Would you drink this to combat green crabs?: Today So Far

• A distillery may have one solution for invasive green crabs. Could the Northwest's breweries find solutions of their own?
• Should Seattle be a chocolate chip cookie, or a brownie? In other words, what are we going to do with all these people moving to town?

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for July 12, 2022.

Would you drink whiskey made with crabs?

Problem: European green crabs have been slowly invading Northwest waters, and are making their way down through Puget Sound. They destroy habitats for local sea life, such as our native Dungeness and red crabs, as well as salmon habitats. People are pretty worried about this.

Solution: Whiskey?!

Over in New Hampshire, they've also been dealing with invasive green crabs. One distillery there has drawn attention to the issue by bottling a special whiskey that incorporates them into its recipe. Each bottle uses about a pound of green crabs.

"People are going to hear 'crab whiskey,' and I'd venture to say three-quarters of them are going to go, 'No, absolutely not,'" said Will Robinsons, product developer at Tamworth Distilling in New Hampshire. "But if you can get them to taste it, they totally change their tune for the most part."

Whiskey can't entirely get rid of the green crabs. Trappers are pulling tens of thousands of them from Puget Sound at this point. But it could help. I know, I know — beer is the big thing in the Northwest. But personally, I've always felt that beer has one major flaw — it's not whiskey. But you got to play your audience, and we all know that our local breweries are some of the most creative corners in our region (we have a festival dedicated to brewing up strange beers, and I once even had beer made with Doritos Cool Ranch chips on Bainbridge Island — it worked). So I'd like to throw this out there to the region's breweries: Is it possible to make beer using invasive green crabs?

I'd also like to challenge Northwest breweries to make any beer that is not an IPA. Because, believe it or not, such non-IPA beers exist. But one thing at a time.

Moving on from beer, let's talk about cookies. And by "cookies" and mean "engineering the future of Seattle's neighborhood density to accommodate the massive influx of new residents."

But KUOW's Joshua McNichols likes to think of it as a cookie (or maybe he was just really hungry when he wrote this story ... somebody get Joshua a cookie!). The idea goes like this: If you think of Seattle like a cookie, the chocolate chips are where we have placed our urban villages, the places where taller buildings, shops, and more are established. The rest of the cookie/Seattle is just houses and other spaces. But there's not enough room for all the new people moving to town. So do we add more chips to the cookie? Do we make bigger chips where more people can live? Do we turn the cookie into a brownie? These could all be part of the recipe Seattle is considering as it plans for future growth.

If the plan so far has been a cookie, then it could be said that former Mayor Norm Rice baked it about 30 years ago. Rice was mayor of Seattle from 1990 to 1997. During this time, he set in motion a plan that created the city's urban villages. Before that, the general approach was to keep building the region up to accommodate cars. But the downsides of that approach became apparent as more and more people moved to the region, and crammed onto roads.

"...We were making sure that cars could get to the places were they need to be," Rice told KUOW. "And if you do that, you need parking lots, you need big, open places. That’s a problem. All over Seattle, people were tearing down historic buildings and replacing them with parking lots."

He's not wrong. Though it could also be said that today, Seattle is tearing itself down to build human storage units that are about as appealing to look at as a parking lot. At least, that's what I've said. If Seattle was supposed to be all chocolate chips, then someone has been sneaking in oatmeal and raisins. But this all speaks to the need for the city to come up with a decent growth plan moving forward (hopefully one with design standards). Now is the time to speak up for that before Seattle potentially bakes up something you don't like.

Read more of Joshua McNichols conversation with former Mayor Rice here.

This newsletter got strangely culinary today. I hope you don't think I'm all grumpy about IPAs, oatmeal and raisins. Rather, I just have a lot of faith in our Northwest creativity. I feel we can always cook up something better if we put in the work ... what's for lunch?

AS SEEN ON KUOW

The first calf born to the K-pod in more than a decade has been spotted on the west side of Vancouver Island. Video taken Saturday showed the baby orca, named K45, swimming with its mother K20 and the rest of the family. (Center for Whale Research)

DID YOU KNOW?

Considering the long history of baking, the chocolate chip cookie is a relatively new invention.

Ruth Wakefield was running a restaurant with her husband in Whitman, Massachusetts, in the 1930s. It was called the Toll House Inn (sound familiar?) and she baked up a variety of goods, including cookies. Among her creative concoctions was a cookie with chopped up bits of Nestle semisweet chocolate. She called it the "Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie." It was a hit and put Wakefield on the map (though the Toll House was already known for its superb desserts). The recipe was included in Wakefield's cookbook "Tried and True." It was suggested as a side to ice cream.

In the 1940s, the cookies became more popular during WWII when families sent them to soldiers far away. And they soon became cooked into the soul of America.

In 1939, Wakefield sold the recipe and the rights to the name "Toll House" to Nestlé. Depending on which story you go by, Wakefield either gave Nestlé the recipe, or sold it for a dollar. Either way, what is known is that in return she received a lifetime supply of chocolate and became a consultant for Nestlé.

Side note: There are a lot of creation myths around the chocolate chip cookie, many suggesting that its invention was an accident. However, that is unlikely.

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