Sea Vegetable Shopping

This weekend I picked up a bunch of sea vegetables to start cooking with. I was most interested in finding sea vegetables from the Mendocino Sea Vegetable Company because it was the most local source that I had heard of. So when I went to Berkeley Bowl this weekend, I was psyched to see a display filled with sea vegetables from Mendocino that wasn't there last week.

Knowing that I wanted to try all the different kinds and not sure if they would carry the sea vegetables next week, I grabbed a huge variety (I think I grabbed every kind they had). The packages were about $5 per pack. This is what I got:


Sea Palm Fronds, Sea Whip Fronds, North Atlantic + Flaked Dulse


Wakame and Kombu



I especially liked their hand drawn labels and simple packaging which gives them a more personal, local feeling. Each package has a hand written slogan specific to environmental conservation. Clean Energy Now, Keep Our Oceans Wild, Harvest Within the Natural Flow, Stop Offshore Oil & Gas Exploration and Protect Our Arctic Refuge are some of the slogans on each label. The back side of each label has handwritten recipes specific to the sea vegetable in the bag.

I don't know quite enough about sea vegetables yet to fully understand how different the quality is between local product and product from Asian countries and other parts of the world, but it made sense to me to try and get local first as much as I can.

That being said, before I went to Berkeley Bowl, I went to the Alameda Natural Grocery to check out their sea vegetable supply. They didn't have any from Mendocino, so I picked up a bunch of Eden sea vegetables not knowing that Berkeley Bowl would have what I needed. Eden is a great company with sustainable practices and on their sea vegetable faq they mention:

Eden Sea Vegetables are the highest quality in the world, cultivated or wild, hand harvested in pristine, environmentally protected seas. All Eden Sea Vegetables, except Eden Organic Dulse, come from Japan where they are continuously fed and cleansed by Arctic Currents, and collected off shorelines that are protected as national natural treasures

It was important to me that they are hand harvested (like Mendocino's). Eden also has a great sea vegetable recipe page which will be helpful figuring out what I can make with all of these sea vegetables! These are the types I got:


Eden Kombu & Wakame

When I got home from the store I put them in a dark dry cabinet as recommended. High temperature & humidity can start to break down the vitamins in the sea vegetables after awhile, but sealed and stored properly they can last for years.