Author: Mildred Bell

There is a type of fishing trip that isn’t listed on booking websites or in weekend vacation supplements. You learn about them in the same manner that you learn about the majority of things that are truly worthwhile: from someone who has been there before and who talks about it in the precise, slightly subtle way that people discuss experiences they’re not quite sure how to describe. There is a fishing lodge in remote Alaska with a one-year waiting list. Goodnews River Lodge and a few authorized outfitters in the Katmai National Park system sell out weeks before the previous…

The majority of parents spend three months persuading themselves that taking a toddler on a trip to Alaska is not a good idea. The logistics seem overwhelming. The distances are actual. Your itinerary is irrelevant to the weather. Furthermore, a four-year-old has ideas on topics unrelated to halibut tides or salmon flows. Before we left, no one informed me that Alaska is actually one of the easiest locations to take a little child when done correctly. The structure of a fishing trip naturally fits the rhythm a little child requires, not because it’s kid-proof or because the fish cooperate—they don’t…

Sheet pan shrimp fajitas consistently rank highly among saved recipes on all of the major food platforms for a reason. One pan, less than thirty minutes, a few ingredients that most people already have, and a product that tastes and looks like you put in a lot more work than you really did make it nearly impossible to argue with. The final section may be the true selling factor. The process is simple. Set the oven temperature to 425°F. Cut a large red onion into thin wedges and cut three bell peppers (orange, yellow, and red, mixed for color) into…

The squid, which has no shell at all, has been embroiled in legal disputes for a remarkably long time. That argument might be coming to an end. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposed changing its definition of “shellfish” in March 2026 to formally include cephalopods, such as squid, cuttlefish, octopus, and nautilus. This would close a regulatory loophole that had long silently irritated exporters and fishermen. The issue stems from language that was written long before anyone realized how complex it would become. Shellfish are defined by federal law as “an aquatic invertebrate having a shell.”” Of course, squid…

In the Pacific Northwest, a certain bowl appears at almost every event, and it hardly ever returns to the kitchen full. It sits next to the crackers, is scraped clean in the first twenty minutes, and before anyone leaves, they always ask for the recipe. Smoked salmon dip is typically found in that bowl, and if you’ve ever attended a baby shower, a holiday party, or a backyard barbecue from Portland to Bellingham, you’ve most likely eaten it without realizing its name. The dip itself is simple, which contributes to its persistence. The base is made of whipped cream cheese,…

For most of the 20th century, seafood in America sat somewhere between a Friday obligation and a beach-vacation indulgence. Fish sticks at dinner. Fried shrimp on a boardwalk. Nothing more ambitious than that. The numbers backed it up — Americans have hovered around fifteen to nineteen pounds of seafood per person per year for decades, a figure that barely moved while chicken consumption climbed past two hundred pounds. But walk into a Costco today and you’ll see something that wouldn’t have made sense thirty years ago: poke bowls in the deli case, sustainably farmed salmon stacked next to the rotisserie…

The majority of the praise given to shrimp scampi is well-deserved. It’s quick, buttery, and doesn’t require much of the person at the stove. However, if you spend enough time around a stockpot, you’ll realize that scampi is merely the starting point. Beyond the garlic and lemon juice that everyone is familiar with, the true variety of seafood pasta—the ingredients that make a kitchen smell like a coastal trattoria rather than a chain restaurant—lives somewhere. Simmer a red clam sauce with only mashed garlic and high-quality olive oil for fifteen minutes. There’s a reason why variations of it appear repeatedly…

The seafood counter at Wrightsville Beach’s Motts Channel Seafood has a distinct rhythm. Before lunchtime crowds ask what’s fresh, boxes are brought in from the docks, ice is shoveled, and whatever the boats brought back that morning is sorted. Sheepshead, a striped, strangely toothy fish that locals recognize by sight and request by name, has been a part of that rhythm for the majority of the year. There will soon be a change in that rhythm. The new sheepshead regulations in North Carolina went into effect on March 1. They increased the minimum size requirement from 10 inches to 14…

You can see a global supply chain under the guise of a lunch special when you walk into practically any sushi counter in America. The Pacific or Indian Ocean is most likely where the tuna originated. The shrimp were probably raised in Indonesia, India, or Ecuador. Approximately 94% of the seafood consumed by Americans originates from overseas, and this fact will become much more significant than most diners are aware. The FDA’s strategy for handling imported seafood has been akin to a slow-moving filter for many years: it inspects a sample here, flags a shipment there, and issues an import…

One of the most prominent riverfront areas in downtown Jacksonville has a new tenant lined up. Depending on who you ask, this could be an indication that the city is finally coming or that the residents are going to be priced out. A Downtown Investment Authority evaluation committee has recommended that Atlas Restaurant Group, a Baltimore-based company with over 50 restaurants throughout the Mid-Atlantic, construct and run a seafood restaurant at Riverfront Plaza, the park that took the place of the former Jacksonville Landing site on the Northbank. The proposal was approved by the committee 3-0 in late April, and…