Here’s a website Debi found this morning while she was looking for recipes that might entice aging hippie octogenarians and the after-church crowd that gathers for coffee in the narthex on Sunday mornings (often the same people). Since I fit both categories, she sent me a link.
Debi’s link led to what we called a “cook page” back in newspapering days. It’s named Simply Nutritious, and it features recipes including — but not limited to — things like Zucchini Herb Chicken Meatballs, along with lots and lots of veggies, salads and desserts. Here’s another main dish that looks intriguing: Salmon with Herb Yogurt Sauce. How cool would it be to whip that up, as promised, in 25 minutes?
This sent my imagination down a rabbit hole. (Up a coastal spawning stream?) I’ve always liked salmon. Seems like we had it a lot at home when I was a kid and you could pick it up for 50 cents a can; you couldn’t really get fresh seafood during the 1950s in our small East Tennessee town, and it was a special treat to visit seafood restaurants along the East Coast when we went to visit my father’s family in New York City. In later years, I learned to nosh on lox and bagels, and I sampled the glories of fresh-caught salmon in Norway and Alaska.
Also, after I got tenure I developed and taught an undergrad Native American cultural studies course. One of my very favorite poems was “How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River” by the late Tlingit tradition-bearer Nora Dauenhauer. It’s written like a recipe, but it’s also about maintaining the old traditions in a homogenized, mass-market society. As you read it and sit with it, you realize it’s also a recipe for living:
It’s best made in dry-fish camp on a beach by a
fish stream on sticks over an open fire, or during
fishing, or during cannery season.In this case, we’ll make it in the city baked in
an electric oven on a black fry pan.
Make do with what you’ve got, I guess. So when Debi sent me the cook-page link and I looked at the salmon recipes, you might say (if it’s not the wrong metaphor in this context) I was hooked.
I needed a break anyway from reading about President Trump’s latest manifestation of attention-seeking behavior, this time by again proclaiming to NATO allies Greenland “should be controlled by the US, not by Denmark.” (Fact check: Greenland is an autonomous territory that owes allegiance to King Frederick X of Denmark. But it has its own prime minister, parliament and Lutheran state church.) I grew up on the Norse sagas of Erik the Red and Leif Eriksen, so Trump’s ignorant, pugnacious blathering makes my second-generation Norskie blood run cold. I was ready for a break.
Plus I like fish anyway. So when Debi sent me the link to Something Nutritious, I took a look around.The website is a project of Gal Shua-Haim, a registered dietician and food blogger from Brooklyn who has lived in Grenada, Philly, San Diego and Florida. She has a variety of recipes for breakfast, main meals, pasta, side dishes and desserts, as well as holiday recipes for Rosh Hashanah, Shavuot, Hanukkah and Thanksgiving. Shua-Haim says:
I have an all foods fit approach when it comes to nutrition, and my overall goal is to simplify your life in the kitchen by showing you that eating healthy can be easy without compromising taste.
She scores high on both. I have to be careful about what I eat as a result of complications from chemo and immunotherapy. (A wise old owl once summed up a kidney diet for me like this: If it tastes good, you can’t have it!) Most of the recipes I glanced at on Something Nutritious were low on sodium (salt) but generous with spices, herbs and condiments to make up for it.
One recipe that especially intrigued me was Salmon Burgers with Spicy Slaw. (Did I mention I like fish?) One thing I had to give up when I went on a restricted diet is salmon fritters, a Southern delicacy made like a salmon patty but seasoned, at least in my case, with an copious amount of a popular crab boil that’s full of celery salt and red pepper; a low-sodium version is available commercially, but I don’t trust my self-restraint in the kitchen, so I don’t try to use it anymore.
Gal Shua-Haim’s salmon burgers look like a tasty substitute, calling for chopped green onions, dijon mustard, sriracha sauce, sesame seeds, garlic powder and only a “Pinch of salt & pepper.” Not at all like salmon fritters I made down home, but worth a try!
To go with the salmon burgers, Shua-Haim recommends a Spicy Slaw. Here’s her recipe:
- 2 cups shredded cabbage
- 1 small jalapeno, thinly sliced
- 2 tbsp mayo
- 1 tbsp sriracha
- Juice from 1/2 a lemon
- Salt & Pepper to taste
This punched another one of my Southern buttons. Cole slaw is kinda like barbecue sauce or chili. Every region has its own preference, and the merits of pinto beans, New Orleans-style red beans or no beans at all, Texas style, are argued endlessly. (For the record, allow me to state the only chili worth eating is served at Hoskins’ Drug Store across Main Street from the Anderson County courthouse in Clinton, Tenn.)
Similarly, the best way to eat slaw is like they do in Memphis, preferably on a bun with pulled pork. Since I moved to the Midwest 40-odd years ago, I’ve learned: (1) I need to be cautious about foods like chili, barbecue and cole slaw anywhere north of the Ohio River at Paducah, Ky.; and (2) you can usually find tasty alternatives, often in ethnic restaurants, if you look hard enough.
Shua-Haim’s spicy slaw recipe isn’t anything like Memphis-style, but cole slaw down South has just enough sugar to put it on my naughty list, so I think hers is worth a try. Like Nora Dauenhauer says, you make do with what you’ve got.
Dauenhauer was a historian and linguist who lived in Juneau, where she was a researcher for the the Sealaska Heritage Foundation. She was was a member of the Raven moiety of the Tlingit nation, of the Yakutat Lukaax̱.ádi (Sockeye Salmon) clan, and her first language was Tlingit. So her poem “How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River” is also about preserving tradition in an urbanizing, throwaway culture.
Here, for example, is how to serve the salmon after cooking it over the wood fire in a traditional riverside fish camp:
After smelling smoke and fish and watching the
cooking, smelling the skunk cabbage and the berries
mixed with seal oil, when the salmon is done, put
the salmon on stakes on the skunk cabbage and pour
some seal oil over it and watch the oil run into
the nice cooked flakey flesh which has now turned
pink.Shoo mosquitoes off the salmon, and shoo the ravens
away, but don’t insult them because the mosquitoes
are known to be the ashes of the cannibal giant,
and Raven is known to take off with just about
anything.
And here’s how to serve it if you live in the city (in this case, Juneau):
In this case, dish out on paper plates from fry pan.
Serve to all relatives and friends you have invited
to the barbecue and those who love it.And think how good it is that we have good spirits
that still bring salmon and oil.
And, in she end, she gives us a glimpse of how and why — and why — a respect for the old ways still matters:
When done, toss the bones to the ravens and
seagulls and mosquitoes, but don’t throw them in
the salmon stream because the salmon have spirits
and don’t like to see the remains of their kin
among them in the stream.In this case, put bones in plastic bag to put
in dumpster.Now settle back to a story telling session, while
someone feeds the fire.In this case, small talk and jokes with friends
will do while you drink beer. If you shouldn’t
drink beer, tea or coffee will do nicely.
I don’t drink beer anymore, and I shouldn’t drink coffee either. But in my case herb tea or decaf — or plain water with a little squirt of lemon concentrate — will do nicely, and I hear the wisdom of the elders in Dauenhauer’s story telling.
Works Cited
Pippa Crerar, “Trump renews call for US to take over Greenland as he arrives for Nato summit,” Guardian, July 7, 2026 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/07/trump-renews-call-us-take-over-greenland-nato.
Nora Dauenhauer, “How to Make Good Baked Salmon from the River,” Robert Ronnow: Poetry https://www.ronnowpoetry.com/contents/dauenhauer/HowtoMake.html.
Bjorn Dihle, “The Gift of Salmon,” Alaska Magazine, Aug. 30, 2023 https://alaskamagazine.com/authentic-alaska/the-gift-of-salmon/.
Gal Shua-Haim, Something Nutritious, blog https://somethingnutritiousblog.com/.
Wikipedia has a bio of Nora Dauenhauer (with a link to the term moiety, which refers to the Tlingit people’s clan system) at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nora_Marks_Dauenhauer.
[Uplinked July 9, 2026]
Ordinary Time 