close Stander
Heckle & Jeckle
December & May

These are just a few of the characters I commute with on a daily basis. Each one has a story associated with their name and I will share them all over the next few weeks.

I Am In A Culinary Rut

I am in a culinary rut.

I love to cook. I always have. My family loves it when I cook and I love to cook for them. It’s just that recently I haven’t felt the fire that I need to finish off some of the half baked ideas I used to have almost every time I walked into the kitchen. I have a 9 foot by 4 foot spice rack that is full to overflowing and when I look at it, I see nothing. When I open the fridge, I see jars & bottle of different sauces & spreads and I yawn. When I look in the fridge or freezer, I see cut after cut of meat or fish and I think about takeout. The Super Bowl is a little over 17 days away and I haven’t even begun to think about my game day menu and if you know me, you know that is bad. I’m not even sure if I have the alligator in the freezer that I will need for my mandatory & much requested alligator chili. So yeah, I am in a culinary rut.

I am sure that I can put some of the blame on the lifestyle change I was forced to make last spring when my doctor sent me to my room without dessert and I am sure I can put some of the blame on the DIE-t I went on to go with that lifestyle change. Sure I lost 48 lbs and now I can eat just about anything I want any time I want (within reason) but even that hasn’t inspired me to get wild & crazy in the kitchen. I guess I feel like a part of me has an out of order sign hanging on me and the service person keeps having to re-schedule.

Slow cooker recipes bore me. Cookies were fun for a while but the holidays are over. I can only justify cookies as donations to food banks and I can’t justify them for myself. I haven’t been traveling anywhere new so I haven’t had a chance to try some new dishes that I can try to spin at home. I haven’t tried out for CHOPPED or had my wife & kids hit me with a mystery basket full of bizarre ingredients. I was hoping that the NFL playoffs would inspire me but most of the teams with interesting cuisines got eliminated already and I am not all that inspired by the food of Baltimore, New England & New York though I can most certainly play with San Francisco. Even my writing feels a bit like limp overcooked pasta to me.

So what do I do ? What do you do when you are stuck in a culinary rut ? How do you get excited about being in the kitchen again. I generally hate blogs that ask a question but I am tuck so I am all ears, eyes & tastebuds for any idea you may have no matter how outlandish. If you know me, you know I will try most anything (within reason).

So come back next time when hopefully I will be out of my culinary (and literary) rut and we will be discussing the incredible Super Bowl Menu that you all have inspired me to create.

MT140 3.0 – Next Week

Three weeks ago I was told I would know the following week.

Two weeks ago I was told I would know the following week.

Last week I was told I would know this week.

This week I was told I would know next week.

Next week I will be lied to again.

MT140 2.0 – thin blood

It’s cold. Not as cold as it has been in the past or even as cold as it has been in other parts of the country but it’s still cold. It has to be cold if I notice it and my wife thinks I’m a Polar Bear. I think I am probably noticing the cold more now because of my recent weight loss but I think the real reason I am noticing the cold is due to the fact that my blood has thinned.

I grew up in the northeast. I played hockey on an outdoor rink from the time I learned to skate right through high school. I learned to ski in Vermont. I went to college in Vermont. After college I lived in Denver. I was never really out of the cold. My body got used to it and accepted it. Then I moved to California.

It was never cold in California. It was then that my thick arctic blood began to thin. When I eventually moved back east, i bought a heavy winter overcoat. I started to gain weight. I built up a layer of insulation on the outside to help keep my insides warm. When I was told last year by my doctor that was going to need to lose weight or else, I lost the weight but I never thought about the chilling consequences that would come with my weight loss. That is, I never thought about them much until this week when it got cold. Now I am convinced that living a softer life turned me soft & my blood then. I am going to have to toughen up and thicken my blood soon because winter has only just begun.

Here’s to staying warm without an overcoat !

MT140 1.0

One things of the things that my 3 years on Twitter has taught me is how to be more concise with my thoughts and my writing. The 140 character limit is enough to get your point across or it should be enough. There are times though when 140 characters aren’t really enough to express the thought process behind a particular tweet and that’s where this blog within a blog comes in. I’ll update whenever & wherever and usually by email.

Now to see if this “resolution” is like all the others I make each year.

My Tribute To Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread

Over the past few weeks I have been asked an awful lot of questions by an awful lot of people about Thanksgiving, food and Allrecipes. I think we more than covered Thanksgiving last month and out of respect for my handful of readers I will try not to mention it again except in passing. Food and Allrecipes are however two subjects that I am more than comfortable & willing to discuss at the drop of the Chef’s Toque. One question that I was asked has stuck with me and that question was “Do you have a favorite recipe on Allrecipes ?”

Now I think that is a great question and I actually answered it without even giving pause. In this age of blatant & shameless self promotion you would think that my answer would have been one of the 15 recipes that I have on this site but Alligator Chili wasn’t the answer even though it is the recipe of mine that gets the most interesting responses. I have a turkey soup recipe that has been featured on Allrecipes twice on the day after Thanksgiving but that wasn’t my answer either. It wasn’t the Sweet Potato Pound Cake that has won me prizes in every baking competition I have entered it in. (see – the age of blatant & shameless self promotion) No, my absolute favorite recipe on this site is none other than Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread by Laurie Bennett. (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/downeast-maine-pumpkin-bread/detail.aspx)  At last count 135,350 people had saved it and another 4,761 of those people had reviewed it with an almost perfect 5 star rating. If I ever had the chance to meet Laurie Bennett I would have to drop down to my knees and bow at her feet while chanting “I’m not worthy !” over & over again. So what is it about this recipe that makes it stand out so much ? 

I’m not sure why I went searching a pumpkin bread recipe all those years ago. (October 18, 2001 to be exact) For all I know it may have been a featured recipe on the day I happened to click on Allrecipes. I do know however that I am glad I found it and so are the countless friends, family members, teachers, cleaning people, mailmen and piano teachers we know. I also know that I have always liked the tradition of certain baked goods for certain holidays and I already had Snickerdoodles  (blatant & shameless self promotion – http://www.allrecipes.tv/videos/community-snickerdoodles.aspx) slotted as my “Fall Cookie” and Grandma’s Spritz Cookies as my “Christmas Cookie” so I really needed something for the Halloween/Thanksgiving time period and to be honest, cookies just didn’t seem to fit. I also have always liked getting small loaves of different breads wrapped in foil & ribbon that people will bring to a holiday party as a small gift for the host. When I found Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread I knew I had found exactly the recipe I had been looking for whether I knew I was looking for it or not. 

It’s not a difficult recipe by any stretch of the imagination but the people I know seem to think I have some magic touch or there is some secret ingredient that I must add. Truth be told that while I usually find that recipes are nothing more than a guide for my creative side, this is a recipe I follow exactly every single time I make it. Well maybe not exactly, all those years ago I didn’t have three 7 inch loaf pans, so I went out to the local grocery and found the next best thing – 1lb mini loaf pans. The recipe divides perfectly into five of these tins and when they bake (58 minutes) they puff up majestically and look like mini-footballs.  In fact, if you wrap them in aluminum foil or plastic wrap when they are warm, the tops will turn to that wonderful soft gooey like texture that we all love from a bread like this one. I am not sure how many batches/loaves I have made in the 10 years that I have been making this recipe but I do know that so far this year I have made 14 batches or 70 mini-loaves and I am not done yet. I’ll probably make another batch or two to either include with a holiday tip or to put in our freezer for a morning breakfast treat. 

So Downeast Maine Pumpkin Bread is far & away my all-time favorite Allrecipes recipe. It’s the one recipe that I would keep if I had to give every other recipe in my recipe box back. I like it that much. 

Come back next time when we might discuss the worst recipe we have ever made or we might talk about the cookies we are going to make this weekend for Cookies Across America.

10 Things I Think About Thanksgiving

It’s Friday and this has been a very long week. Much like everyone else out there, my mind is hardly focused on the task at hand and I just want quitting time to get here as soon as it possibly can. With that in mind and considering how close we are to that Super Bowl of Food Holidays – Thanksgiving – I have been compiling a list of 10 Things I Think About Thanksgiving in between answering emails, dodging phone calls and filling out the new coversheets on the TPS Reports for Home Office.

1. There is no place on the Thanksgiving Table for sushi. It just doesn’t belong. There is no need for an argument here. Next.

2. While I love traditional sweet potatoes and even sweet potatoes with marshmallows, I would have no problem at all if someone switched them out for sweet potato fries. I can’t make them to save my life but I sure do love to eat them.

3. Slide Ridge Honey Wine Vinegar is probably the greatest food discovery I have made since I first discovered Uncle Dougie’s Chicken Wing Marinade. There hasn’t been anything I have put it on that wasn’t automatically better. I am going to find a way to get it onto the Thanksgiving Table this year.

4. I’m getting a 23lb Bird again this year. I am going to respect him with a couple of sticks of butter rubbed into the skin, shoved under the skin and basically put anywhere I can put butter. I don’t think you can ever have enough butter in or on your Bird. Just ask those dudes over at Butterball.

5. I always try to sneak one small new side dish or condiment onto the table each year. Last year it was Balsamic Pearl Onions. Not sure what it will be this year but I have a feeling it will involve the Honey Wine Vinegar I mentioned above.

6. I will miss most if not all of the Detroit Lions football game due to my duty to The Bird. The Lions have never been worth watching in the past so I haven’t really missed anything. Don’t think I am going to miss much this year either. Their hot start has cooled like that extra gravy boat someone left in the kitchen.

7. I no longer put my stuffing inside The Bird even though that is the way I was taught to cook The Bird. I now stuff The Bird with cut up lemons, limes & herbs. I think it helps keep The Bird moist and adds a certain freshness to even a frozen grocery store bowling ball bird.

8. Of course if I did stuff The Bird, I would stuff it with an Apple Cornbread Stuffing. I don’t believe in meat stuffing. I did have my family convinced for a few minutes that my wife’s 100% Italian side of the family stuffed their Bird with pasta but even I couldn’t keep a straight face on that one.

9. Apple – Pumpkin – Pecan – that is the my order of preference when it comes to the traditional triumvirate of Thanksgiving Pies. Of course if someone were to somehow make or bring a Fruits of the Forest Pie, well, I am sure I could find some room on my plate for it.

10. Cranberry Sauce in a can is scary but my Grandmother’s Cranberry Salad recipe is awesome. It’s actually the very first recipe of that I submitted to AllRecipes.com back in 1997 and the first recipe of “mine” that they published on the site. I just refuse to ruin it with a dollop of mayo at the end.

11. (because I can’t count) I know that it will look like I am going to screw up the gravy but somehow I will make the save – at least in the taste department. Two years ago the gravy didn’t look a lot like gravy but it sure tasted like gravy. I stress more about the gravy than I do The Bird.

12. (because when it comes to cooking, a dozen is always a better number) I saw a Wishbone Tie in a catalog the other day and the store is down the street from me but I going to go with the Turkey Tie my wife gave me last year. It’s dark and no one will notice if I spill on it except for the little turkey drowning in gravy.

13. (Baker’s Dozen and the final think) I have never gone shopping on Black Friday and I don’t intend to go shopping on “Black Thursday” this year either (looking at you Toys R Us & Walmart). Thanksgiving is time for family, food, friends & fun. The deals worth getting on the items worth buying will still be there on Saturday or even Monday. So RESPECT THE BIRD, stay home, enjoy the holiday and don’t let Christmas Occupy Thanksgiving.

(You can also go to http://respectthebird.com/ and take The Pledge or you can take it on any number of the pages here at AllRecipes.com)

So come back next time when we revisit Thanksgiving and continue to tell you about our time cooking with Chef Luigi or we might just write about something else entirely different

DADDY ! YOU GOT EXPLODING CHICKEN !

As an Allrecipes All Star Brand Ambassador we are asked to try new recipes and new products from sponsors we both know and don’t know. The views expressed in this blog are purely my own and do not reflect the opinions, views or thoughts of the staff at Allrecipes.com

Now that we have that out of the way, one of our assignments for the month of October was to try the stuffed chicken breasts from Barber Foods. I will admit, I had never heard of Barber Foods and I certainly hadn’t seen their products in the frozen food aisle of our local grocery store. To be honest, the only time I walk down that aisle is to grab a bag of Ore-Ida Sweet Potato Fries because let’s face it, anyone who has ever read any of my blogs (and there might be one or two of you out there that have), know that I can’t make decent sweet potato fries to save my life, so the thought of looking for frozen stuffed chicken breasts was well….new.

After checking the company website to see what they had to offer, I armed myself with a fistful of coupons and headed off to my local grocery story to see if I could find them and lo & behold, I did. They were in the auxiliary frozen food section all the way in the back of the store near the Steak-ums, Veggie Burgers and other frozen entrees I might buy once a year at best. I actually spotted the boxes from a distance as I was walking by, which is a good thing because I had not even remembered that there was a third frozen food aisle in the store. I have to admit that I was surprised by the choices & varieties that were available. I had expected maybe two different kinds to be available but I actually had my choice of almost their entire menu of selections. I finally decided on the Fit & Flavorful Chicken Cordon Bleu (a nod to my DIE-t), the Broccoli & Cheese and the Crème Brie & Apple stuffed chicken breasts and I headed home to “make” dinner.

When I got home I pulled the boxes out to show the family what our eating assignment was this month and my teenage daughter excitedly screamed,

“DADDY ! YOU GOT EXPLODING CHICKEN !!!”

“What ?”, I said. I wasn’t sure I had heard her right since she does have a tendency to runherwordstogetherwhenshegetsexcited.

“You got Exploding Chicken ! We have it at camp.”

Now the fact that she had had the chicken breasts at camp usually was not a good sign since my daughter pretty much dismissed camp food as being bland & tasteless so I had to ask,

“Is that a good thing or a bad thing ?”

“Oh it’s good. We liked it. We always had the Broccoli & Cheese. Thank you Daddy.”

That night at dinner I threw all three boxes on the same tray and 40 minutes later we were sitting down to an “Exploding Chicken” dinner with a bunch of leftovers for sides. My teenage daughter took great delight in showing us with her first cut how the chicken “exploded” onto her plate. Her younger siblings also enjoyed making their stuffed chicken breasts “explode” too. All three of them thought they were good and they all said that the Broccoli & Cheese was the best of the three flavors that we bought. My wife thought they were decent and she said that they could indeed be used as an emergency dinner when she didn’t have time to cook. Her only lament was that they couldn’t be thrown in the microwave but then again, I bought the raw versions only because the fully cooked versions were not available.

As for me, well they reminded me of the stuffed chicken breasts that I get when I get upgraded to first class on some of my flights for work. They were okay but then again, I am a food snob or have found out that I am a food snob through this whole All Star program because I don’t love everything that we have been asked to do. (Could it be that I actually can’t cook very well ? That thought never crossed my mind until now) While I liked the flavor combinations and the low calories associated with each flavor, I found them to be bland. I would have preferred a bit more spice or maybe a little deeper concentration of flavor. I also thought that the chicken was a little “spongy”. Don’t get me wrong, I love the idea but I am just not wild about the execution. Overall I will say that for a relatively institutional fast food dish it was a winner. My kids are having them for lunch right now and my wife reports that they are happy.

So come back next time when I discuss what went wrong or right with the Pillsbury Crescent assignment.

Tilapia: Love it or Hate it ?

A little over a week ago I wrote a blog about football in which I compared one of the teams (San Diego Chargers) to an inferior Fish Taco and as somewhat of a throwaway line, I said that Tilapia does not belong in a Fish Taco. The inference in what I wrote and how I wrote it was that I felt that Tilapia was an inferior fish when in reality I just don’t much care for Tilapia and I honestly don’t think it makes for a good Fish Taco fish. It did however get me thinking about why I don’t seem to like a fish that has been slowly taking over the seafood market as we know it.

My first experience with Tilapia wasn’t eating it. It was actually reading about it in a mystery novel called Mean High Tide by James W. Hall. I had to have read that book more than 15 years ago but what stuck out in my mind was that the hero of the novel, Thorne – a marine biologist, was trying to not only solve a murder but stop a fish farm of Tilapia from being released into the Florida ecosystem. I seemed to remember that he said that the Tilapia would overrun the ecosystem and be bad for the environment. For years after that, I would occasionally see Tilapia on a menu or in a store but I would never buy it or order it. Finally I did breakdown and tried Tilapia and I have to say, I wasn’t all that impressed. It’s a very serviceable whitefish that carries a breading or a sauce well but is relatively non-descript on it’s own. I could never imagine eating it with just some salt, pepper, butter & lemon. It would be too bland. The rest of America however, must not have the same view of Tilapia that I do because Americans last year consumed over 475 million pounds of Tilapia making it the most popular farmed fish gracing the dinner table. So what is it about Tilapia that makes it a target for both disdain & praise ?

On the positive side, it’s a fish that doesn’t have a very fishy taste thus making it just about perfect for places like schools & cafeterias where the fish is typically breaded and served as a fish cake or fish stick. Farm raised Tilapia can be harvested in as little as 9 months so costs to breed it are relatively low. They can also be fed pellets made of corn & soy rather than expensive fish food. This again helps to keep the cost of this fish down. Finally, we have all been told that fish is “Brain Food” so eating more fish has to be good for you and Tilapia is readily available and relatively cheap so how could it not be smart to eat it ? . I couldn’t find anything wrong with any of these statements though until I started to look behind the velvet curtain and what I found began to back up the notions that I had had over the years.

I mentioned as a positive that Tilapia could be harvested in as little as nine months but there is also a negative in that same statement. Farm raised Tilapia have been scientifically engineered to no longer resemble the same fish in the wild. They have small heads & tails and big fillets that have resulted in a new product called “Tilapia Loins”. I’m not sure about you but I didn’t know that fish had loins. In fact, I would put “Tilapia Loins” in the same category as “Chicken Fingers”, “Chicken Lips” and the movie “Caddyshack 2” – they aren’t real and they don’t exist. They also don’t have the naturally occurring Omega-3 fatty acids that we all freely associate with eating fish. Those same corn & soy pellets that allow the Tilapia to grow so large so quickly don’t have the aquatic plants, fish meal or fish oils present that Tilapia need to produce Omega-3 fatty acids. In fact a serving of Farm Raised Tilapia only has 135 milligrams of Omega-3 while the same size piece of Salmon will have more than 2,000 milligrams. More research needs to be done but there are reports now that state that Tilapia also have twice the amount of Omega-6 acids and that actually can result in the increasing the risk of heart disease. Tilapia may be an inexpensive protein alternative but it would seem to be that there are better choices out there from a health standpoint.

Environmentally, the verdict is still out on Tilapia. They were originally brought to this country and other parts of the world to help control weed & mosquito populations. In some cases they did this too well. They have been known in the wild to crowd out the native fish and to “clean up” lakes & rivers a little too well. The book I mentioned earlier talked a lot about this potential problem and in some countries in Latin & South America it has come true. The fish have escaped from their large holding pens and wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. Those large pens can also be a problem as the fish are packed in so tight that all they can do is eat & poop. Even a strong current can’t fight that type of assault off for very long.

Now where does all this Tilapia come from that America seems to be consuming ? The vast majority of it comes from unregulated or loosely regulated fish farms in China where the fish are harvested, filleted and flash frozen before being shipped to the United States. A total of 422 million pounds of frozen Chinese Tilapia fillets were shipped to the United States last year. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch Program rated frozen Chinese Tilapia as an “AVOID”. They gave Latin American Tilapia (just under 50 million pounds) a rating of “Good Alternative” and United States bred & raised Tilapia (less than 1% of all US Tilapia consumption) as “Best Choice” though from what we have seen from a nutritional standpoint, it’s the not exactly the best of the best no matter where it is from. The industry is trying to tighten up it’s standards & practices worldwide but it is going to take time and it is going to take money and in the growing economic doldrums that seem to be hitting every country around the globe, that money just isn’t there.

So I guess when I look a little deeper into why I took a shot at Tilapia in my football blog, even I get a little better understanding of why I am not a big fan of Tilapia. How do you feel about it ? Is it your fish of choice at the seafood counter ? Do you order it in restaurants ? I am not seeing both sides of the fish farm ? Let me know what you think. Let others know what you think. No opinion on this topic is 100% right or 100% wrong. Now I am going to go get a fish taco for lunch and I am going to be seriously bummed out if they are using Tilapia.

Come back next time when I talk about another food you love and I hate.