This comic has really held true for me in the past couple weeks on my adventure to include more fish and seafood in my diet. Every time I tried something new, someone else was there with me and knew that it was all new to me and that this was the first time I would be eating it in at least 10 years. So with each first bite of a new food, whoever it was that I was eating with, appeared to sit there waiting to start their meal after I had my first bite so that they could see my reaction to this foreign food.  While they’re expression of interest is nice, sometimes it makes eating uncomfortable if you know you’re being watched through the whole process.

As per request from a fellow blogger on my last post, I decided to try scallops last night for dinner. Instead of trying just scallops on their own, I bought bacon wrapped scallops instead for added flavour, or a way of hiding the flavour and texture of the scallop if I didn’t like them. I chose to buy the President’s Choice- Bacon Wrapped Nova Scotian Sea Scallops.

For the first one I decided to be brave and I peeled off the bacon and gave the scallop on it’s own a try. It was delicious. However I don’t know if the flavour of what I thought was scallop could be attributed to the bacon it had just been cooked with for the past 20 minutes. Regardless it was really good and I will definitely have them again. Perhaps not bacon wrapped so that I can discover the true taste of a scallop, a Nova Scotian sea scallop at that.

These past 5 weeks have been a real roller coaster on my taste buds as a conquered my long lived fear of eating fish and seafood after that one dreadful Christmas day when I was sick all day because I thought I had gotten sick from the seafood eaten the night before at my family’s traditional seafood dinner on Christmas Eve.

I am glad I chose to embark on this mission because I have discovered many new foods that are delicious and I will continue to include in my diet on a regular basis. This will also allow me to increase the variety of foods I choose to eat.  I plan to continue trying new fish and seafood and will be participating in the Christmas Eve seafood dinner for sure this year for the first time in nearly 10 years and I expect it will be delicious and a great decision for the benefit of my taste buds.

Even though I will not be continuing on with this blog due to time constraints, I make a promise to you that I will continue to try new fish and seafood and will try to include it  at least once, if not twice a week to follow Canada’s Food Guide!

Any ideas for one last crazy seafood or fish I can try out, just to say I did and perhaps actually enjoy?

After several weeks of experimenting with fish and seafood prepared by other people, I have finally conquered the task of preparing fish myself.

I went to Zehrs and purchased some of the President’s Choice Atlantic Salmon. I followed the instructions my mum gave me on how to cook it as mentioned in one of my previous posts, and to my surprise I did a good job at cooking it. Cooked to perfection for my taste buds! I enjoyed my fish with some rice and green beans and it made a delicious meal! I plan to make more meals like this in the coming weeks, even after my blog has ended.

Not only have I cooked it on my own, I continue to turn my eye to the fish and seafood sections on menus and from time to time actually making a selection from this section. I would say in the past few weeks through my experimenting I have managed to meet the Canada’s Food Guide recommendations of including 2 servings of fish in your diet a week. Now if only I could follow the rest of their recommendations.

Any suggestions of something else that I can try? Whether it’s a seafood or fish I haven’t yet tried or whether it’s just a great recipe you’ve been dying to share with someone?

As promised in my last post, I went out for a sushi lunch, among other things, and YES I did try raw fish and it wasn’t so bad. Not necessarily something I would eat often, but it was something different to try out.

So today, a friend and I made our way downtown to stop in at Fuji Restaurant for an all you can eat lunch. Upon arrival we were greeted by our server and set out to decide what we were going to eat. We decided on several things for the two of us to share. These included : teryiaki chicken, sesame chicken, chicken wings, pan fried dumplings, onion tempura, edemame, spring rolls, fried squid tentacles (better known as calamari to us Canadians), cucumber and avacado maki, crab maki, salmon sushi (for me) and shrimp sushi (for her), followed by a dessert of mango ice cream for me, and a banana tempura with vanilla ice cream for her.

For those of you who don’t know, what most of us would classify as sushi (the stuff you would pick up in your local grocery store) is actually called maki, in true sushi appears to be rice with a  piece of whatever it may be on top, in our case raw salmon and cooked shrimp.

While I struggled with the use of chopsticks I got through the meal and enjoyed everything that I tried. The hardest being the sushi as it was a daunting task putting this raw piece of fish in my mouth when I’m so used to having meat/fish cooked, but I managed to get it down and it actually tasted quite good. It wouldn’t be my first choice, but definitely a good alternative to the maki.

Comparing the two maki that we had, crab vs. cucumber and avocado, I actually enjoyed the crab one better, something about the flavours and the sauce already on these rolls made it delicious!

The squid tentacles were very good! I have had calamari before, as mentioned in previous posts, but never done quite like this. These tentacles didn’t have quite as much breading on them so you could kind of see the actual tentacle which was weird, but kind of neat at the same time to see that something so weird looking was so delicious!

Looks like eating fish and seafood is easy after all! These past few weeks have gotten me to try some new things and discover how much I truly enjoy them. I guess my next challenge is to actually try to get 2 servings of fish into my diet per week as recommended by Canada’s Food Guide.

All of these new experiences are starting to get me excited for my mum’s seafood feast for Christmas Eve dinner this year. It will be my first time participating since 2000 so it should be a good evening. Not to mention less strenuous on my mum as she has had to make me an entirely different meal for the past 10 years!

This week = a sushi lunch. I love vegetarian sushi, but I’m going to give the other kinds a try. If I can eat cooked fish, why not give the raw stuff a chance?

Well it happened. Not only did I eat and enjoy one kind of fish, but I ate and enjoyed TWO kinds of fish (salmon and haddock). I can’t believe I have gone this long without it. It was delicious. However I did enjoy the salmon much more because the haddock had a little bit of a fishy taste to it, but it still tasted great!

Earlier in the week, after speaking with my parents, we decided that yesterday my mom would come over and teach me the “art” of cooking fish. So yesterday upon her arrival we headed out to the grocery store to embark on the section of the store I always just walked right by, partially because the smell is so overwhelming, but also because it was just something I had no interest in eating after that experience many Christmas’s ago. Up to the counter we went to get  a salmon fillet and a haddock fillet just so I could see the difference between two kinds of fish in terms of what to look for to know that it is done cooking. We headed further into the grocery store to pick up a mixture to make lemon dill sauce, recommended by a friend (click here to see her blog on Guelph’s local restaurants).

Back home we went to embark on the mission of actually cooking the fish, which in the past few weeks, has been the most daunting task of my mission. What we did was we put each fillet on a piece of tin foil, sprinkled some salt, pepper, and cajun spice over top, squeezed a little bit of lemon juice onto each one and finished it off with about 2 tsp of butter, we then closed up the foil making a little “package” and put them both on a cookie sheet in the oven at 350°C for about 15-20 minutes. After the time had passed my mom showed me how the salmon should now flake and lift right off the skin left on the fillet, and how the haddock would flake also.

After making the lemon dill sauce, and a chickpea salad to go along with it, we sat down to eat. Oh boy, I couldn’t believe I had gone so long without eating fish. I really wish someone had forced me years ago to try it again because this fish was delicious. As mentioned before the salmon was much better than the haddock, due to the slightly fishy taste the halibut left in the mouth, but both were excellent. I didn’t put the lemon dill sauce right on top of the fish because I wanted to try it without, remember, I was on a mission to try and eat fish that wasn’t hidden by breading or other things. So instead after a few bites of no sauce, I started dipping the fish into the sauce which was a nice added touch, but definitely not a necessary component in order to enjoy the fish.

So … my mission has been accomplished, with left overs to show for it, and to enjoy for lunch today I’m sure! Next will be cooking the fish alone without the help of my mom.

Next on the list of things to do: Purchase, and cook a piece of fish without entirely masking it by something else. Wish me luck!

I sit here after eating the most delicious tuna sandwich I think I could have possibly made. Remember those omega-3 fatty acids I was telling you about? Well I just took it up a notch by adding in some avocado which is also high in these fatty acids.

What else was in this sandwich you ask? Well, I took a can of tuna (and used the whole thing), chopped up some avocado, added 1.5 tbsp of light mayonnaise, dash of salt, dash of pepper and some cajun spice (which I should probably tell you I will add to just about anything that I cook), mixed it all together and put it on some whole wheat bread. 

While making this sandwich I was a bit hesitant about how it would taste, I’ve grown to love tuna (the canned version) over these past few weeks and avocados are something I’ve always enjoyed but just because you like both things doesn’t mean they’re always going to combine well. Well, let me tell you, this made an excellent combination it was quite possibly one of the most delicious sandwich I’ve had in a long time and would recommend it to anyone who likes tuna and avocados.

Since my last post I have managed to include a little seafood in my diet, but I must admit it was masked by breading, or a sauce. I had a stir-fry and added some shrimp to it, but used barbeque sauce in making the stir-fry, therefore the taste and texture of the shrimp was more or less hidden. I also had some calamari which was breaded.

Both were delicious, but I need to discover some options that don’t mask the fish or seafood. The task of cooking fish is daunting because I have never in my life cooked fish and I fear over or under cooking it and making the experience a less than enjoyable one. I guess I need to focus more on the seafood sections of menu’s when I go out for dinner, or find someone who knows how to cook it and have them make me dinner or lunch sometime in order to a get a true fish or seafood experience.

In the meantime, I have done some research on the benefits of including fish and seafood in the diet:

• Fish is full of omega-3 fatty acids
  • reduced risk of cardiovascular disease
  • prevent the spread of some cancers
  • relieve inflammatory disease
  • reduced risk of stroke
• Low in saturated fat
• 1 serving of fish per week shown to reduce the risk of dementia by 30%
• Consumption during pregnancy shown to reduce risk of pre-term delivery or low birth weight babies

Perhaps if I can’t get myself to eat fish and reap the benefits listed above, perhaps I should start taking fish oil supplements in their place to avoid such things.(Information 1-4)

Has anyone had good seafood experiences at local restaurants and could make some good suggestions of places for me to try seeing as I haven’t tackled the task of learning to cook it myself?

So I’m a few weeks in and I’m finding it really difficult to try to choose seafood options. This is something I have gone years without so it’s almost instinct to walk right by it in the grocery store, or to completely skip that section of the menu. I think I need to make a trip to Red Lobster ® or some other seafood restaurant in order to force myself to try new things.

Even the appearance of these foods aren’t all that appealing to the eye in my mind, adding another factor as to why I can’t make these choices as I promised I would. The look of flakey, slimy, or sometimes even rubbery looking food isn’t exactly what I want to be eating unless forced to.

Does anybody out there have some great recipes or favourite dishes at local restaurants that you recommend I should try? Any help would be greatly appreciated, because as you can see, I’m struggling.

My next mission: SHRIMP; any suggestions of recipes for a first timer to try?

My 10 “fish-less” years have come to an end as I have officially begun my quest to include fish and seafood in my diet on a regular basis.

So far, on multiple occasions, I have dined on fish and chips and enjoyed them much more than anticipated. While this may not be the best seafood choice, I thought it would be one of the easier ones to try as my first encounter with fish. My reasoning being that the fish is breaded, making it less obvious that it was fish. Not only does the breading mask the appearance of fish, it also alters the flavour a bit, making it more bearable for me and likely made a large contribution as to why I enjoyed it so much and have had it several other times.

Looking for a great, do it yourself fish and chips recipe? Try this one:

Classic Fish and Chips (1)

Ingredients

• 4 large potatoes, peeled and cut into strips
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 quart vegetable oil for frying
• 1 1/2 pounds cod fillets

Directions

1. Place potatoes in a medium-size bowl of cold water. In a separate medium-size mixing bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, salt, and pepper. Stir in the milk and egg; stir until the mixture is smooth. Let mixture stand for 20 minutes.
2. Preheat the oil in a large pot or electric skillet to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
3. Fry the potatoes in the hot oil until they are tender. Drain them on paper towels.
4. Dredge the fish in the batter, one piece at a time, and place them in the hot oil. Fry until the fish is golden brown. If necessary, increase the heat to maintain the 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) temperature. Drain well on paper towels.
5. Fry the potatoes again for 1 to 2 minutes for added crispness.

Hello everyone!!

My name is Alyssa and I am a 4^th year Applied Human Nutrition student at the University of Guelph. As I engage further in my studies, I continue to learn the benefits of fish and seafood, especially in their contribution of various nutrients that are essential to the human body.

Christmas 2000 was a changing point in my diet. After having a big seafood dinner on Christmas Eve (as we do every year), myself along with most of my immediate family members spent most of Christmas day quite sick and not in your stereotypical “jolly” spirits. As I was young, I decided that it was the seafood that had made me sick, and ruined Christmas for me, which it would for just about any child who considered this day to be the best day of the year. From that day on I refused to eat seafood and for years to come my mother was forced to cook a single chicken breast, just for me, every Christmas Eve. So, after approximately 10 years,  of not eating fish or seafood, I am going to make it my goal to consume it on a more regular basis to reap the so-called “benefits” of these foods. I plan to start slow and small, working my way up to more elaborate seafood dishes, that don’t need to be masked with added foods or seasonings.

Join me in my journey to include these foods in my diet and feel free to post any recipes you feel would help a first timer begin to enjoy them after many years without them.

My first mission: FISH AND CHIPS (the hidden but delicious fish)