Millions of Fishes

The Ukrainians I've met seem to adore all things fish, believing that not only is fish uncommonly tasty, but it's also extremely healthy. While some foods, like peanut butter and maple syrup, are all but impossible to find here, fish is high on the list of frequently available foods. Ukraine is a seafood-lover's paradise.

Growing up in Minnesota, near the center of the North American continent and subsequently pretty much as far as you can get from the source of, well, any kind of even mildly exotic oceanic sort of fish, I was rarely exposed to the wonders of the world of seafood. As far as I can recall, the only fish my family ever ate on a regular basis consisted of the breaded, processed, frozen variety, preferably dipped in ketchup.

Now living only 100 km from the Sea of Azov in Ukraine, I find myself confronted with fish of an incredible variety on all sides. Dried fish in plastic bags are in the door of the refrigerator at my family's home, just chillin' next to the mayonaise, kefir, and kalbasa (store-bought sausages). In the mornings, vendors stand on the street corners selling striped and headless fish out of plastic pails. The ladies wear puffy coats with frilled aprons over them, and chat animatedly with one another as I walk by on my way to school. Sometimes they have to shoo away a lucky stray dog that manages to get his head into one of the buckets. If you enter a local magazine (Russian for 'store'), your nose will be most likely be accosted by an unmistakeably fishy odor. At the markets, giant fish as big as an adult human leg flex their gills open and shut, slowly suffocating on the long wooden tables.

Fish here, fish there, fish and seafood everywhere. What am I going to do?

For the holidays, we ate an incredible amount of food, and a significant percentage of the festive dishes contained fish of some kind. Shrimp cocktail was served with sliced citrus; fist-sized calamari tentacles stuffed with rice and mushrooms, covered in mayonaise and melted cheese slid greasily around on our plates; Ukrainian salads were crafted with pickled fish, baked and shredded fish, diced fish, smoked fish.

But I met the crowned king of fish at our New Year's celebration. He was bought fresh, twisting slowly in his bag for a day and a night before my host mother stuffed him with mushrooms and liver pate, baked him in his skin, drizzled an intricate pattern of mayonaise on top, robed him in black olives, lemon slices, and pomegranate seeds, and accompanied him with a retinue of sliced cucumbers, flowered tomatoes, oranges, and rare, expensive lettuce leaves. His eyes were glistening black olives, his lips tender red slices of tomato. He was coronated in a carefully sculpted tomato circlet encrusted with an olive. The result was truly a masterpiece:

Alas, for the poor crowned king of fish was not to be eaten. Frankly, I'm not sure why, although I was somewhat disinclined to indulge, myself. I can't really explain why I lack the gusto to dive into eating all this fish, but for some reason I approach seafood reluctantly at best.

I might blame my lack of fishetite on my upbringing, saying that culturally I've never gotten used to eating fish, but many Minnesotans regularly enjoy fish of a more local variety and more exotic fish has always been available. It is true that in my family we tended to stick to chicken, pork and beef. And I've all but convinced myself that I'm allergic to shellfish, since my mother is, and I had a feverish run-in with a shrimp dish in China. Whether I'm truly allergic or not, I can't ever bring myself to chance eating a food that required I had to endure it twice. Urp.

And then there's the issue of environmental contamination. I'm living in a heavily industrialized part of Ukraine, with little to no governmental regulation of emissions or dumping. As American Volunteers, we're already forbidden to eat fish caught locally from streams and lakes because of pollution and possible radioactive particles. I also guess that much of the industrial waste generated in this part of Ukraine runs off into the Sea of Azov, which might be cleaner than the Black Sea downstream, but still poses enough of a mental threat that I feel I might be healthier if I just avoided fish altogether.

That said, it's awfully hard to have to say "no" all the time to offers of intricate, interesting fish dishes that represent the heartiest goodwill of your friends and neighbors. When you're a guest at someone's home in Ukraine, the host always feels a deep-seated obligation to feed you, and feed you well. If that food is fish, finding a culturally sensitive way to decline is the first thing on my mind, when I'd rather just be sitting back and making a few new friends. And I can't help feeling like there's something fishy about that.

Thanks to a great book by Wanda Gag that my Grandma Marilyn used to read to me when I was little, and that I read in my 5th form class today, Millions of Cats, for inspiration for this post.