Always looking for ways to improve on the basic burger, I eagerly took some advice from a farmers’ market produce peddler last week.

I bought one of the thickest leeks available at her stall and sliced it cross-wise into paper-thin rings. These I embedded in a homemade salmon burger and grilled. The leeks were indeed sweeter than onion and so succulent that they didn’t at all compete with the salmon’s delicate texture.

It’s easy, by the way, to make your own salmon burgers rather than relying on the prepackaged variety. This is also a great way to use up leftover baked fillets.

The concept is similar to a fritter. Chunk up your leftover salmon or a good-quality canned variety (make sure it contains no skin). I prefer salmon canned at Chuck’s Seafood in Charleston, previously mentioned in this blog. Add one egg and dry bread crumbs just until the mixture holds together. I like to add fresh or jarred, minced garlic, green onion, parsley or whatever other fresh herb I have on hand. Season with salt, pepper, cayenne, smoked paprika, mustard powder and a dash of Worcestershire. Form into two patties and pan fry in just a little olive oil.

I love these burgers with wasabi-spiked mayonnaise and fresh enoki mushrooms or sauteed wild mushrooms, depending on the season. And now, leeks!

Some names of note have surfaced lately:

Jason Allred, for instance, came across my e-mail on a Google alert because his record score in a college golf tournament had been matched.

In the 61st annual Western Intercollegiate at Pasatiempo Golf Course, John Streibach from Xavier was the individual champion, finishing with a final-round 63 Tuesday and a three-day total of 199. The 63 tied the record first set by 1964 U.S. Open champion and former CBS-TV golf commentator Ken Venturi, who played for San Jose State in the 1950s, and matched by Allred and Bryan Pini of the University of the Pacific. Streibach also tied Allred’s tournament record for a 54-hole score.

Allred, a member of the Nationwide Tour, will be in Medford on April 3 to speak at a Fellowship of Christian Athletes banquet at Rogue Valley Country Club. The banquet is at 6 p.m., and the cost is $40. For information, call Jim Winans at 261-2809.
Allred’s appearance will follow a tournament in Livermore, Calif. This week, the Nationwide Tour resumes in Broussard, Louisiana, after a month layoff.

Meanwhile, in boxing, Central Point super heavyweight Mike Wilson has qualified to represent the U.S. in the Pan Am Games. He lost in the championships of a qualifier in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Tuesday, 13-10 to Didier Vence of Canada but still gains a berth.
The Pan Am Games are July 13-29 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

And former North Medford baseball player Brett Timmerman helped Corban College of Salem to its fourth straight win with a game-winning single up the middle that scored two in a 5-3 victory Tuesday over Simpson. Ex-South Medford player Ryan Heil had a run-scoring bunt single early in the game and later scored on Timmerman’s winning hit after reaching on an error.
Former North Medford player Nate Mayben is in his first as coach of the team.

What are these people doing?

This is the new glass-bottom Skywalk unveiled today at the Grand Canyon, where you can now get a birds-eye view of the bottom of the canyon by actually peeking between your boots.

That’s right. This $30 million bridge extends over the canyon’s rim, and the glass floor allows visitors to look straight-down 4,000 feet into the depths below.

Now, The Fish Hack is no Mensa. Proves that with every new post here and with most Thursdays in The Fish Wrap. But I do know a thing or two about Darwin. And I think he’d consider glass-bottom sky bridges a hell of a recruiting tool. Like screen doors fitted onto submarines, or Siegfreid and Roy.

This over-accessorizing of the natural world is something that The Fish Hack can’t endorse. You shouldn’t use fake accents to the real thing. But if you do, the last product to incorporate into the natural world, short of DDT, is glass. Remember the Bottle Bill? Hello?

What’s next? A glass-bottom driftboat, so you can see the rock that sinks you? Glass-bottomed four-wheelers so Sand People can see the dunes they cross? Shouldn’t part of experiencing the ruggeds of nature include doing something natural, or maybe even a little rugged?

Fish Bowls might be a good after-market add-on for the Pope Mobile, or for Bubble Boys looking for more permanent digs. Hell, glass slippers provide a sanitary option for guys with foot fetishes. But stapling some glass bridge to the side of one of the Seven Wonders of the Natural World is just wrong.

You shouldn’t have glass IN the Grand Canyon, so you shouldn’t have glass OVER the Grand Canyon.

And they better not keep the glass too clean and transparent. Some condor might fly into it, and there’s no squee-gee big enough to clean that mess.

Well, it wasn’t that bad, really. But a couple of callers wondered why we would give prominent play to UNLV — Oregon’s opponent Friday in the NCAA Midwest Regional — in Tuesday’s paper rather than do something big on the Ducks.

The fact is, the piece on the Runnin’ Rebels came out of The Associated Press bureau in Nevada, and it was the only wire story that moved Monday pertaining to the that matchup. We figured something was better than nothing.

Why not do a story ourselves, you might ask. Our staffing on Mondays is thin, and I’m guessing access to the team would have been difficult as they returned late Sunday from Spokane and began preparations to head to St. Louis.

In a conversation with AP in Portland, I was told we’d be getting stories on the Ducks the next couple of days, and we’re hopeful of lining up freelance help to enhance our coverage this week and possibly beyond — similar to what we do during the football season.

I hope that sheds some light.

More than two months after a massive freeze damaged much of California’s agriculture industry, it’s apparent grocery stores still have plenty of lemons, limes and oranges.

However, as most of you have likely noticed, the fruits aren’t all that attractive. The skins are often blemished (definitely not conducive to zesting). On a few occasions, I’ve even sunk my thumb right into a mushy lemon while digging through the produce bins at my local grocery store for the more promising specimens.

The good news is: Grapefruits look marvelous. Most of the fruit was grown in Texas, which apparently didn’t suffer any adverse weather prior to harvest. So I’ve been really upping my grapefruit consumption. Even my husband, previously dedicated to oranges, has been grabbing grapefruit for a snack.

Our new favorite salad combines grapefruit sections (freed of pith and membrane) with avocados (which also have been superb) atop watercress or another peppery green like arugula. Top with some seared sea scallops or lightly sauteed shrimp and fried wonton strips. As we’re usually too lazy to fry off wonton dough, we substitute ready-made ones sold under the label Fresh Gourmet. I serve this salad with a homemade raspberry vinaigrette.

All right, Fishheads. It’s the piscatorial cunnundrom of the week, and we’re going to solve this Big Fish Madness thread now so The Fish Hack isn’t accused of miking this motha well past its pull date.

This is the last installment, the Finals, of the hypothetical battle among fish species to determine which fish, pound-for-pound, offers the best fight. It’s spawned by Versus.com’s similar use of March Madness bracketology to pour lighter fluid on the unsolvable debate on which fish brings the best A game when hooked on rod and reel.

Today, it’s Steelhead v. Shad.
Both anadromous. Both great biters and tough fighters. But some intrinsic differences loyal readers of The Fish Wrap could recite in their sleep.
Steelhead, obviously, are native. Shad were hauled by train from the East Coast and introduced to the Sacramento Delta in the 1880s.
Naturally, native gets precedence, but this is about pull, not pedigree.

And pull they do. Both need light leaders, thin rods and good drags for anglers to get the upper hand.

But for the money, one fish not only brings it on, it’s powers are so impressive that they are intimidating. Hook one and get ready to run downstream, reel screaming and hope you stay on top of him until you can turn him.

And the fight never ends with just one run. It’s two or three runs, easily.

You gotta give major props to Shad. Yet they’re no Steelhead, the pound-for-pound champ that The Fish Hack would lay a benji on in any contest.

There’s an interesting column by foxsports.com’s Jeff Goodman on Duke’s early exit from the NCAA tournament and its uncharacteristically “dysfunctional” make-up. It can be found on MSN.com as well. The interesting part comes toward the end, where it’s suggested Kyle Singler of South Medford could be the Blue Devils’ go-to guy the minute he steps on campus.
Here’s the link:
http://msn.foxsports.com/cbk/story/6575084

All right, Fish Heads. It’s time for the two semi-finals of the Big Fish Madness tournament, in which our Final Four fish square off to see which pisces is, pound for pound, the toughest around.

It’s the NCAA-style bracketology used by Versus.com to promote fishing shows on the Versus cable channel and their website as profiled in Thursday’s Fish Wrap.

OK. Here, it’s Steelhead versus Bluegill and Fall Chinook versus Shad. Imagine them the same size. Which ones are tougher?

Chinook v. Shad is an intriguing match-up. One big-school darling of the Northwest; the other a Mutant Herring from Heck. The draft horse on crack against a skinny little slime-ball.

Gotta like ’em. Both are anadromous, bite well and pull like hell. One big difference, though, is how big a leader and how much drag can you use.
For chinook, you can get them to swallow some hardware lure and crank down the drag until you could slow down a Volkswagen and still not lose them. However, Shad’s mouths are so soft and their power so strong, they’ll actually pull so hard that they yank the hook right out of their own mouth.

The Fish Hack is impressed by intentional lip-piercing without anaesthesia. Shad in a squeaker.

Steelhead v. Bluegill is a blow-out. The fish from the Farmers’ Pond ain’t in the class of the cold-water god of the Northwest. That’s why there’s Steelhead beer and The Northwest Steelheaders Association. No Northwest Bluegillers Association meetings where dudes down Bluegill Ale and talk about the 8-ouncer that got away.

That gives us an all-anadromous Finals. Steelhead v. Shad in a weekend fin-off. Stay tuned.

If you’re anything like me, cheese takes center stage at your festive events. Indeed, cheese shows up in so many of my favorite appetizers and desserts that I’ve taken to calling party spreads “Sarah’s Festival of Cheese.”

This weekend, Rogue Valley residents can truly celebrate cheese with some of our local masters.

Rogue Creamery will host the Oregon Cheese Festival from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at its Central Point headquarters, 311 N. Front St. A $5 entry fee buys tastings and demonstrations. For another $5, visitors can take home a commemorative wine glass etched with the Oregon Cheese Guild logo.

Numerous Oregon and Northern California creameries will sell cheese and offer samples this weekend. Participants include Fraga Farms, Juniper Grove, Pholia Farm, Tumalo Farms, Tillamook Cheese Co., Willamette Valley Cheese Co., Fern’s Edge Dairy, Rivers Edge Chevre, Ancient Heritage Farmstead, Vella Cheese and Rogue Creamery.

Other participating culinary artisans are Lillie Belle Farms, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Gary West Meats, Rising Sun Farms, Applegate Valley Artisan Bread Co., Butte Creek Mill, Pennington farms, SOS Pear Station, Slagle Creek Winery, Cliff Creek Vineyards, Madrone Mountain Vineyards, Eden Vale Winery, Paschal Winery, Agate Ridge, Troon Vineyard and Rogue Ales. For more information, call Rogue Creamery at 665-1155, ext. 123.

If you opened your paper this morning and tried to find the sports TV schedule, or the local schedule of games, or the NBA boxes, NCAA tournament schedule and boxes, golf scores, NHL standings, transactions, you name it, I know how futile and frustrating your search was. We had it all there on the Scoreboard, ready to go at a little after 11 p.m. last night. We pushed the button to send it through imaging and to film and on its merry way.

And nothing happened.

Well, something happened. Everything locked up and refused to budge. That’s as techy as I get. There were people who knew what they were doing trying to fix the problem, but to no avail and with no time to spare. The newsroom is near the front of a long assembly line. The pressmen, inserters and distribution folks were all waiting on us. When deadline was an hour old, the difficult decision was made to slap a house ad on the page and go without the Scoreboard and the couple of paid ads on the page. As unhappy as people will be this morning, please understand frustration reached a crescendo here, too.

And it could have been far worse. It could have been the sports cover that turned into one big house ad. Or an inside page where all the jumps from 1D were supposed to go. Or all the prep roundups could have been obliterated.

In the end, we sacrificed one page so the rest of the paper could be delivered.

We truly hate to give you this incomplete edition, and we don’t expect it to happen again.