spitfirebill wrote:
iceracer wrote:
Strange, no one mentioned fish/sea food.
I'm a lttle scared of the salmon being sold today. A lot comes from China and want no food products from there.
I suspect you can buy catfish filets pretty cheaply if you try. When I moved to Alabama in 1982, everybody down there raved about catfish. We had always considered catfish a trash fish with a strong flavor. I can assure you, farm raised catfish tastes like chicken. Yummy!!
I have worked 4 years in seafood at Wegmans, GOOD seafood will not be as cheap as chicken or beef. A couple of things to look at is farmed vs. wild, fresh vs. frozen, country of origin, and preservatives.
Farmed vs. wild, both are good. For something being farmed, it will be for any of a handful of reasons. Sustainability(Atlantic salmon), availability(tilapia), DEC law(freshwater like trout/cat).
Fresh vs. frozen, again, both are good, but... I only like to go with frozen if I am getting it from the freezer, not previously frozen thawed product from the service case. Frozen will be cheaper, and time between catch/harvest and freezing will be hours. It also enables wild fish to be available out of season. Finally, good frozen fish will usually be individually vacuum sealed, allowing easy thawing of individual pieces.
Country of origin, look for where it comes from. Most of my fresh product is US or Canada. Notable exceptions include fresh tilapia from Ecuador, and wild fish range and migration patterns. The only Chinese fish we sell at Wegs is our frozen tilapia. Also, most farmed shrimp will be from SE Asia. I'm not big on the concept, but knowing the standards that we demand from our suppliers, I won't hesitate to get Wegmans branded products from asia.
Preservatives, most options in cheap seafood will be loaded with things like Sodium tripolyphosphate. I refuse to eat anything with this.
As far as cheap catfish, that is mostly a thing of the past. In the last 2 years, price has gone up 50%. This is for several reasons. #1 being the growth of Swai, a Vietnamese framed fish similar to catfish. Partly due to swai, there are now only 2 large scale commercial cat fish farms in the US anymore. Finally, flooding along the Mississippi last year wiped out a lot of soy crop, rising the price of soy, the main ingredient in catfish feed.
Sorry for becoming a Wegmans Canoe.