My first bite was salty, crunchy. I could hear the dried black seaweed crackle like cellophane in my mouth.
“My father lived to 100, almost 101, and he ate this almost everyday,” Raleigh Morrison from Hydaburg told me.
Morrison says you can use the seaweed peppered in fish stew or to punctuate salmon eggs.
“Or you can eat it just the way it is, like popcorn.” Morrison said.
Morrison and a handful of other vendors are selling traditional Native comfort foods outside the Dena’ina Center during the Elder’s and Youth Conference and the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention this week in Anchorage.
Find Jenny Sam and Laura Stephanoff if you’re looking for smoked salmon strips. An elder, Lena Repin, from Southeast bought king salmon from both women.
How did it taste, I asked.
“Oh fabulous,” Repin said. “Mmm, going to heaven.”
Sam said she’s sold smoked salmon at AFN every year since she was in high school. One of her two coolers was already empty by the time I stopped by, just before lunch.
I could hear people around me talking about a woman who sells akutaq, Eskimo ice cream. They expect she’ll be here later in the week.
Let’s hope she saves some for me.
A Taste of Alaska
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i want to buy some smoked salmon,but where can I find the address?