Civil Eats

BP announced last week that it will never again try to produce oil from the well where the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred. “The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that’s what we will do,” said Doug Suttles, BP chief operating officer. Apparently, the right thing doesn’t include the cessation of drilling elsewhere in the same reservoir, which they have stated they plan to continue.

Have they, and we as a nation, learned nothing from this disaster? Here are some questions to ask ourselves now. Can we be assured that an oil spill of this magnitude will never happen again? Is there a fail-proof method way of extracting oil from deep water wells? Read More

“Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp.” As a homegrown New Orleanian who grew up on a steady diet of the freshest, local seafood from the nearby waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico, this has long been my mantra.

The culinary culture of New Orleans has become increasingly threatened by the flood of cheap, imported shrimp. Yes, even here it’s necessary to ask where the shrimp came from, despite the fact that we are blessed with two shrimp seasons making freshly caught shrimp available virtually year round. Read More

Up until a few years ago I was part of the problem, and didn’t even know it.  I was blindly buying shrimp for my restaurant and personal consumption without paying attention to its origin.  I was oblivious to how shrimp was caught and transported.  And I couldn’t tell you the advantages of wild caught vs. farmed sources. Read More