Wild Alaskan Company
I grew up in a military family in the post-World War II era of frozen food that was quick and easy to prepare. In my mother’s various kitchens, fish dinners came from the freezer in the form of breaded fish sticks served with mashed potatoes and bright green frozen peas. However, there were two fresh flounder meals that I’ve never forgotten. One was on a family road trip from Massachusetts into Canada when I was ten; the other was during a family vacation on the Gulf of Mexico when I was in the 7th grade.
Dad grew up on a dairy farm in Pennsylvania where he loved fishing in local streams. As we moved from base to base during my childhood, he kept a fishing rod and reel in the coat closet in case there was an opportunity for him to go fishing; but life was full and that didn’t happen. But while on our trip to Canada, he introduced me to the taste of fresh flounder when we dined out one night, and I loved it.
My second encounter with flounder came when I literally stepped on one when my family was vacationing at Ft. Walton Beach, Florida. Gulf Flounder are bottom dwellers and one had settled on the sandy bottom where I was wading with my sisters. Dad had brought his fishing gear and was nearby, casting his line into the waves in hopes of catching something we could cook for dinner. I remember two things about that riveting moment. Something large, flat and potentially menacing wiggled under my bare foot and sent me racing back to shore. I like to think that my close encounter with that camouflaged flounder launched it in Dad’s direction where it ended up on his fishing line moments later. That night, I enjoyed the second fresh flounder dinner I’d ever had, and once again, I loved it.
In the late 1960s, I often bought fresh red snapper in a local Bangkok market while I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. I remember pan-frying them on an electric hot plate (I had no stove or oven) and sharing them with Chomsri, a student who lived with me then and remains one of my dearest friends today. We’d cook a pot of rice, de-bone the snapper once it was ready, and that was our dinner for two. Simple and simply delicious.
In my early years of cooking dinner for our Salter family of four—Kit, Hayden, Heidi, and me—fish rarely appeared at our table. I just didn’t know how to fix fish so that it didn’t taste fishy. But years later in Missouri, our friends Barbara and Orion Beckmeyer took me fly fishing one afternoon on a local pond. That day I experienced the quiet beauty of casting a simple fly rod line without the heavy fishing gear that Dad hauled around over the years. There was poetry in that solitary exercise that connected with me and spoke volumes. I also remember the sunfish (crappie) we caught that afternoon that Orion pan fried in butter, and how it literally melted in our mouths.
The Beckmeyers loved fishing and generously shared what they caught. One fall they went on a fishing trip in Alaska and shipped their fresh caught frozen salmon home be enjoyed and shared throughout the coming winter. When the shipment arrived, they invited us to a dinner of grilled Alaskan salmon that was the best I’ve ever tasted. Which brings me to the Wild Alaskan Company, its founder Arron Kallenberg, and how I now have a freezer filled with an assortment of fresh caught frozen wild Alaskan seafood.
On the company’s website www.wildalaskancompany.com you learn Kallenberg’s story—
“I was born and raised in Alaska and grew up on the back deck of my family’s commercial fishing boat…. My grandfather moved from New Jersey to Alaska in 1926 and began fishing in a wooden sailboat. Since then, my family has always fished Bristol Bay, Alaska—the largest, sustainable sockeye salmon run in the world.” When Aaron moved to the ‘Lower 48’ to go to college, he “realized just how hard it was to eat real food—let alone to reliably find sustainably-harvested wild seafood.” He believes that “Today, many Americans mistakenly think that they don’t like seafood because they’ve never tried the real thing.”
I discovered The Wild Alaskan Company’s website about a month ago. Knowing that seafood is a great source of protein, I ordered my first shipment of their wild seafood and am now learning ways to prepare them. My first order was WAC’s Wild Combo Box of individually sealed 6-oz portions of wild caught Coho Salmon, Sockeye Salmon, Pacific Halibut, Pacific Cod, Wild Alaska Pollock, plus a large free bag of scallops. And, did I mention that there is no charge for shipping, WAC’s prices are amazingly affordable, and their fish are really fresh and delicious?
I love this third-generation family’s real food movement, their recently formed company that boasts their sustainably harvested, wild-caught seafood, and their personal mission to help protect Alaska’s fishing industry. Check out their website today. What are you waiting for?