salmon

I can’t believe it is almost 11

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Today I went to a workshop on how to incorporate special lessons into the regular curriculum to add enrichment for gifted and talented children.  The materials were good.  I will use them, but think most would be fine for everyone.  Years ago when I taught English I never told the students, but I taught them all more or less as if it were an Advanced Placement class.  This strategy resulted in high test scores on the state test.  Everyone complains about teaching to the test.  If you teach well, students will do well.

It’s late; this day went by way too fast and here I am blogging and still need to grind coffee for morning among a few other things.  Three kids,including my grandson, are spending the night.  They have the iMAC on, the TV on, and are drawing, all at the same time.  They are 8 and 10.

In the midst of all this activity, I came across the following information:

-The Sacramento River is so low salmon smolts cannot make it to the sea so the state is transporting them in trucks.

-Three-fourths of the US corn crop is bioengineered to include  genes from the natural toxin Bt to make it resistant to corn rootworms, which are now becoming resistant to Bt.

-Lake Mead–the water supply for Las Vegas–is so low they are going to have to move the intake pipes.

-One-third of the natural gas produced in North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation is burned off and lost.  The flares from this can be seen in space and produces greenhouse gases equivalent to one million cars.

-Atmospheric carbon dioxide is the highest it has been in at least 800,000 years. s

-Solar power in Italy and Germany is now as cheap as power from fossil fuels.

-At night rangers close the roads through northern California’s parks to prevent poachers from cutting the valuable burls out of the redwoods with chain saws.

-The use of public transportation in the US is at a 57 year high.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What do people want?

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

As I looked at my blog statistics a few minutes ago, it dawned on me that apparently few others want what I want in life or care about what I care about.  Either that or most others like me do nor blog or read blogs.  One of my most popular posts over time had been a poem entitled “Hot Pink Toenails”.  My guess is that when individuals search and find this, they are not really looking for a poem about personal identity, the topic of this poem.  Maybe they have a foot fetish or are searching for some new type of nail color or pedicure.  My popular recipe posts I understand.  Who doesn’t want a great recipe for salmon or for tasty vegetarian dishes if you are vegetarian or entertaining vegetarian friends.  But hot pink toenails.  I would not even know what words to put in the search block to pull this up.

Sometimes to see if I can tag better to draw more traffic to my blog, I take a look at what visitors used for search terms.  Lately, “Costa Rica jungle flowers” and “what  did people wear to survive the dust bowl” showed up.  Both these make sense, the latter especially since a mini form of the dust bowl seems to have returned to this area of the country.  Yesterday and today, high winds and blowing dust like brown fog reigned.  It has become rather tiresome and scary, given that we have had no rain in so long I cannot remember when it rained at my house.  Miles of brown grass cover the landscape with the only relief being irrigated wheat fields and lawns.  I do not even want to think about what would happen if someone dropped a cigarette.  With a 45 mile per hour west wind like today, fire fighters would have an exceedingly difficult time.

For those who follow my blog and enjoy my posts about the environment, nature, etc., I won’t stop just because such topics often get fewer viewers.  These are things I passionately care about.  And for all of you who like facts, here are some to add to the fact list:

-80.000 acres of wetlands are lost annually in the US to intensifying coastal storms and sea level rise.

-The forest burn season in the western US has grown 50 per cent longer in the past 40 years.

-The once mighty Colorado River now dries up before it reaches the sea.

-Contrary to popular opinion, carbon emissions from power plants are not regulated.

-Money funneled into efforts to deny global warming and climate change, at least in the US, increasingly follow untraceable avenues.  They use pass through foundations, e.g. Donors Trust.

On a lighter note if you eat salmon and wonder what is safest to eat, here is the latest.  Canned salmon is safe because it is wild caught pink or sockeye salmon from Alaska with high Omega 3s and low mercury.  Most frozen and fresh salmon sold in the US is Atlantic farmed salmon with much higher mercury levels.  Grocery stores and packages indicate the type of salmon and whether wild caught so you can choose.

 

Teriyaki Salmon with Red Chard and Cassia Cinnamon (for two)

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Image

The red chard leaves, chopped.

Image

Just after adding the salmon.

Image

The finished product.

 

2  6 oz. servings of wild salmon

1/2 medium red (purple) onion, chopped

1/2 large poblano pepper, seeded and coarsely chopped

2 large red chard leaves and stems

1/2 to 1 tsp. cassia cinnamon

1/8 cup teriyaki sauce mixed with 1/8 cup Worcestershire sauce

Olive oil

Marinate the salmon in the teriyaki/Worcestershire sauce while you prepare the rest.  Using a sharp knife, destem and devein the red chard.  Coarsely chop the stems and veins.  Chop the leaves into pieces as indicated in the photo above.  Cover the bottom of a medium sized skillet with olive oil.  I love extra virgin olive oil and use a lot of it, but not absolutely necessary.  Saute chopped onions in the olive oil until translucent.  Add the poblano pepper and red stems of the chard.  When the peppers and chard stems are slightly cooked, add the salmon and marinade and sauté for about 2 minutes.  Turn the salmon and place the chard leaves on top.  Scatter the cinnamon on top of the chard leaves.  Saute until the chard leaves are wilted.

Serve with mixed grain rice (khao-pa-som in Thai) which can be found at Asian markets.  It is a mixture of brown, black, and red rice with various grains including what appears to be barley.  I cook it exactly like rice: sauté in olive oil with finely chopped garlic for a minute or so, add water, and stir in 1 tsp. concentrated bouillon. Turn heat to low, cover pan with several layers of paper towels, and put on lid.  This, like red and brown rice, takes about twice as long to cook as white rice.  It is more nutritious than white rice. If you want the health benefits of cinnamon, it is necessary to use cassia cinnamon, not Ceylon cinnamon.