I blame it all on my nephew.

Around the time that he was born, earlier this year, something clicked and I decided to take the whole sustainable seafood thing seriously: if he and his unborn cousins are to enjoy a long life full of lobster tails and skate wings, it is up to me to make informed and responsible choices now.

I had heard of the depletion of the oceans before, but I don’t think I had quite realized how dire the situation is: fish populations the world over are threatened by overfishing, overconsumption, pollution, and fishing techniques that wreak havoc in local ecosystems. If we don’t change our ways fast, major fish species may become extinct as early as 2050.

Like all environmental problems, this is an abysmally complex one, with multitudinous causes, implications, side effects, and collateral damages. And if you factor in other, equally pressing concerns, such as levels of mercury, PCB, and other contaminants, as well as the need to favor locally sourced ingredients, it all becomes rather overwhelming, befuddling, discouraging, check all that apply. Not everyone aspires to become an expert in marine matters, and not everyone has the time or inclination to decode what the experts are saying.

We just want to eat fish and be merry.

It is perhaps tempting then to sit on one’s hands and say, well, I’m just the one consumer, I can’t change the world, and that slab of red tuna on the fish stall or on the menu is already out of the water anyway, so I might as well eat it.

But no; it is best to let that slab of red tuna sit there, uneaten, for it is very much a chicken-or-egg (or rather, a fish-or-roe) matter. As much as we would want them to, restaurants and fish markets aren’t in the business of saving the planet; they’re in the business of making their customers happy.

And if what makes you happy is to feel sure that the fish you buy has been fished or farmed sustainably — that is to say, in a way that ensures that the fish population will be maintained or increased, and that the ecosystem it belongs to is protected — then it will become financially profitable for fish vendors and restaurateurs to care.

So, what to do, what to do?

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This has been the strangest July ever. Maxence and I are having our bathroom renovated, and it is far more disruptive than I had — perhaps naively — imagined it would be. The dust, debris, and general lack of showering implement have made our apartment rather inhospitable, and my poor little kitchen is all tarped up, to protect her (of course it’s a she) from the ambient grime.

As you might infer, there has been little cooking going on around here lately — rubble cake, anyone? — but, by a stroke of involuntary foresight, just before the workers came in to bash the walls, I had prepared the ideal antidote: a simple lemon kefir ice cream, made with fermented milk.

It is, without a doubt, the best lemon ice cream I’ve ever tasted.

The culinary fairy behind this recipe is my good friend Estérelle, who writes for ELLE and has a truly staggering knowledge of all things food and cosmetics. In the original version posted on her blog, she makes it with lait ribot, a fermented milk from Brittany. I *heart* lait ribot, but I have difficulty finding it in my neighborhood, so I used kefir instead; it is readily available in the fresh milk aisle of my grocery store.

The acidulated creaminess of the fermented milk is a rare complement to the acidity of the lemon, and the result is a snow-like, tangy concoction that works wonders on one’s dust-parched throat and construction-weary soul.

It is, without a doubt, the best lemon ice cream I’ve ever tasted.

The recipe can be easily adapted to use other types of fermented milk and sweeteners, and even other kinds of citrus. Lime would be perfect (with a splash of rum or cachaça rather than limoncello), as would orange, grapefruit, and, if you want to dazzle your friends with your culinary exotica, yuzu or cumbava.

But I must say that, like Estérelle herself, I am so smitten with this lemon kefir ice cream that I’m unlikely to try it any other way.

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I recently told someone that I was totally over my phase of buying kitchen stuff all the time. With a straight face, I explained that I was content with my current equipment, and that I needed nothing more, really.

I’m afraid this is true in a distorted version of reality that exists only in my head.

I can delude myself all I want, but the fact remains that, over the past three months, I have acquired a little more than zero utensils. I will readily provide a set of indisputable reasons for buying each and every one of them, but still: a flour sifter, a frosting spatula, a set of madeleine molds (one that fits in my small oven), a bulb baster, a new piping bag with metal tips, a sesame mill, and now this.

This, for those of you who are not wholly acquainted with the perfect little baker’s paraphernalia, this is a dough whisk, designed to succeed where the wire whisk and the wooden spoon fail.

This, for those of you who are not wholly acquainted with the perfect little baker’s paraphernalia, this is a dough whisk, designed to succeed where the wire whisk and the wooden spoon fail.

I was completely unaware that the gods of baking had created such a utensil until I visited Portland last spring, for the release of my Paris book: I was to appear briefly on local television, to demo the recipe for chouquettes. I did no such thing, of course, since cooking on a set usually consists in pointing at various items placed on a counter, while talking the host through the recipe.

Local authors might prepare and bring in their own food, but since I was about 5,000 miles from my own kitchen, it is really Sandra, my media escort* and food stylist extraordinaire, who had prepared the choux pastry and the finished chouquettes for me. (And perhaps we can all remember, next time we watch a cooking segment on television, to mentally acknowledge the work done behind the scenes by food stylists.)

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[Blue, White, and Red]

Today is the French national holiday, known in the English-speaking world as Bastille Day, but simply referred to as le 14 juillet in France.

I wish I could offer some sort of culinary tradition tied to this holiday, but as I explained in this past post, there is none: the celebrations revolve mainly around fireworks, military parades (I had to interrupt the typing of this post to watch the planes cross the sky above us, on their way to the Champs-Elysées), and dances. There may be grilled merguez vendors on the sidewalk here and there, but that’s about it.

That’s not to say, however, that one can’t have a blue, white, and red lunch to mark the occasion: something tomato (say, a salad of coeur de boeuf tomatoes), something dairy (such as a Bordier yogurt from Saint-Malo), and something blueberry (ideally, a blueberry tart).

Joyeux 14 juillet! How are you going to celebrate?