coho

It was an odd after-school snack for a West Virginia farm kid (Tara), I\’ll admit. My big sister and I, tired and famished after an hour on the school bus, would hike up the driveway, throw down our book bags and settle in with a plate of saltines and smoked salmon — really good, wild Pacific smoked salmon. The kind you pay primo prices for at specialty shops.

But we got it for free. My mom had cousins who\’d gone out to the Pacific Northwest to seek their fortune and wound up running their own salmon-smoking business. Every year, they\’d ship us pounds of the stuff.