Quixote's Tart

And so starts summer

2008-05-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

This Morning's 6 a.m. Stroll with the Hounds

2008-05-15T08:57:00.001-07:00

Free Hog Dogs and Kool-Aid for All

2008-05-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Break-Up Party !!!!

The Day After the River Broke

2008-05-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day in Iowa

2008-05-11T22:06:00.000-07:00

An Engineering Degree from Iowa State !

2008-05-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

All my bags are packed ......

2008-05-08T21:49:00.000-07:00

Over 16 hours of it .....

2008-05-08T00:39:00.000-07:00

Sunlight!

J. and I are off to Iowa for a few days to celebrate Nate's engineering degree! Yeah! I'm pretty sure we couldn't be giddier.

Update on the River

2008-05-04T00:46:00.000-07:00

It's still frozen.

But break-up is near. And the birds have started to arrive.

I've never actually been lucky enough to have been in Bethel when the river breaks. I seem to always be travelling for work. And this year doesn't look too hopeful either. I stiil hope though.

Ptarmigan Broth

2008-04-24T21:04:00.000-07:00

The camera woes continue. Fortunately, such woes don't interfere with my ability to make broth with J's first ptarmigan catch. That isn't to say, however, that I had an easy go with the making of ptarmigan broth. I didn't seem to have a handy way to remove the feet. Remembering my childhood awe in dim sum restaurants, when a cart would present chicken feet, I finally concluded that these stubbornly atttached feet could only add flavor to my ptarmigan soup. And so I made the broth with ptarmigan feet attached. If this is wrong, please let me know.

April 22, 2008

2008-04-23T20:54:00.000-07:00

I wish I could buy pork from Sugar Creek Farms in Osage, Iowa.

Sadly, I haven't found a worry-free way to get all the meat back to Alaska. Maybe someday I'll find a way to do so. Until then, I'll keep reading of the adventures and aspirations of Sugar Creek Farm and day-dreaming that our trip to Iowa this summer will permit an opportunity to swing by and see this farm that I love reading about. In addition, I'll consider myself "tagged" for a meme posted on their blog, and - in reply - post one picture of the view from my front door, and one picture of the view from my back window. (The meme actually requires that one post a picture from one's back door, rather than window. But I'm hoping that you all will let me overlook the fact that there is no back door to the hovel on stilts.)

Here is the view of our front "yard" from our arctic entry:

And here is the view from our back window:

And, as a completely gratuitous gift, here is the view from down the street:

an unrelated postcript: Friends, I'm having camera issues. Whenever I'm inside, the flash on my Nikon D-80 insists on going off so brightly that the pictures come out as bright blasts of light. And when I'm outside, the pictures all come out over-exposed like this. Even the auto-focus has become a nightmare and simply refuses to to let me take a picture. Sometimes it taunts me too, weaving in and out of focus, again and again, before I realize that no matter what it does, it's not going to let me snap the picture. I fear that I broke my camera when I dropped it [twice....sigh] at the Portland airport, but I'm still open to any advice from any kind someone who knows a way to fix this Nikon D-80 by simply pushing a button or changing a program or something else like that.

It is amazing ....

2008-04-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

how amazingly luxurious it is to read a Sunday newspaper on a Sunday morning. Especially, when that Sunday newspaper correlates to that actual Sunday! Oh, my friends it is bliss.

Sure, I wish the Anchorage Daily News was the newspaper it once was. And I wish we could get the New York Times. And I miss the days when I was going over to Hoppi's and reading her week-old Sunday New York Times and eating eggs fresh from her chicken coop. But a current Anchorage Daily News, even in its current patheticness, available first thing in the morning, and read while we are relaxing on our plywood couch, giddy with the assurance that the dogs have been walked and sipping our first coffees of the day.......

It's a veritable slice of utopia.

Pear Pie with Almond Cake Topping

2008-04-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

My mother was the one that taught me how to take a dreaded task, and transform it into a process you can enjoy. I can distictly remember the lesson.

It was several years ago. Sadly enough, it was decades ago. (Oh, friends, how can the time pass so quickly?) I was a freshman at college, and needed to submit a Financial Aid Form, by a date certain, in order to receive financial aid during my second year. The deadline was days away, but the form was far from being done. I needed my mother's tax information. And calculators. And paperwork. And all sorts of other things that were far, far too practical for my collegiate state of mind, not to mention beyond the realms of my family's state of organization. It all just seemed so thoroughly impossible.

I was about to give up hope and accept the fact that my family could not meet deadlines, and that I would be unable to get the financial aid package I needed to return for a sophomore year, when my mother hit upon the perfect solution: she took me out to dinner. Not just to any dinner. But to a dress-up dinner. We got all dressed up, packed up all the papers and calculators we would need, and went out to a fancy restaurant for a fancy dinner. And whilst supping, and laughing, and genuinely enjoying the moment, we finally managed to complete this dreaded task. Miraculously, we filled out that Financial Aid Form. Gratefully, we had enjoyed the process. We actually had fun accomplishing a dreaded task. It really was quite an impressive solution that my mother found.

And that is why it was hardly surprising that I turned to that same strategy to assist me in preparing and filing my taxes.

Well, to be honest, it was a similar strategy. We don't really have a fancy restaurant up here, and I don't really have any fancy clothes left. And, well, it's cold out there (it being a mere 27 below zero). I had little inclination to "treat" myself by going out into it. So, rather than go out for dinner to do our taxes, we stayed home, baked a Pear Pie with Almond Cake Topping, and worked on our taxes. Aside from this little technicality, it was the same idea: enjoying the process, rather than dreading the task!

All in all, it made for a fine weekend with a delicious pie. Indeed, what a fine and productive pie it was. It even inspired us to work on the guest list.

Pear Pie with Almond Cake Topping
(adapted from Pie, by Ken Haedrich)

I really can't praise this pie enough. It's delicious. And unique. But I will confess that the title of the recipe, and the ingredients, didn't inspire me much. I made it because I had the ingredients on hand. It was definitely a fortuitious circumstance. Sometimes the Fates can be kind that way. Perhaps others have better vision than me, but I don't believe that the title or the recipe properly indicate just how good this pie really is! I suppose the best way to describe it is "half pie, and half almond cake," but then I find myself guilty of the same complaint. I think this pie deserves more celebration than such a boring description. Trust me. It's a keeper - an example of decadence and humble magnitude. J., a man of little hyperbole, says it could just be his favorite pie so far. Trust him.

1 single crust, flaky pie crust (unbaked)

5-1/2 cups peeled, cored, and thinly sliced firm pears
1/3 cup, plus 2 tablespoons, sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest
1-1/2 tablespoons cornstarch
Big pinch of cardamom

1 cup whole almonds
1/3 cup sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1 large egg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon almond extract

1. Roll out the pastry dough, and invert it into a deep-dish pie pan. Sculpt the edge into an upstanding ridge, and freeze for 15 minutes.

2. Combine the pears, 1/3 cup sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Set aside for 10 minutes. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

3. Combine 2 tablespoons sugar, cornstarch, and cardamom in a small bowl, and then stir this mixture into the pears. Scrape the filling into the chipped pie shell, and bake on teh center rack for 30 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 375(F), and bake for 10 minutes more.

4. Meanwhile, prepare the almond cake topping. Put the almonds, sugar, flour, coconut, baking powder, and salt in a food processor and pulse until the nuts are finely chopped. Scatter the butter over the top and pulse until it is well incorporated and the mixture is crumbly. Whist the egg, vanilla and almond extra together in a small bowl, and add to the processor. Pulse again, just until the mixture starts to gather around the blade.

5. Remove the pie from the oven. Using a soup spoon, dollop the cake batter more or less evenly over the fruit. (It will settle during baking.) Return the pie to the oven, and continue to bake until the top is a rich golden brown and the batter is cooked through. (This recipe calls for 20 to 22 minutes, but with my unpredictable stove it took 30 minutes.)

6. Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let cool for at least 2 hours.

Super Cyber Sleuthing

2008-04-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

My brother is many things. Witty, yet often stoic. Adventurous, yet calm. Strong, yet laid-back. I could go on. Indeed, I have. I've talked about my brother, and his incredible traits, before. If you knew my little brother, and then read all that I write about my little brother, however, you'd probably conclude that he is an amazing guy that eludes my ability to give proper description. And I'd agree.

But with all my attempts at description, I have never mentioned that he is a super cyber sleuth, and yet intensely private. It is hard to take a good picture of the guy, and even harder to get it posted.

That's why it was much fun to stumble upon this: CLICK HERE.

Good living

2008-04-11T09:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a cold week.

I do love our neighborhood.

(Fortunately for me, the morning it was 27 below zero fell on one of J's mornings of the week to walk the hounds.)

More Oregon

2008-04-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

J. and I were down in Oregon for Easter, and for a mandatory marriage preparation retreat weekend.

I think this picture pretty much sums up the first impression this rural Alaskan made at her mandatory marriage preparation:

Rest assured, I made certain to explain - at the first presented opportunity - how Alaska's local option laws required me to travel around with that big, shocking "ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE" sticker. It was fun, however, to hear all the assumptions that had been drawn before I delivered my explanation.

I'm still not sure exactly what I had been expecting from our mandatory marriage preparation weekend retreat, but it turned out to be a wonderful weekend. We learned some good things about each other, and about marriage. We met some really good and fun people, and caught up the times with childhood friends I hadn't seen in over twenty years. I had fun sleeping in the dormitory that used to be my parents' college dormitory and taking "classes" in a building where they once took their college classes. And I loved being able to go with J. to Tiny's Tavern, my father's college local so many decades ago, and be able to plug "Hey, Hey Good Looking" into the jukebox.

All in all, it was wonderful to be back in a childhood stomping ground to find so much - and yet nothing at all - had changed.

Oregon....oh, I adore you so!

2008-04-04T14:18:00.002-07:00

This is a picture of Holy Rosary Chapel on Crooked Finger Road, where J. and I will be married.....and where, 38 years and 3 days earlier, my parents were married.

I know that, from such a view amidst trees, it is hard to see the Holy Rosary Mission. But I couldn't resist sharing the photo of those trees that leave this tundra-dweller in a perpetual state of swoon. It is a breathtaking place.

I took this picture last week, while J., my brother and I were exploring the woods that surround the chapel. They are quite amazing to explore. One can see mountains, and white barns, and rolling foothills. And yet it feels incredibly private. So little traffic.

In addition to its beauty and privacy, the Holy Rosary Chapel has a lot of family significance. According to family legend, my father and his best friend first saw the Holy Rosary Mission whilst driving around the back, back roads of Oregon in my dad's VW van. He too, it is told, thought it beautiful. And it was my dad that suggested to my mother that they be married there. I have it on good authority that this is what my father would have seen at his first glimpse back in 1970:

Just about what J. and I saw at our first glimpse!

Our reception, guest accomodations, and several preceding events are being planned at Silver Falls State Park.

This is the dining lodge, at the park, where we are having our reception:

We are especially excited about all the potential offered by this firepit outside the dining hall:

There is also a lot of excitement about the Old Ranch House, where we are having a Hog Roast the night before the wedding and reception. The Old Ranch House is a big, historical bunkhouse inside the park that can sleep up to 76 people. The ceiling is made out of timber, and the bunk beds are all made of solid wood. The Old Ranch is surrounded by a big meadow, which is edged by more woods.

Add in a few haybales for extra seating, the Tallboys from Seattle, some lawn games for the kids, and lots of Oregon-fresh vegetarian side dishes for those that may not want a hunk of roasted hog, and we are quite certain that there is no better place - or way - to celebrate a bit of Iowa (J's home state) in Oregon (my home state).

The Old Ranch House also has a firepit. A big one. An indoor one.

Another great feature of the Old Ranch House is that those doors, like an old barn, open wide.

But I suppose the greatest excitement comes from the combination of all these excitements: that after a fun and delicious Hog Roast and an evening of great old-time string music, J. and I will be enjoying late-night conversations with brothers, cousins, buddies and other assorted hooligans (that we don't get to see nearly enough!) around a roaring firepit, with the barn doors wide open.

We are so excited about spending three nights with our friends and families at Silver Falls State Park, that we took the liberty of reserving all of the cabins and lodges at the surrounding Silver Falls Conference Center for three nights. And then, testing our luck, we allocated the best cabins (that look like the picture below and have private bathrooms and showers) to Aunt Margaret, Auntie Donna, and Eli and Bernie. Not that we want to pressure these dear folks into making the trip Out West, of course. We just want to ensure that every persuasion that could be made towards that end is made. Here is a picture of their accomodations:

In addition to these cabins, the Silver Falls Conference Center also offers several group lodges. We hope that many of our family and friends with children could be persuaded to stay here:

And this is a picture of the telephone option at our wedding reception:

OK. I'll admit it. I'm giddy. So giddy, in fact, I plead (in advance) you to forgive me if my next couple of posts seem Oregon-focused! But I just can't restrain myself from showing you the Old Ranch House, where we are having our night-before-the-wedding Hog Roast. Or the pictures of the lodges and cabins that we've reserved in the park for family and friends. Oh! And you certainly don't want me to restrain myself from showing pictures of all the fire pits and fire places at the lodges, cabins, ranch houses, and dining halls, around which smores will be roasted and popcorn popped....do you? Of course not!

It is fun to be so giddy.

Happy St. Paddy's Day

2008-03-17T19:40:00.000-07:00

A Glance at Our Life

2008-03-15T19:47:00.003-07:00

Today is the last day of the caribou season.

It is also the day that I discovered that my town has a day spa.

Oh, all the excitement!

One celebration amongst the infinite reasons to celebrate pies

2008-03-14T20:59:00.000-07:00

Today is ()-Day!

Such a day merits celebration.

And I can't think of a better way to celebrate than by posting one of my favorite pictures, that just happens to capture one of my favorite memories of the person (a favorite) who called me up this evening to let me know that today is Pi-Day.

This picture was taken during this person's Thansgiving visit to our hovel on stilts. It was a great visit. I believe the Fates also found it so - and that's why they gifted us with the perfect weather for a snowmachine trek, complete with one of the more beautiful tundra sunsets that I have ever been privileged to witness.

But the celebrations don't stop there.

I'd like to further celebrate Pi Day by posting one of my favorite pie-baking recipes: Dave's Crumb Topping. If you were to look on page 147 of Pie, written by Ken Haedrich, you'd find merely a quick reference to "crumb topping" for a fresh raspberry pie. But this particular crumb topping is so much more delicious than such a humble reference might indicate. This crumb topping is so delicious, in fact, that we've taken to applying it to all of our apple and cranberry pies. Indeed, all of our apple pies now bear this topping.

Let's be honest here. Such a delicious pie topping deserves more honour than a mere reference, no? Well, we certainly think so. As a first step in making sure that this crumb topping gets its merited honour, we've taken the liberty of renaming this crumb topping in honor of one of our favorite people. Coincidentally, this is the favorite person that was our house guest the first time we tried it. As an additional coincidence, this is the same person we remember each subsequent time that we've enjoyed it. And, if all that wasn't coincidence enough, this is also the same person that I described in the very first paragraphs of this post.

Oh, I do love how life so often works out to be one fun series of coincidences.

Dave's Crumb Topping
(from Pie, and enough for one pie)

1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup butter

Mr. Haedrich advocates that you use chilled butter, cut into quarter inch pieces. And then he instructs you to combine the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt in a food processor. Then he advises you to scatter the butter over the dry mixture and pulse the mixture until it resembles fine crumbs. Then he notes that you should put the crumbs into a large bowl and gently rub between your fingers to make large, buttery crumbs, which you would refrigerate until you are ready to scatter them over the unbaked pie.

If you can, you should probably follow his instructions. I would. But, alas, I don't. I use a "hasty" variation of Mr. Haedrich's instructions. In my hasty version, I mix up the dry ingredients in a cereal bowl. Then I dump in a stick of room-temperature butter and mix&rub the concoction with my fingers until it makes large, buttery crumbs. I usually do this right before I put the pie in the oven, and I only use my right hand. Once the crumbs are ready, and still using my right hand, I scatter them across the unbaked pie. And then, with my left (and unbuttered) hand, I open the oven and put the pie inside.

K300 Sponsors Race

2008-03-09T22:57:00.000-07:00

Today was the Kuskokwim-300 Sponsors Race.

More to come.

With regard to other races, I find myself constantly checking the race boards for updates on the Mackey/King race to Nome. Neither of these mushers should ever be under-estimated. I can only imagine the strategizing that is going on between Unalakleet and Shaktoolik right now.

Playing in the Sun

2008-03-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

We are well past 10 hours a day of sunlight.

We may even be past 11 hours!

J. is out with a friend, in the sunlight, looking for caribou. I believe they went out towards Kwethluk. I stayed home. I had lots of plans for the day - some reading (I'm currently reading A Team of Rivals), a little cleaning, a little blogging, maybe even some cooking! But the sun, and the balmy 35 degrees above, were all too tempting...

.... I ended up spending most of the day outside, playing with the dogs.

A neighbor and her puppy joined in the fun, and Puck found himself in a surfeit of ball-catching glee. She threw, and threw, and threw the ball for him. Sometimes she'd run around, holding the ball, giggling as Puck chased her. Then she'd throw the ball again. And again. And again.

It was, without a doubt, a slice of Puck's personal utopia.

There might have been one thing that Puck would have changed about the day. It turns out that the neighbor's puppy preferred chasing Puck, to chasing the ball. But Puck managed to tolerate the puppy's exuberant attention so long as the puppy's owner kept tossing the ball for Puck.

Clyde, who is sadly not allowed off-leash because he tends to take-off in search of discarded fish parts, alternated between watching Puck-chase-the-ball-while-the-puppy-chased-Puck and chewing on sticks. I'm sure he would have preferred running free and wolfing down the fish heads and fish skins that he always seems to find around the neighborhood, but I think he still managed to have quite a good time.

I'm fairly certain, in fact, it was a fine, fine day for everyone.

When the sun finally set, I came inside and started a cast-iron pot of Arroz con Pollo for J. to dig into when he returned. I will spare you my attempts to take a picture of this skillet of Arroz con Pollo, but not my opinion that it is quite tasty.

Arroz con Pollo
adapted from a recipe printed in The Cast-Iron Skillet Cookbook (oh, I do love this cookbook!) by Sharon Kramis, and her daughter Julie Kramis Hearne

2 tablespoons butter
1 large fryer chicken, cut-up (I used chicken pieces instead - boneless thighs and legs)
2 onions, coarsely chopped
2 green peppers, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, diced
1 celery, diced
1 cup white wine
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can whole tomatoes
3 cups chicken stock
1 tsp paprika
Pinch of saffron
Bay leaf
Salt and freshly ground pepper
2 cups uncooked long-grain white rice
Juice of 1 lemon (I keep forgetting this, so it probably optional)

Melt the butter, and cook the chicken until lightly browned on all sides. Transfer the chicken to a plate. Add the onions, garlic, carrots, celery, and peppers. (I tend to add things as I finish chopping them up, and so this is also the order that I chop.) Cook this for about 10 minutes, stirring occassionally. Add the wine and deglaze. Stir in the chicken stock, tomatoes, paprika, saffron, bay leaf, salt and pepper, and cook for 5 minutes. Stir in the rice. Add the chicken back to the pan, submerging it as much as possible. Bring to a simmer. The recipe calls for cooking it slowly over a low- to medium-heat fire, for approximately 45 minutes. (I plopped on the cast-iron lid and put it into the oven at 300 degrees, for the length of a dvd. The recipe also calls for occassionally turning gently and turning the pot to move the rice, but not stirring it. I sort of did that.) Season to taste with additional salt, pepper, and lemon juice and serve. (As I mentioned above, I completely forgot the lemon - a shame, as I had actually made a trip to the A.C. specifically to buy a lemon for this purpose. And, instead of serving it right away, I kept it in a very low oven until I went to bed. And then, just before going to bed, I placed it on the table, together with a plate, silverware and a note to J. to stick it in our extra fridge - i.e. our arctic entry - after he is finished eating.)

p.s. I'm serious about Clyde and his fish-finding prowess. The other day, that canine hooligan managed to dig a fish skin out of a snow bank. I don't know how he does it. One moment he was walking along beside me, the next moment he was halfway finished ploughing through a huge snow bank to unearth a hidden fish skin. But he does it, and so quickly, and smoothly, that I can only conclude that Clyde keeps a mental inventory of every discarded fish piece within a 500 foot radius and, at any given moment on any given walk, is ready to take advantage of any given distraction by the person holding the leash to dive in and eat it.

Glance at the Life: the Neighborhood

2008-02-20T21:35:00.000-08:00

Here is an example of why I must try to carry my camera more often whilst walking the dogs:

Glance at Our Life: the Front Yard

2008-02-17T22:09:00.000-08:00

This boat was in our front yard before we moved in.

But it used to be in one piece. Right before this year's freeze-up, someone brought over a trailer and tried to move it. It broke in half. The two pieces were left, as is, where fallen.

I wonder what will happen to them after break-up.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

2008-02-15T21:43:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday to my mom!

We had hoped to be able to celebrate your birthday with some tundra adventures! Hopefully we'll be able to persuade you to come up for another winter event.

In the meantime, here's a picture I snapped, in Iowa, after you took my dare that you wouldn't offer to help the kitchen make our late-night and starving order of a round of tenderloins! For a lady who doesn't believe in frying foods, dear Mother, you sure make a fine Iowa Tenderloin sandwich!

Happy Valentine's Day

2008-02-14T21:04:00.000-08:00

What a fantastic, fanta'bulous, fun day at the local post-office:

J. came home with a box of gifts, all the way from a dear mother in Iowa! Oh, how we loved all the treasures that we unwrapped! All of them! Thank you!

We also exchanged gifts between ourselves. After so generously permitting me priority-use of his XtraTuf mud boots over the last three years, J. bought me my own pair of wellies.

I love them! I feel so stylin'! and prepared!

For the first time since I moved to Alaska, I'm actually prepared for break-up!

Glance at Our Lives: the Satellites

2008-02-09T18:13:00.000-08:00

For those who may have thought that all those references to satellites was a family trait-inclined exaggeration........

These satellite-receivers provide our link to our long-distance telephone and internet service. I took this picture while on a snowmachine trek to the A.C. to buy Tillamook butter. Someday I'll take the necessary moments to introspect my way into an understanding of why riding a snowmachine on a simple errand makes me just so darn happy.

Glance at Our Life: Public Art

2008-02-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

There is something incredibly beautiful, up here, about the interaction of nature and man-made detritus.

I don't quite know how to describe it. The juxtaposition of the temporary convenience of the man-made things, as highlighted by the stable and permanent context of nature. The discarded value of the man-made thing, as highlighted by the perpetually renewed value of nature. The chaos of the man-made versus the humble significance of the environment into which it is installed.......

Oh, help me here! Waxing poetic will not get me to the description of the beauty I'm trying to describe.

I suppose words themselves can't provide sufficient description. I should post examples, such as these examples of the electrical lines that keep our neighborhood in electrical heat and operating lightbulbs.

(Forgive me for the quality of the photos. I have not yet mastered the secret to flash-less photography, and it is hard to focus on taking pictures when I'm juggling our two canine hooligans.)

For the best photographic examples of this slice of Alaskan beauty, I highly recommend perusing Genevieve's pictures of their adventures in and around Unalaska. Especially this one, which shows a prime example of "industrial remnants set against dramatic backdrops." (Yes! Now there's an excellent description.) She posts pictures of of WWII bunkers, and mountains of fish nets, and public displays of shipping containers. And the pictures of little Paxson are, without a doubt, too cute for my skills in descriptions.

Pictures of Dee's Visit

2008-02-07T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'd like to resume the photographic tale of Cousin Deirdre and the Fabulous Mike's visit to the Kuskokwim-300. I will spare you the details of the reasons for my delay. I won't even go into the topics of procrastination or distraction. I won't talk about the corncakes I made to heat the hovel when our heat went off and it was cold, and windy, and 60 Below. Or about the piece of art that one particular fur hat sewing district attorney gifted to me….indeed, I won't even talk about how he sewed a fur hat out of green astro-turf. (Though I will – soon – and in the meantime shall pause, for just a second, to again ask you to join me in persuading Tom to start a blog of his own.) I shall even restrain from talking about my favorite fried egg sandwich in town.

I'm going to save all that for later.

Here – and now – I shall, finally, resume the photographic tale of a visit of two very fun folks, the memory of which still has me glowing from the combination of good people, good times, and smoked fish.

So, here we go……

When we left off, the ever-adventurous Cousin Deirdre and the Fabulous Mike had learned their snowmaching skills on Mission Lake and then demonstrated their snowmaching prowess on a trip down the Kuskokwim River. After going through a few sloughs, and past a few wintered-up fish camps, we returned to town, crossed Mission Lake, sped through Alligator Acres, and popped over to Pat's to meet Hugh Neff's dog team.......

After playing with the dogs, Mike got to work and helped Hugh to swap out the "regular" runners on his sled for a pair of "race" runners. (Do keep in mind that only a few hours before, Mike got to work and helped a pizza delivery guy that knocked on my door to pull his car out of the ditch in front of my neighbors house.)

If ever there is a musher that is generous with his time and enthusiasm for dog mushing, it is Hugh Neff. I really am grateful to him for taking time out of his day-of-the-race morning to talk with my visiting family about dog-mushing and to let us play with his team!

Be sure to look for him in the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod. He's good people!

Eventually, we had to leave to start our official race-day volunteer duties. Our next race-related endeavour took us to the neighborhood called Kasayuli. This time we drove - I drove. Cousin Deirdre and the Fabulous Mike were too polite to express any fear at the prospect, and I am very happy to say that we arrived safely....and early! Oh, that Cousin D - she has always been such a good influence on me! In any event, we were on truck support duty, assigned to help musher Jim Lanier get his sled to the start line. Our pick-up is not equipped to transport dogs, and so we were there - literally - to transport the sled. Alas, there was some confusion and a dash of chaos with the folks that were assigned to transport the dogs. Eventually, fortunately, a plan was hatched. Bethel-style - meaning we made it happen with the resources we had. Here is the team getting the bulk of the team loaded up into a pick-up equipped for transporting dog teams.

The other dogs rode inside our pick-ups. One rode in the cab of my pick-up (while Mike rode in the bed of the pick-up, making sure that the sled and gear did not fall out - oh! he's a good man!), two dogs rode in the bed of my friend's (with his wife and my cousin Deirdre, each holding onto a dog), and a few rode inside the jeep of Jim Lanier's host family. But they all arrived! A little later than we had planned, but well before the last musher arrived. Without any delay, Jim Lanier got his sled set up and started the process of moving the dogs from the pick-ups to their harnesses.

And then, amidst an excitement that I may never be describe though I hope never to forget, we lined up and helped Jim Lanier get his team to the starting chute. Cousin Deirdre and the Fabulous Mike jumped in and helped, even though I'm fairly certain that they hadn't ever handled a team inside the starting chute of a world-famous dogsledding race amidst an eager and excited crowd. They were incredible.

(For the record - I wasn't the only one that thought so. Indeed, the very next morning after the race start, we stopped by the Saturday market at the Cultural Center and Cousin Deirdre discovered that there was an entire crafts table devoted to pictures of Deirdre and Mike at the starting line....pictures, postcards, greeting cards, magnets, photo albums, etc.!)

One Mr. Lanier's team was off, we were free to watch the rest of the teams make their way through the chute. Here's few pictures of the crowd. They don't do justice to the scene, but I suppose they make a good introduction.

And once the last team was through, we wandered over to the Hovercraft to partake of the free hotdogs and hot chocolate being offered to the community. Alas, they had run out of everything! And so we settled for a picture.

(Why - yes! This is the very same Hovercraft that carried us to the village of Akiak where Josh proposed to me last April!)

The night continued with fireworks. And I introduced that poor duo to more people than they could possibly have dreamed they'd meet in such a short amount of time. And then I had to enlist their assistance in moving a stack of frozen lasagnas from one pick-up to my pick-up. And then, exhausted, we came home. And slept. Hard.

The next day, though, the adventure continued...........

The Akiak Dash !

As I near the end of this post, I must make a confession: this summary of Cousin Deirdre and the Fabulous Mike's visit is abbreviated. I am purposefully reigning myself in, lest I unleash the verbosity and gush about how much it meant to me that my cousin would travel so far, in winter, to visit us. In my determination to post something, I am not posting nearly enough to properly describe how fortunate I find myself to have a cousin that is also such a dear friend. But, like I said, I'm abbreviating here. Condensing all these days and adventures, and moments of gratitude, into one blog post.

But even with this quest for brevity, I would be remiss if I failed to make a few references to a legacy of cousinly rivalry.....more specifically, to a match of Scrabble and to a certain card game called Spit - actually, to a tournament of Spit that is well over a decade old!

Dear Dee - I do look forward to being 70 years old and still competing for the Ultimate Spit Championship!

Democracy in Action - Tom Style

2008-02-06T23:18:00.001-08:00

Tom, very graciously, sent me several pictures of our local democracy in action.

But friends I can't post them.

Why?

It's quite simple - I can't bring myself to post all the pictures that he sent to me because I do not want you to be distracted from this one:

It's Tom. Wearing one of Tom's home-sewn hats. Caucusing for Obama. At the Caucus. Wearing one of his home-sewn hats. He has a collection of them, by the by. And goggles. I like this photo. A lot. I'm also in a sustained effort to persuade Tom to become a professional hat maker. He should consider this paragraph part of that effort.

Ok. Fine. You're right. This is fun. I'll post a few more of Tom's photos, even if it could potentially distract you from the one above. But someone needs to explain to me why Tom doesn't have a blog himself. He has far too many photos and stories for his mere Friendster page.

Tom actually sent a bunch of great photos, including great photos of the Clinton and Kucinich camps. But, alas, I'm not sure whether any rules apply to the mixing of caucusing and blogging. And though I could act out of an abundance of caution, and simply seek out their permission, these were direct face-to-face photos and I find myself as equally reluctant to seek the permission of my neighbors to post their picture as I am to risk offending any of them for not doing so. All this is to say, that I ultimately hesitated myself out of posting those great photos.

Hopefully this photo by Tom will appeal to map-lovers everywhere, and make sufficient amends for my blogging cowardliness:

Super Tuesday !

2008-02-06T21:43:00.001-08:00

A Pre-Post Postscript: I am going to do it again. Yes, folks, I am going to - again - interrupt the photographic tale of Cousin Deirdre and Fabulous Mike's trip to Alligator Acres in order to insert a random story of the day-to-day life since they (oh so sadly) left us to return to their urban adventures. Love me. Hate me. Be entertained. Be annoyed. But, in all cases, do forgive me - for the interruption, and also for interupting the interruption in order to apologize for interruptions.

Lest I lose you to my verbosity, I shall dangle a bit of a preview......to the left is a glimpse of what I still promise to provide as soon as I can get Blogger to permit me to upload the rest of the photographic evidence of their visit.

*************************************************************************************
After seeing my good friends' post about their experience with Democracy in Action ..... Unalaska style, I feel it is only fitting to post about:

Democracy in Action......Bethel Style!

Those who know me, or who have talked with me in the week since the announcements were first made on the one radio station that there would be a local Democratic Caucus, know that I have been very excited about this. Some of you have even received emails from me in which I talk about all the anticipation. Some of you have received emails in which I solicit opinions as to whether I should bring cookies or porkchops. Some of you received both.

The good news - what has me doing my daily cartwheel of glee - is that the actual experience far exceeded anything I could have imagined. I can't believe that I didn't discover this fine process until my thirties. My friends, I can't help but think that all primaries should be replaced by the caucus. The caucusing process might just be the key to restoring some genuine splendour and roots to American politics. It certainly did for me.

But the bad news is that I didn't bring cookies or porkchops. It is hard for me to admit this. Embarassing, actually. I brought, my friends, store-bought donuts. From Swansons. Go softly with me. I was sick the night before, and chained to my desk the day-of. The homemade contribution was, sadly, impossible. But the best news - and perhaps a contributing factor to why I so loved being a part of the evening - is that the Bethel Democratic Caucus was well-equipped with homemade foods - there was salmon dip, and bean soup, and a rice pot, and cookies, and salsas....and, yes, donuts. Noone knew how to get the coffee pots to brew coffee. But there was more than enough water to go around. The Obama table even brought fresh fruit and two veggie platters, and it was fun to see the kids running around, eagerly digging into a fruit bowl for apples.

The statistical summary of the evening is that the Bethel majority went for Obama. But there's always so much more to an event than its statistics and summaries, aye? There was quite a bit of debate, at the start, about how to determine the number of people in attendance. And then there was some debate about how to organize and assign corners so that the unexpectedly large number of attendees could stand in recognizable groups. Eventually, it was decided to divvy-up the room based on the 8 rafters in the ceiling to create 8 "stalls." And one person was assigned to each stall to hold up a sign of a different candidate. Most of the attendees were gathered in the stalls at the far ends of the room. There was a stand, however, in the middle of the room, for Kucinich. Sure, Kucinich has left the national presidential race. But he was still on the Alaska ballot. And a lot of people - seven or eight - decided to make a pitch for him. However, they did not have enough to meet the 15% requirement, and eventually those in the Kucinich stall had to disperse and select between the two candidates that did: Obama and Hillary. There was some banter across the room, and some stumping. Not alot, mind you. And I think it would have been better to have more. But there was some, and I definitely feel more involved in the political process for having witnessed it. Eventually everyone had staked their position and the numbers were counted. I don't remember the exact number of people in each camp, but I think it was something like 58 for Obama and 38 for Hillary. Ultimately, 8 Bethel delegates will be sent to the state convention to vote for Obama, and 5 for Hillary.

Unlike my good friends in Unalaska, I didn't get any photographs of the actual caucus. Fortunately, though, my buddy Tom did and it looks like he may let me post them here.

While I wait for them .......

I recommend listening to the local radio's coverage of the evening. I can't provide an actual link to the actual story, but I'm hoping that if - a little bit after Thursday morning's news - you click here and then click on "English news", it will include the story and interviews from the caucus. (It's my humble opinion, of course, but I do advocate for setting an alarm just to be sure you get to hear it!)

And here are some pictures of the context for the evening to tide you over until I get to post Tom's pictures.

Here is the flyer announcing the caucus.

Here is a picture of the outside of the Imaculate Conception Church, where the caucus was held. I took it from the steps outside of Swansons, when I popped in to buy the donuts.

Here is a close-up. Do you see the map to the caucus?

The crowd starts to arrive...........

And here is Puck, at the end of the evening, playing politician. For the record, I did not take my dog to the caucus. But, with Pamela as my excuse, I felt like this would be a good way to sneak in a cute picture of him.

And here is a photograph that symbolizes a very big and earnest thank you to some very good friends out in the Aleutians!

(p.s. - are those MickeyD burgers at your caucus?)

Weather and Beans (and Truculence)

2008-01-27T20:51:00.000-08:00

I am going to interrupt myself.

Rather than delve into my anticipated topic (that being Cousin Deirdre and the ever fabulous Mike snowmaching over Mission Lake, and across Chief Eddie Hoffman Highway, to Pat's house in Alligator Acres to meet Hugh Neff's dog team), I'm going to talk about the weather. And beans. And truculence. Why, you may be asking, would I interrupt the photographic tale of two Massachusett's kids coming all the way out to our little hovel on stilts to talk about weather and beans and truculence? I suppose there is no better answer to that very reasonable question than to simply say because the weather is crazy these days and the beans are delicious. (I'll let you mosey-on down to the bottom of this post, if you'd like an explanation for the truculence part.)

Seriously (and aren't I always serious?). It's been a crazy roller-coaster of weather out here. A string of craziness. Go back a few weeks - even just 2 - and we were stuck in a seriously cold snap - weeks of it - at 30 below. Indeed, it felt like months at 30 below, and it was so stubbornly and persistantly below 30 that our truck finally refused to turn over. The ultimate temper tantrum. It refused to run. It didn't give up the ghost, mind you. Rather, it refused to turn on until the weather warmed up. We waited a week for things to warm-up naturally. But such easy solutions did not come. The temperature remained below 30. Our patience was tested. Our optimism wilted. Forgive us - there are only so many times that you wanted to be walking to and from the A.C., in the 30 below, to bring home the necessary gallons of drinking water.

Eventually, we had to resort to diesel means. This is a picture taken of dramatic - and successful! - efforts initated by our neighbor to thaw-out our pick-up two Sundays ago:

As only the Fates would have it, within a few days of all that effort, the temperature suddenly spirited up to the 20 Aboves. Snow started falling. All the wires and poles and shrubs around town were sparkling with a thick overlay of snow clinging to the white frost that originally covered them. Folks were giddy with the beauty of it all, and exuberant about the warmth. And I, myself, was even giddier with the thought that Cousin Deirdre and Mike were going to go back telling all my cousins that J. and I live in a veritable winter wonderland populated with ebulliently happy people. But it wasn't just perfect for my ulterior motives of persuading those cousins to come out and visit. We were also looking at perfect trail conditions for the K300.

If only we could have frozen still that temperature.

The temperature started increasing the day of the race start. Even so, the snow remained relatively solid, if not a bit more packed down into itself and less fluffy. We even had a flurry of snow as the mushers were making their way to the starting chute. (Why yes, I do have some pictures of Cousin Deirdre and the Ever Fabulous Mike, under the falling snow, at the starting chute, that I could post.......) There was no foreshadowing, at least to me, of what would come. But it kept getting warmer, until - finally - it rested at what I can only call a tropical blast. We were in the High 30 Aboves. Ominously, we occassionally tipped up towards the 40 Aboves. The snow started to get punchy. Then it just started to melt. The tundra started draining onto the frozen river. By late Saturday night (and growing worse with each minute into the wee hours of Sunday morning), the K300 trail conditions deteriorated, leaving us with puddles the size of Lower 48 lakes. I don't know this personally, of course. I was here in town. On the river, but in town. But I heard about it. If your curious for a first-hand description, you should click here for an audio clip in which the 2008 K300 champion gives a pretty good description of the chaos that a sudden 60 degree increase in temperature can inflict on trail conditions.

Suffice it to say, the 2008 Kuskokwim-300 will be going down in the annuals of history as the Kusko-Swim.

By Wednesday, however, we were back to Below 30's. The lakes atop the frozen river began freezing-up. And, since Thursday, we've been in blizzard conditions. I might go so far as to say that we've gained over a foot of snow this weekend.

I'm sure it says something about me, though I haven't had much time to thoroughly introspect it: I greeted the Below 30 temperature with more glee and exuberance, and sheer relief, than ever I thanked the Fates for a 30 Above. For many reasons. And then, as I mentioned above, we entered into a week of blizzard conditions. Frozen again. Covered, again, with snow. All in all, perfect conditions for scenic dog walks.

To truly ensure a bucolic dog walk in blizzard conditions, I made sure to have a pot of my favorite (delicious!) bean stew waiting for me when we returned:

Cannellini, Butternut, Kale and Kalamat Stew
adapted from epicurious

I discovered this recipe over a decade ago, while living in Seattle and struggling with the financial realities of one's first formal job after college. For those who knew me during those days(or may still hold me accountable for that time that I'd do such things as lame myself by walking across Seattle in Italian boots with 3 inch heels in pursuit of farm fresh, organic chicken eggs, or nearly getting my roommate and I evicted from our Magnolia apartment for getting the scent of a tropical brewery stuck in the building's air-system as a result of my decision to try my hand at making a Peep's Poptart Porter....) I promise - it is more aromatically-pleasing than my experiments with Peeps Poptart Porter, much easier to shop for than a true crema inglese, and much easier to clean-up than a pasta-making party. To all, I promise that it will feed a surprised-to-be-so-happy crowd. And it's even better the day after.

1/4 cup olive oil
3 large onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
1 3 1/4- to 3 1/2-pound butternut squash, peeled, seeded, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
3 red bell peppers, seeded, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 1/2 cups canned chicken broth
1 1/2 large bunches of available winter greens (kale, chard, etc.- the important thing is that you cut the leaves crosswise into 2-inch strips; I tend not to add the ribs)
1 tablespoon dried rubbed sage
5 15-ounce cans cannellini (white kidney beans), rinsed, drained
1 cup Kalamata olives, pitted, halved
Freshly grated Romano cheese (if you have it - I didn't)

Heat oil in heavy large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic; sauté until tender, about 10 minutes. Add squash; sauté Add bell peppers and stir to coat with onion mixture. Add broth. Cover and simmer until squash is just tender, about 10 minutes.

Mix the winter greens and sage into stew. Cover and cook until the greens wilt, stirring occasionally, about 8 minutes. Add beans and olives and stir until heated through. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Transfer stew to large shallow bowl. Sprinkle generously with cheese.

Postscript: As for talking about "truculence", I must confess that this subject in this post is a bald excuse to share with you this picture of Puck cuddling-up with me while I - settled into a luxuriously leisurely post-K300 Sunday morning - flipped open the ever-used American Heritage to research a word found in Profiles in Courage:

In case you are curious, truculence has the following meaning in the American Heritage Dictionary: A disposition or apparent disposition to fight, especially fiercely; Ferociously cruel actions or behavior.

Cousin Deirdre and Mike, On Snowmachines, and Traipsing Across the Kuskokwim River

2008-01-25T20:09:00.000-08:00

Just how did we manage to get a baker and an accoustic engineer, both from Massachusetts, skating across the Kuskokwim River?

Cousin Deirdre and Mike arrived on a Wednesday afternoon. (Travelling with them on the afternoon jet were Jeff King and five other mushers, as well as their respective dog teams - oh! how I love the K-300 times!) It was a long trip for them - all the way from Massachusetts, with a few days layover in Seattle. They should have been tired. I should have been a good hostess, and offered them showers or naps. But, no....rather, J. took us home (and then returned to the airport to help Jeff King get his dog teams to his host family's residence) and I stood around rather helplessly as our dogs enthusiastically jumped in and squelched any chance they might have had for peace & quiet. (Puck, it seems, is madly infatuated with Deirdre and his own personal utopia undoubtedly includes endless opportunities to cuddle up on her lap; Clyde has tagged her as the best back-scratcher ev-ah.)

After a few hours of tossing balls for them, we took them out for a stroll along the river. And then we were jumping back in the pick-up (the truck-bed of which was filled with enough frozen lasagnas and cheesecakes to feed a crowd of 400 at the Musher's Banquet on Monday night), and rushing off to the Cultural Center to watch the much anticipated K-300 Benefit Concert: Kevin Morgan opened, followed by former Bethel resident Martha (Scott) Stey and her husband Jim, and highlighted by the arrival of Elias Venes on the stage.

And then, dear Cousin Deirdre and Mike, stayed around after the concert, standing by me as I handed out frozen lasagnas to all the gracious bakers that volunteered to bake them for the Musher's Banquet.

Suffice it to say, we were home late....and exhausted.

And though anyone would think they would be so exhausted from it all, I have to say that Cousin Deirdre and Mike were up before sunrise! I was in awe. We loaded up on coffee. We ate some toasted bread with apple butter and the blueberry jam that Genevieve and I made during her breeze through town at the end of summer. We bundled up. We warmed up the snowmachines.
And then we were out and about!

And that's how Cousin Deirdre and Mike came to be fearlessly traipsing back and forth across the frozen Kuskokwim River!

Cousin Deirdre's First Alaskan Adventure

2008-01-23T14:32:00.001-08:00

Had I the technological wherewithall to do so, I would italicize the word "First" in that title above and thereby emphasize my commitment to persuading her to return.

But I don't.

Instead, I'm settling in for a long evening of Blogger Battle to see if I can't get it to let me post a few of the pictures from Deirdre and Mike's visit to our little perch in Western Alaska. Maybe, if I'm lucky, it will even let me post a bit of commentary! And, thus, shall I endeavour to persuade my dear cousin to return for a Second Alaskan Adventure......or [red rover, red rover] send Billy, Judi, Joyce or Sweet Pea right over.

In the meantime, here's one of my favorite photos of Cousin Deirdre in the Great White North.

Cousin Deirdre Has Arrived .....

2008-01-18T02:56:00.000-08:00

and, oh!, is it fun to have her on the tundra island!

We've been putting Deirdre and Mike to work. The other night they were handing out frozen lasagnas in preparation for a musher banquet on Monday. This morning Mike pulled a car out of a ditch. The grateful driver (who wasn't wearing mittens and kept dodging my maternal instincts to give him a pair) offered Mike a free pizza. And Clyde and Puck have been showing them how they like to take their daily constitutionals along the river, and how they like their balls tossed at home. Clyde's managed to show Deirdre how he would like her to massage his back. (Tonight, he emphasized his preferences by sitting on her....with that Dee accent, she tried to remind him that he is not a lap dog.)

It's tomorrow, though, that the K-300 races - and their real work - starts.......

If ever I do it, I do hope that I manage to live up to this here promise to post pictures of Mike and Deirdre doing truck support and starting line support for Hugh Neff!

Our Highway is Officially Frozen

2008-01-10T23:57:00.000-08:00

Wealthy in Good Living

2007-12-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

I never made it out to pick cranberries this summer. I wanted to. I was even determined to. But I never did. I picked a lot of blueberries. But by the time the cranberries were ready, it seemed too wet. And cold. And, oh, how it rained - day, after day, for weeks. I guess I was lazy. Spoiled.

And I was kicking myself for my shortcomings - or, more specifically, about how my laziness was going to cost us a winter without wild cranberries - when I happened upon a 5 gallon bucket of them for sale! Oh, such treasure!

I bought it before anyone else had a chance to even glance at it!

I brought my bounty home, and promptly set aside a whole Friday night to clean and sort them!

Oh, it was fun! If one were to rank it, I think the evening would go right up there with the Saturday night last Spring that Hoppi and I cleaned smelt in her living room, whilst watching foreign movies, until 4 in the morning.

Ahhh, yes, my friends. There is something wonderful about a quiet weekend night immersed in chores that glow with such humble magnitude.

And here is Puck. He doesn't care much about the berries, but he's loving the snow-games that the neighborhood kids set up when it warms up to 10 above!

A Trip to Town (many months ago)

2007-12-01T09:50:00.000-08:00

Months ago (and I do mean months), we went to a town....actually, we went to Girdwood - a little town outside of "town." Because Girdwood is on the road system, and that road system allows you to go from Girdwood to Anchorage within an hour, I call it part of "town."

In any event, I took a lot of pictures (and I do mean lots) during this trip. Oh, you wouldn't believe what good intentions I had to share them with you too! It was going to be good. But when I arrived back at home (a few hundred air miles from that road system I describe above), laden with the couple hundred of pictures I had taken, I learned a very valuable lesson: namely, classy cameras produce pictures that do not upload easily via dial-up internet service via [Russian?] satellite. Blogger and I waged a few mighty battles. And I sat at my laptop, waiting 2 or 3 hours for one picture to upload - only to have it suddenly time-out. Multiple times. (I can be stubborn that way.)

I was ready to give up. But then, a few months later, I was sent back to town. And this time I had the bright idea of packing my laptop and uploading the pictures whilst hooked-up to my hotel's fast-speed internet. It was a wonderful idea. And I'm sure it is one that I will try again. But it needs work....namely, I need to find the willpower to stay at the hotel, uploading pictures via the hotel's fast-speed internet, and not be completely and utterly distracted by all the opportunities to hang out with friends, and shop, and go to restaurants, and get my hair done, and all those other things I do when I go to town.

Suffice it to say, I didn't upload as many pictures as I had originally planned. But I did manage to upload a few. And I guess sharing them is as good a way of breaking my months of silence as any.

So..........

Here is the local airport - decorated by the sons and daughters of the local National Guard members who had just returned from a tour in Iraq the day before.

Here is the place we stayed:

Here is the scenery during one of my hikes whilst my significant attended a conference at the place we stayed:

Here is a picture I took whilst attempting to be artistic during my hike:

I drove into town a couple of times while we were staying at Girdwood. Anchorage, for me, represents a blend of breathtaking beauty and sprawl, and of tradition and chaos. I snapped the next few photos as part of my amateur efforts to try and capture some of that.

Here's a picture I snapped at the corner of Northern Lights and New Seward:

This picture is for Sonya - here's a picture of the coffeeshop from which I called and emailed you about going to dinner with the Vagabonds.

Here's a few more amateur effort to capture that Anchorage puzzle of grandeur and ordinary:

I took a little detour during my town antics for a little stroll around my old stomping grounds. Before I moved out here, I lived in Anchorage for about a year and a half. Here's the park where Puck and I did our daily walks - 3 times a day:

Here's a picture of the house that we'd pass during each of our walks - and that is, without a doubt, my dream house. Sadly enough, there is a movement abreast to replace it with condos. I hope that doesn't happen.

THANK YOU !!!!

2007-11-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

My friends, I have returned from the postoffice with another brown box filled with another bounty of surprise!

A box mailed all the way from Tennessee!

A box carrying a well-wrapped jam jar of Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam made by April of Abby Sweets. There was also a very sweet note from April. It all left me just a bit giddy - ok, I was giddy like a school girl! It's just so much fun to get gifts in the mail! And so much fun to swap homemade goodies with folks in far places. Ahhh, yes.....rest assured, dear April, there are two excited people out in rural Alaska eagerly anticipating this weekend's opportunity to celebrate your Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam with some homemade biscuits! I'm actually off, as soon as I finish this post, to see if the good ole AC has some fresh buttermilk for us.

I shouldn't have been surprised to find April's gift. But I was. Several weeks ago, I signed up for a "Jam Exchange" hosted by Molly, an Alaskan with a beautiful food and sights blog. (I have a secret suspicion that her moose stew post might just be my secret trick for persuading Christine to visit the Great White North!) And I even learned with whom I would be exchanging jams. But the times, you know how they go, they go changin'. Winter took hold. (A post will be written to further describe that.) I signed up for a watercolor painting class, and have been a little desperate trying to persuade my (lack of) talent to keep up with all the talented people in the class. (Just to embarass myself, I may just post some pictures of the portfolio I'm supposed to hand in on Monday.) There was a local arts auction to raise funds for a pre-school. And then there was a local talent show called Just Desserts. Then suddenly we were leaving for a week in Girdwood. (Yep, a post is being written to describe that further.) And the time just passed faster than I had comprehended. So, truth be told, when I picked-up the box at the post-office, I had absolutely no idea what it could be. For although I knew that my to-do list included the selection and mailing off of my own jams, I had - GASP - forgotten that I would be receiving a gift of someone else's.

Suffice it to say, you know life is good when you are reminded of reality by a jar of homemade Tennessee Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam!

Thank you, April!

p.s. Winter is here. And with it comes the dark....approximately (round about) 5 to 7 minutes more of it a day. While it is true that our little hovel has radiated at times with the hefty brightness of la vita dolce, it is also true [sigh] that it does not have much natural light. Even at the summer solstice, when one must stretch the imagination to recognize a sunset, our little hovel remains in shadows. And today, rather than muddle my enthusiasm for April's gift with the inevitable haziness of a picture taken from inside our home, I decided to take the gift of Chocolate Covered Strawberry Jam outide and photograph it under the natural light of the river bank. So J. and I packed up the camera and the jam, herded up the hounds, and headed up for a stroll along the river. Would I be too repetitive if I said that a post is being written to further describe that stroll? If so, forgive me. If not, stay tuned!

A little Brother, a Box of Cheese, and a Cast-Iron Skillet of Ginger-Glazed Goodness

2007-10-19T13:26:00.000-07:00

My little brother is not little. He is over 6’5. His shoes are big enough that he is lucky to find them even in specialty stores. He is, I’d guess, the human equivalent of a sequoia. Tall. Strong. Awesome. Sometimes though, I admit, I find myself fondly recalling his childhood years. Those adorable, dimpled, giggling years, when I could cajole him into being the “baby” while my friends and I played house. Oh, frivolous me, I once even persuaded an aunt to let me dress him up in girl clothes so that I could pretend I had a baby sister. (This occurred, I should caveat, during his newborn infancy and long before he had a voice with which to protest my antics. It hasn’t happened since. But I do, like any big sister would, have pictures of those short-lived times.)

Despite all this nostalgia for his younger days, my little brother has been - for years - the “man” in our family. He is the person that my mother and I call when a car might need a repair. He is the first person I call when I think the oil-change guy is ripping me off. He is the one I call when something big needs to be lifted, or a complex project needs to be overseen. Usually he has foreseen the need, and carries the big things and oversees the complex projects before I even realize it. I often call him simply to avail myself of his treasure trove of “how-to” – such as the first time I found myself faced with the task of cleaning a fish. He is the one I call when my heart breaks, or the world seems suddenly antagonistic. I call him when I need to borrow a dose of courage, or when I find myself keenly missing the father I didn’t get a proper chance to know. Likewise, I call him when I am keenly happy, when life is being deliriously kind and the Fates generously benevolent. He always has good advice. And, somehow to my great fortune, I accept, without struggle or ego, his opinions and advice. Indeed, over the years, my little brother has grown from that dimply giggle into a man I greatly admire. His opinion is precious to me. It is fair to say that he has become the man against whom I gauge and judge every other man. He is the man that will be walking me down the aisle at our wedding next year, and “giving me away.” (A task - he likes to remind me – that he’s been waiting years to accomplish and would be more than willing to do even sooner…the punk.) He is also wonderfully independent, and stubborn, and kind and compassionate and all those other stalwart, human qualities that indicate the wisdom of maturity and the experience of age. But I still – and shall - insist on calling him my little brother.

And today I write about him because J. returned from the post office with a big brown box.

We opened it and found a cheesemaking kit (!!!) – a gift to us from the man that is my little brother, complete with a reminder note that “cheese is the food of the gods.”

It is hard – nay! impossible(!) – to imagine a more perfect gift. And I thought a little childhood context about the gift-giver would be appropriate for this announcement that there is a little hovel on stilts stuffed with his family, their books and the various debris from his sister’s attempts to simultaneously learn watercolor painting and photography, taken-over by canine hooligans and apple-butter preserving equipment, and located at least 500 airmiles from the nearest store-bought options for real cheese, that is brimming – literally humming – with all sorts of excitement, and ideas, and culinary anticipations, the requisite cartwheels of glee, and just plain, old-fashioned, humble, utter gratitude.

Thank you, dear Bobby! We love the cheesemaking kit!

In commemoration of his generosity, I thought I’d highlight a recipe that we discovered this summer: Ginger-Braised Corn with Carrots. This may seem incongruous. My brother sends us a cheesemaking kit, and I counter with a corn and carrot recipe….It makes sense, however, because my little brother was the one that actually introduced us to the concept of cooking vegetables with ginger. He lived up here for a few months last winter. I didn’t think I could enjoy any memory more than the memory of dressing Bobby up as a little sister, but there is no sibling memory I treasure more than that winter of cooking and feasting together. I was amazed by all his culinary ideas and suggestions – how similar, and yet so distinctly different, his approach was to mine. I was especially impressed by his cooking tricks with ginger. Broccoli. Carrots. Mushrooms. He has a whole repertoire of gingered veggie recipes. After a few winter months with us, he moved back to the Lower 48. When I miss him, I find myself whipping up gingered veggie recipes…..Suffice it to say, we eat gingered veggie dishes pretty regularly.

And this summer, we did a long-distance toast to my brother with a particularly delicious and ginger-based concoction that we called Ginger-Glazed Corn with Carrots.

Please trust me - this dish is beautiful.

Much more beautiful than it may look in this picture. Indeed, I could even confess to signing-up for a watercolor painting class just to be able to better display its vibrant colors.

Ginger-Glazed Corn with Carrots

The introduction to the concept of this recipe came from my little brother. But the nuts and bolts basis for this particular gingered recipe came from my favorite cookbook, the Cast-Iron Skillet Cookbook by Sharon Kramis and her daughter, Julie Kramis Hearne. I love this cookbook. I think everyone should own a copy of it. I’m doing my best to bring about such a state of affairs. The official recipe in the Cast-Iron Skillet Cookbook is actually called Ginger-Glazed Carrots. It doesn’t contain corn. Only carrots. And I’m sure it would be delicious just so. But I have a hard time following a recipe verbatim. And ever since I discovered the incredibly good good-living of Iowa, I tend to add corn to everything. Maybe, perhaps, my tendency to add corn to everything is a bit like my brother adding ginger to everything. In any event, this combination of ginger and corn makes for a fine family tradition.

1.5 pounds of carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch slices
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup salted butter
1-inch piece fresh giner, peeled and thinly sliced
2 tablespoons sugar
A handful of corn (fresh off the cob or frozen)
Chopped fresh parsley
Salt

Plate the carrots, water, butter, ginger, and sugar in a cast iron skillet. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, reduce heat to medium-low, simmer and cook for 8 minutes, stirring occassionally until the carrots are tender and a butter sauce has developed. Toss in the corn and continue to cook and stir for at least 2 more minutes, but ultimately until the corn and carrots are cooked (but still retain a crunch). Season with sea salt, garnish with parsley, and serve immediately.

Glance at the Life: Good Friends and the Winter Project 2008

2007-09-26T21:04:00.001-07:00

It does not go unnoticed by me that I owe any and all ability to post a picture to this blog to my friends. More particularly, to two friends: Carolyn and Genevieve.

Carolyn (unpictured....for now) was my college roommate. Currently, she is my generous and witty and quick and just entirely-too-much-fun-to-be-around buddy in Anchorage. She is also the reason that I live in Alaska instead of 2 blocks from the Union Square Greenmarket. It was, you see, her wedding in Girdwood that brought me to Alaska for the first time. And when I couldn't stay away, and less than a month later I was back for more, it was the trip to her family’s cabin at Whiskey Lake that confirmed I would move mountains to be able to live here myself. About two years ago, Carolyn gave me my very first digital camera. (A year before that, she also set me up with pillows and a futon and even – I swear - a car, and gave me my first and only DVD player, but these are topics – and gushes of appreciation – for another time. Suffice it to say, Carolyn made moving to Alaska much, much easier and fun than it could have been. Carolyn, my friends, is simply talented in fun.)

It was generous. And I was so excited to finally be able to send pictures to the people that I've been earnestly attempting to persuade into visiting. But, I’ll admit it, the camera scared me. It took me a long while to learn how to turn it on. It took, in fact, importing my little brother up to Bush Alaska to set it all up for me. He installed a memory card (gifted also by Carolyn) into the camera, and installed software into the laptop. With the smugness that only one’s little brother can demonstrate towards a technologically inept big sister, he even tried to tutor me towards using it. Luckily, I finally learned. I even learned how to take a picture with it, and to upload the picture, and to email the picture, and – obviously – how to post a picture here. But, I never quite mastered it. And, oh, it was bad at times.....like one of those several times where I found myself lamenting (for weeks) that I had broken it only to be slammed by an epiphany that perhaps I simply need to put in new batteries. And it has “modes” and “menus” - and these cause me such consternation that I never even really try to understand them. I never even sampled them. I turned it on, and shot, and it took pictures, and I could upload them. And life was good, and easy and – from time to time when I remembered to update the batteries - recorded.

Slowly, with time, came comfort. Confidence with digital photography. And gumption. So much gumption, in fact, that a few months ago I whirled and whimmed myself into buying a new, complicated, and big camera. A Nikon D-80.

It arrived. I was so excited! I started to take it out of the box. But it had so many pieces. So many manuals. So many different languages and plugs and contraptions and stuff like that…..oh, I get breathless with angst all over again just thinking about it. It required, my friends, assembly. It was all too much. Assembly! Ugh. I promptly put everything right back in the box, and carried the box right up to the spare room, and set it right up in the middle of a pile of stuff, and decided that it would be best to ease into it. Months passed. Occasionally I’d go up and look at the box and contemplate trying again. But then I’d remember all the pieces and all the programming and all that other stuff, and I’d just turn around and leave.

Fast forward a few months, and this email popped into my inbox:

any plans for next thursday and friday? i'm thinking of dropping in for a
visit...g

"G" is my friend Genevieve. She is a witty, adventurous, berry-picking, baking, renaissance-worthy island-dweller out in Unalaska. Genevieve, in fact, is diversely talented. Leonardo da Vinci would have definitely invited her to his table. Think it would be fun to learn how to play an Irish tin whistle? She already knows how to! Think it would be fun to pick up 12 ungutted silver salmons! She’ll come over with 5 minutes notice, and set up a cleaning station, and bring a Food Saver, and patiently – oh! so patiently! try to show you how to fillet them. She won’t laugh at your attempts. Think it would be fun to buy 5 gallons of already fermenting cloudberries? But then realize you have absolutely no idea what to do with all those berries? The answer – call Genevieve. Similar tales could be told about sleuthing town for the one remaining cucumber, and cutting down sugar in jams, and finding berry patches, and crawling over, and under, and around pipes to take short-cuts to the Cultural Center. Genevieve, my friends, is the guide you want on your tundra island. It was a very sad day when she left it.

So imagine my glee, my joy, my celebratory cartwheels when I got an email saying that Genevieve was coming to town! Now, my friends, let’s be honest here. I don’t live in a place where one can just “drop in.” And Genevieve, in Unalaska, doesn’t live in a place that permits her to just drop by. She lives in the middle of the Aleutian Chain. She lives on an island – a real one - in the middle of the Aleutian Chain. But in addition to all the talents described above, Genevieve is also an Alaskan Airlines guru. A traveling wonder. A multi-mile millionaire, I suspect. Most definitely a deal spotter. One of those real kinds of deal spotters. One of those kinds of traveling wonder deal spotters that cut their teeth traveling around the Caucasions and Central America.

With such a plethora of talents, is it a surprise to anyone that, while in town, Genevieve put together my new camera? She came to town for 48 hours last week and assembled my camera for me. She even read the manual for me. (Yes, there does seem to be a pattern of me putting guests to work. I shall introspect on that at another time, though.) She could have gone to the A.C. to see who was buying $15 gallons of orange juice. She could have gone to Swanson’s to see if they ever got another shipment of ramekins. She could have walked along the river and looked for glimpses of Tom’s John Deere Green boat. But she is kind, and generous – and she spent her time gifting me with an assembled camera and distilled suggestions for operating it. I'm indebted.

In sum, it is a direct result of Carolyn and Genevieve, and their generosities and patience with me and my technological waywardness, that I have started taking pictures with a Nikon D-80. Sure, it has menus and modes enough to send me crawling under the covers. But I think I found a solution. I 'm making digital photography my Winter Project 2008. Let the cold come. Let the dark return and the whipping winds of below zero flay. I shall be safe, and warm and utterly enraptured with my Winter Project, photography. Now I don’t promise anything fancy here. I don’t even promise anything interesting. And we all know I’d be courting something stinky if I promised anything talented. But I do promise Pamela that there will be a lot more pictures of the dogs.

Here are a few pictures from the start of this project:

Here is Paxson grinning at his proximity to Puck's tail.

Here is Puck realizing Paxon's proximity to his tail.

Here is Puck attempting to hide his tail. It didn't work.

But before you feel sorry for Puck........

Here is Puck moping after Genevieve and Paxson left - and it wasn't just because

there were no longer stray cheerios to nibble on.

And here is Clyde.......ahhh, Clyde! So handsome!

With the first camera,
here is a glimpse of Paxon's state of awe when he first saw Clyde.

And here are some snapshots of Paxson (clearly the son of his parents) going from awe to adventure -

it's amazing how quick of a crawler he is!

Marion Cunningham's Beet Marmalade

2007-09-12T06:30:00.000-07:00

Last winter, when the blizzard hit and the radio told us to stay where we were, I was at home. On my lunch hour. And because the town closed the road due to the blizzard, I was forced to stay there. I made a mug of milky tea and set about to make Marion Cunningham's Cream Biscuits. They were deliciously easy to prepare, and abundantly warm and lovely. I have never more enjoyed a tundra blizzard.

In February, when the light was returning but doing so slowly (oh so slowly) and arm-in-arm with a bone-breaking cold, I made her Baked Rice Pudding. Such delicious anticipation. While the stove warmed up our home with heat and the perfume of rice pudding's humble goodness, we listened to the town council on the radio and tossed balls for our dogs. Forgive me for the lack of modesty, but I do believe our little hovel radiated with good living that cold February night of the Baked Rice Pudding.

In May, when the internet was literally chirping with pictures of daffodils and fresh asparagus but our river was still frozen solid and Winter lingered, I made her Lemon Curd. Literally skipping with the glee of a Spring to come, we took a jar of Marion Cunningham's bright, gold Lemon Curd to a friend's house. Our friend ate the lemon curd on Wheat-thins, and fed us her homemade salmon liver pate and shee-fish chowder. It was hard not to love our lives with such bounty.

On a leisurely Sunday morning in July, while J's mother was visiting but J. was at his office prepping for 9 trials in a row, I made us a breakfast featuring Marion Cunningham's Yellow Cornmeal Buttermilk Pancakes. I added some blueberries to celebrate the special occassion, and confessed to J's mom that cornmeal pancakes remind me of her father, R.C. I never actually ate cornmeal pancakes with R.C., but he was a cornseed farmer. And a tractor-pull champion. And a wit. A great wit. I have no doubt that eating cornmeal pancakes with R.C. would be a witty adventure of good living. And that July morning, we two ladies spent a few hours at the sticky table, eating Marion Cunningham's cornmeal pancakes with blueberries (which I have further personalized and named "R.C. Cakes") and chatting about R.C. We actually talked about many things. But I especially loved talking about R.C. and how he once drove a Model-T across the country, fed a pancake to a bear, and drove back. I don't know if there is a cookbook more appropriate for a leisurely Sunday morning in rural Alaska with one's visiting future mother-in-law than Marion Cunningham's cookbook, The Breakfast Book. I doubt that there is a finer breakfast than Marion Cunningham's R.C. Cakes.

Well, those Dutch Babies are pretty good too.....On August 5th, for Sunday breakfast with just J., I made Marion Cunningham's recipe for Dutch Babies. I baked them in two castiron skillets and served them with homemade blueberry lime syrup, powdered sugar and bacon. They were delicious. We were loving our life, though this shouldn't be too surprising. It is not hard to love one's life when one is looking at their own cast-iron skillet of dutch baby, and tarting it up with homemade blueberry-lime syrup. I made a silent shout of thanks to Marion Cunningham for, again, adding to the perfect meal moment.

And on August 28th, for no reason other than I had picked up two bunches of the Meyer family beets at the Saturday Market, I made her Beet Marmalade. I served it with slices of cold pot roast and hot, creamed mushrooms. It was delicious! We loved it so much, in fact, that I immediately went around distributing the remaining jars of this surprising treat to our neighbors. Life - can you see the pattern? - was loved.

Even though I have never met Marion Cunningham, she has certainly has made quite a contribution to the life we're building up here. I wish I could meet her in a person. I'm sure I'd stammer and stutter. Just how is one supposed to be cool and calm in front of someone to whom they owe such a grace of good living? But even with this likelihood that I'd make a complete and utter fool of myself, I still hope that someday, maybe, hopefully, I might bump into Marion Cunningham whilst perusing the new shipment of eggplants at the A.C. Who knows? Maybe it can happen...? In the meantime, I should probably be proactive and write her a letter, thanking her for all the moments of humble magnitude that her recipes and cookbooks have led us to. I should do that. Or maybe Marion Cunningham googles her name every now and then, and maybe up will pop up this little itemization of the "simple, easy, flexible meal[s] marked by the intimacy of family or friends" that she has inspired up here on this little tundra island. You just never know what can happen, aye?

In any event, here is Marion Cunningham's recipe for Beet Marmelade. I could lose my voice in an effort to describe its perfection. It's surprisingly easy to prepare, yet startingly beautiful. I gave a jar of it to Tom, who also thought it was pretty. "It looks like salmon eggs," he explained. It is also delicious. An intriguing burst of flavours. Refreshing, but complex. It is a bit like cranberry sauce, though it has the peppery bite of a chutney rather than a tang of a jelly. Partnered with pot roast, it is divine.

I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

****

Beet Marmalade
(copied from Marion Cunningham's The Supper Book, page 168)

4 medium-large beets, boiled** and peeled
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 large lemon
2 tbsp chopped fresh ginger

Put the beets in a food processor and process until coarsely chopped, or mash the beets by hand. Transfer the beets to a heavy-bottomed saucepan and stir in the sugar.

Cut, seed, and quarter the lemon. Put the pieces and the giner into the food processor and process until finely chopped, or chop by hand. Add the lemon and ginger to the beet mixture and stir to blend. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring often, until the marmalade has thickened a little. This takes about 2 minutes - remember that the marmalade will get even thicker as it cools.

Put the hot marmalade into clean jars, cover and refrigerate when cool. This will keep for a month. For longer preserving, fill sterilized jars with the hot mixture, leaving 1/4-inch headspace. Put on the lids and tighten, and process in a boiling-water canner for 15 minutes.

** Instructions for boiling the beets are on page 11. They are pretty standard. But in the interest of sharing as much Marion Cunningham wisdom as I can, I'll summarize them here. Basically, she advises that you cut off all but an inch of the beet tops and drop the beetings into boiling water for 30 minutes to an hour. Don't trim, pare or otherwise remove the roots. When they are cooked, drain and cool them down in cold water. When you can, slip off the skins.

Glance At Our Life: the Sand Plough

2007-08-28T23:57:00.000-07:00

This is the sand plough that periodically restores traversability to our road.

Our road is not paved. It is made of sand. Compacted sand, perhaps. But, still, sand. Unlike most sand, the sand of which our road is made is a type of sand that becomes gloppy mud with a bit of water. Even a little shower of rain can transform our sand road into our mud trap. And if our road suffers a few days of rain - oh! it can get bad. Rain wreaks massive mischief on the traversability of our road. So does the sun. Yes, if it gets too dry our road can become an eye-blinding whirl of blowing sand. And if the weather is such that it is both dry and wet, well, we get potholes. Bad potholes. Potholes that stretch to gigantic proportions. Potholes that can eat a truck. Ok. So that is an exaggeration (...most of the time -I have seen at least one SUV in the grip of a desperate struggle with our road). In any event, you get the idea. Right? I suppose it doesn't need to be said, but snow and ice can also impact the traversability of our road, though it does make for a firmer surface.

Sorry if I'm being verbosely redudant here. I could probably have condensed that entire paragraph into this one sentence: it is not rare that J. puts the truck into 4 Wheel Drive to get home and every now and then the sand plough comes through to temporarily fix that. But I wanted to share all those weather and seasonal details so that you, dear readers, could better understand just how exciting it is to see the sand/snow plough in our neighborhood. I wish we saw it more. It is so exhillerating to travel along a traversable road. But I won't be ungrateful for when we do.

These are pictures from the last time the plough visited our neighborhood. I took it the day before leaving for Sonya's wedding in Seattle. In fact, I made J. stop the truck so that I could hop out and take these pictures. I'm not sure who was more surprised by my camera - J. or the plough driver. But here you go. Here is a very real glance at our lives: the plough that periodically restores traversability to our road.

It looks, doesn't it, like a snow plough? But no, it is a sand plough. Even when we freeze up, and no longer deal with sand or mud because everything has been frozen more solid than cement or asphalt, I still call it the sand plough. I do so, probably, because we rarely see it in the winter.

Uncle Nate's Corn Cake

2007-08-23T20:48:00.000-07:00

There is a recipe, below, for this easy-to-prepare corn cake. It isn’t a “cake” made with corn like a corn cake analogous to carrot cake would be. Nor is it like cornbread. It is a corn cake that is fashioned out of corn and eggs and a mere teaspoon of flour. It is delicious.

Before I describe it any further or give you the recipe, I can't resist…..well, perhaps more honestly, I don't want to resist……. but really, seriously - regardless of the specificity of the vernacular – I won’t resist talking, just a bit more, about the corn - those 45 pounds of Iowa corn that Nate carried over to Alaska in a black duffel bag. Just a tiny bit more, I promise. (Admittedly, I’m going to define”bit” and “tiny” in accordance with the Alaskan perspectives of one who lives amidst the vast, immense, seemingly infinite tundra. But you couldn’t expect me to do any less in my attempt to sufficiently describe a gift of corn that brought such a carnival of glee into our home, could you?)

I’d like to segue, just a bit mind you, into all our options with that corn. Quite frankly, once we had it, I didn’t know what we were going to do with it all. I think I was so caught up in the excitement that we could get so much corn, that I hadn’t actually sat down and thought out a plan for what we would do with it if we did. The three of us tossed around ideas. Actually, I think I probably tossed out ideas. Those two Iowa boys were already contemplating the buttery goodness of simple corn on the cob. I could see it their eyes. They were just entertaining me, tolerating my bombardment of time-consuming options with their typical good-naturedness. Undoubtedly to simplify things a bit, Nate suggested “putting it up” and promptly googled a straight-forward way for doing so. In the face of such a solid, achievable plan, I countered with chaos. Start a sweet corn soughdough starter? Can a case of chowchow? Peach-corn-buttermilk sherbet? Corn vinegar?……

I know. These are some unique ideas. But that's exactly why I loved them so! Please don't think, however, that my creativity created them. No. They are the ideas of Betty Fussell. I lifted every last one of them from her every-cook-should-have-a-copy cookbook titled Crazy for Corn. As soon as I saw the bounty of the duffel bag, I went straight for the bookshelves to pull it out. I don’t know Betty Fussell personally, of course, but I’d do quite a cartwheel of glee if I could. She's brilliant and she writes those lovely kind of cookbooks that keep. Seriously. They exist outside of fads and trends. They are, in fact, timeless mini-treatises on accessible subjects, emphasizing the culinary heritage of generally familiar ingredients, regions, traditions, etc.. Her emphasis is eloquent and engaging. And it would not be strange that one could think they will steal just a few minutes to simply glance through a few pages of one of her books, maybe a quote or two, only to find that an entire afternoon has passed, and the sun is setting, and the mug of milk tea has long grown cold, and the book is now covered with post-it notes and other indications of recipes that one must, simply must, make some day soon. I can confess to one or two narcissistic moments since I first discovered Betty Fussell’s cookbooks, when I was convinced that she writes them just for me! Just for me, she fills them with all sorts of lovely quotes. Just for me, she prints them on these lovely fibrous pages with wide margins that so eagerly accept all my own hand-written notations. Just for me….ok, just for us, she wrote Crazy for Corn - a simple, hearty cookbook that can – as you can see from the maelstrom of my brainstorm - instigate all sorts of culinary adventures.

Sadly, on that particular first night of Nate’s visit, we were too tired to really embark on any of Betty Fussell’s adventures. All three of us. J. and had just returned from his 22 hour journey from Seattle to home. I had just returned from my own 16 hour journey from Seattle to home. And Nate, poor Nate, had just finished his very, very long journey from Iowa to Alaska. Although it was such fun to glimpse through Betty Fussell’s research the world of opportunities that lay in that duffel bag filled with corn, we eventually settled (I say “settled” facestiously) for a simple dinner (I say “simple” facestiously too) of steaks and corn on the cob. J. prepared the steaks using the Brazilian churrasco method he learned from Sonya's new husband, Rodrigo, down in Seattle. Simply salt and a grill. Divine. And we pulled out 6 ears of corn from the bag and handed them to Nate, our resident corn expert. He shucked and boiled the corn. Sublime. Seriously. Sublime.

Nothing like putting your fiance and houseguest to work while you slap post-it notes on every other page of a Betty Fussell cookbook, aye?

My fingers numb from busily post-it-noting all those pages, my mind exhausted from the travel, and my belly full of some of summer’s finest luxuries, I finally had to concede that the sourdough starter, vinegar, chowchow and peach-corn-buttermilk ice cream would have to wait. I did manage to clear out a third of our refridgerator space before crawling to bed, and Nate kindly carried the bag of corn over to fill it. I suspect we had just enough energy to accomplish this simple act of corn preservation.

The next morning, J. and Nate got up and “put up” the 45 pounds of corn. I'm guessing from the photos on the camera, they made big pots of coffee and sat at the table to clean all the corn.

Then, they boiled, chilled, cobbed and bagged the corn. It looks like quite a production.

By the time I got home from work and took possession of the camera, they were putting the last of the corn into ziploc bags and were - I swear - giddy with all the success of it.

We ate corn that night too. Alas, I can’t remember exactly how we ate it. Isn’t it funny how, in wealth, we can so easily forget the details of our joy? Wealthy in corn, I can’t for the life of me remember how we ate it that night. A salad? Buttered? I just don’t remember. Fortunately, I do remember feeling a sense of wellbeing knowing that I was in Alaska eating straight-from-the-Iowa-cornfield corn with two Iowa-born guys and that there was a winter’s worth of similar goodness enriching our freezer.

The next morning, it was my turn to play with our cache of Iowa gold. I woke up early and used some of the unfrozen corn to make “the boys” Corn Cake for breakfast. The recipe came from the cookbook Savouring Desserts, a handy if not as hyperbole-inspiring kitchen resource. It is a little odd that after all the brainstorming two nights before, I didn’t use a recipe from Crazy for Corn. But I had marked this particular recipe for just this kind of occasion. In fact, I bought Savouring Desserts just to possess this recipe for just this kind of occasion. I felt a little compelled to try it. I’m sure Betty would understand.

And now, full circle, we come back to the description and recipe for Uncle Nate's Corn Cake.

If you find yourself with some fresh corn, definitely try this “cake.” It’s simple. Quick. Delicious. Quite perfect, actually. But please know that it’s not really a cake. It’s more of a corn clafouti, I suppose. And it’s not really a dessert. Oh, it could be dessert if you so wanted it to be. It did come, after all, from a book comprised solely of dessert recipes. But I think it makes a finer breakfast. It is sweet. Oh, goodness. There is no denying that. But it's just not a dessert kind of sweet. I find it maybe too rich and buttery, really, for a rustic dessert. Yet its particular sweetness seems too homey, too nostalgic, for a celebratory dessert. All in all, I’d say that its sweetness is one of familiarity and comfort that is more appropriate for starting, rather than ending, the day. There is also this: I personally find it too rich for a summer dessert. Admittedly, I could just be partial to desserting on fruits during this season of fresh corn. But one should also be aware of this fact of summer relevancy: it has to bake awhile. While we don’t have to worry too much up here about turning on the stove during the summer (only occassionally does it get that hot) old habits do die hard, and my own personal habit of avoiding hot stoves in the summer is one of those more persistant kind of death-defying habits. If you make it for breakfast, you get the advantage of the old summer tradition of doing all a day’s baking in the morning. And let’s be honest here, it is fun to do the summer baking in slippers whilst there is just enough chill in the air to lend a hearty appreciation for that day’s first coffee but not enough to require a cardigan.

A final reason to consider this as a breakfast option is that it is an ideal kind of breakfast to make for a weekday houseguest. You can do the prep-work in your pyjamas. While it bakes, you can shower and get ready for work and even set the table for your guest to wake-up to. But don’t forget to make your guest a pot of coffee too. That hot coffee – preferably a stoic black - with this cake, is a fine combination indeed. Indeed, I'd do cartwheels of glee to make it for a mid-morning coffee with Betty Fussell, should she ever pass through this little portion of vast, immense tundra and feel inclined to rest a bit at our kitchen table.....and, maybe, just maybe, assist me a bit in compiling a list of ways to make use of all that wild chamomile that pops up all over the dusty driveway out front.

Uncle Nate’s Corn Cake
(Slightly abbreviated version of the one in Savoring Desserts, p. 19)

Aside from minor substitutions to accommodate what I had handy (salted butter for unsalted, etc.) and doubling the baking time and switching from a fry-pan to my absolute favorite pie plate, I followed the recipe below verbatim. But that’s where my fairly faithful act of culinary obedience ends. I followed the recipe, but I am changing the name. In Savouring Desserts, it is called simply “Corn Cake” (in English) and "Pan de Elote" (in Spanish). In our home, however, it shall henceforth be called “Uncle Nate’s Corn Cake.” Not that we are expecting children at this moment, mind you. But if we do, someday, in the future, maybe, hopefully….well, I see no problem with celebrating today how lucky those little hooligans will be to have an uncle like Nate. In the meantime, there are two adoring canine hooligans that don’t mind claiming a familial connection to the Iowan whose departure they still mourn. So, yes. In our hovel on stilts, this lovely little cake-of-sorts shall be called “Uncle Nate’s Corn Cake” and will go on the shelf of favorites right next to Amelia’s Rhubarb Pie.

1/2 cup butter, at room temperature, plus 2 tbsp
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup fresh corn kernels
4 eggs
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp corn oil

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit.
With an electric mixer, beat together the 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup sugar until creamy.
Grind the corn kernels in a food processor, stopping while the corn still has some texture.
Add the ground corn to the butter miture and mix well. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the flour, baking powder, and salt and beat until combined.
Put the 2 tablespoons of butter and the oil in a 9-inch ovenproof frying pan and heat in the oven until the butter is melted. Add the creamed corn mixture and bake until set. A tootpick inserted into the middle should come out clean, and there should be no liquid visible if you shake or tilt the pan. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with sugar, if desired.

**********

First Postscript: To serve, I set the table with Bernie’s homemade cloudberry jam, my homemade apple butter, CarolAnn’s homemade strawberry-rhubarb jam and A.C. purchased maple syrup, just in case anyone wanted to doctor up their slice of Uncle Nate’s Corn Cake like a pancake or cornbread. I even put out some powdered sugar, just in case anyone wanted to doctor it up like a dutch baby or french toast. But the consensus seems to be that all such doctorings are unnecessary. This cake can stand – indeeds merits from such standing – on its own. But, then again, who would expect anything less from a recipe named after Nate?

Second Postscript: This postcript is for Pamela, who I’m guessing would be particularly interested in our hooligans’ initial reaction to the carnival smells of 45 pounds of Iowa corn. They may have smelled freshly flown-in corn before. I don’t know. They could have. But it wouldn’t have been like this. Not straight from an Iowa cornfield! Oh no. This was their first exposure to such treasure. They liked it! Admittedly, they were a little hesitant at first. But after that, it was all excitement.

So excited were they, that little Puck decided to test a nibble. We put a stop to that, of course, though I did wait to do so until after I had secured – for you - a picture of his adorable audacity.

La Vita Dolce

2007-08-18T19:20:00.000-07:00

How quickly these days have passed. Fourteen friend-filled, family-emphasized, antic-encouraged, and life-affirming days have passed since my last post. They have been, in the most sincere way, wonderful. Alas, I don't know how to describe them. I don't know where to start, or even how to edit them away from a rambling meander of details and gushing hyperbole. Quite frankly, I do not possess the skill to describe the magnitude of their simple goodness.

Please, dear readers, please, bare with me. With the insufficient words I do have, and the limited skills I urge myself to fumble with, I am trying to describe to you the joy, the glee, the sheer and utter and immense contentment of four glorious friend-and-family-and-food-and-dancing-and-humble-yet-magificent-wit-that-college-friends-best-epitomize days in Seattle celebrating the marriage of a lifetime friend to a wonderful man, and returning to our home in Alaska just in time to enjoy five full days of adventures with the man I’m going to marry, his hilarious brother, and the 45 pounds of Iowa corn he carried across the continent in a black duffel bag for us.

(Let's pretend that italics do not indicate hyperbole, shall we?)

As an extra dollop of joy, while I was down in Seattle and immersed in all the emotions and antics of a remarkably fun PacificNW/Brazilian wedding, I was nominated by the very kind and eloquent Amanda (who, I've noticed, does possess an admirable talent for describing beauty and good-living, as well as dishes that pretty much inspire my grocery shopping lists whenever I go Outside) as a "Rockin' Girl Blogger." Such a fine compliment! I blush with the honor of it and then dive into contemplating all the new cartwheels of glee that her nomination inspires.

And to top it all off, after our return to the tundra island, J. went to the post-office to pick up our mail, only to discover that my future father-in-law sent us a book self-published in 1972 with the history of the little chapel in the foothills of the Cascades where my parent were married and where we too will be married. Such treasure! This book is titled Holy Rosary Mission: 1892 to 1972. It is signed by the author, Patricia Keegan Schonbachler. And it contains a quote that I suspect I've spent my lifetime looking for……

"The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future."

Those more eloquent than me, and those that can better wield words to capture the sentiment of extreme gratitude, could do better. But me. With what I have, I can only ramble out a surface description of my appreciation for our current string of glee: Weddings! And family! And friends! And the potential and adventures that only 45 pounds of Iowa sweet corn can unleash upon our little kitchen on our massive tundra island! Compliments! Appreciation for the life we are building in Alaska! Encouragement for the vows we'll exchange in Oregon!

In light of such bounty, I’m sure you can see now how hard…nay, impossible! it is to describe these days with general terms, polite nonchalance or even mere understatement. These days are the kind of days one builds a life upon – and days that give you tangible proof that the life you have built is just right. Sometimes I think of these kind of days – and all these precious moments that form their architecture – as “snapshot moments”…..moments that immediately assume the poignancy and relevance of an adored photo with dog-ears and creases and all the other evidence of being carried around during travels to show new friends where you come from. Yes. These have been fourteen days full of Snapshot Moments.

Looking back, I can see that much of the excitement and joy and emotions of these days has also been a harvesting of our heritage, of sorts. A harvesting and a very excited approach towards our future.

P.S. - There will be more to follow. More details. More stories, with recipes and all. I promise. They're all percolating in my mind. But, for now, I'm going to linger just a bit longer in the gratitude for it all. My thanks to Sonya and Rodrigo - for finding each other, and making each other so happy, and for hosting a beautiful wedding that samba'd its way into the chronicle of my most treasured lifetime moments. To Nella, for knowing me so well - and still being such a solid friend - and for leading me to the most perfect place to enjoy urban dining and for agreeing to park in a garage in your own town so that I could get more time drinking wine in public and eating charcuterie, and cheese, and pate', and plum financiers, and lamb sausage. Oh goodness. Thank you so much for such a delightful afternoon. To Karri, for keeping me in a constant state of chuckle. To her mother, for those jars of pickled asparagus. Yum! To Christine and Steve, for one of the best late-night conversations I've ever had, and for having it in your beautiful house whilst your handsome baby slept and we ate tomatoes picked from your garden. To JMay and Will, for all that fun and for reminding me how much joy there is to be had by topping a great evening with a Dick's burger, fries and shake. To Amy - indeed, all the Funkhousers, for managing the details with such grace and warmth of welcome. To the Rochas and Pintos, for being so gracious in the face of the damage that seventeen years has wreaked upon my ability to speak in Portuguese and for not once laughing that what I do manage to speak in Portuguese is uttered in an accent best described as the equivalent of a thirty-something Texan woman brazenly speaking in a drawling version Valley Girl Talk as if it was perfectly normal and that fad had never phased out. To Nate, for gracing our hovel on stilts with your wit, insight and drawer-fixing engineering prowess.....and for preparing our freezer for the incoming Alaskan winter with 45 pounds of Iowa corn! I suspect that I may grow old and be permanantly perched in a rocking chair in front of my rhubarb patch, grandkids sporting about and canine hooligans wreaking all sorts of good-living mischief, but the story of those 45 pounds of Iowa corn that you carried to Alaska in the Summer of 2007 shall still guarantee to bring me to a smile. To Pamela, for inspiring Nate's visit. And to Dave, for getting us even more excited about our wedding. There is no doubt in my mind that Cecilia is doing jigs of joy that you sent to us such a fine, fine reminder to remember, cherish, and build our lives upon all the people, places, adventures and heritage that have contributed to who we are and how we define la dolce vita.

A Glance At Our Life: Our Neighborhood

2007-08-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

I love our neighborhood. Loooooove it.

Our neighborhood stretches along the river.

Our neighborhood has a lake.

What really makes our neighborhood so special, though, are our neighbors. I have fine neighbors. Tom, for example, is a fine neighbor in our fun neighborhood. Tom moved here 'round and 'bout the same time that we did. He is a district attorney. He doesn't eat chicken. Or eggs. He likes to put capers in his quesadillas. I took care of Tom's dog, Kusko, when Tom went to Paris. Kusko and Puck get along really well, though they can get a bit overwhelming. I won't use the word disturbing, this being public and all. Kusko makes really horrible, awful noises when she wants something you won't give her. There were times that I thought that passing persons might hear and shudder at the noise. I was expecting visits from public officials. As a thankyou for taking care of Kusko, Tom gave Puck a wizard costume for Halloween (Kusko was costumed like a devil and yes - it was all so cute) and gave me a gift that quickly became one of my prized possessions: this cutting board sculptured like a cheese with a cheese knife forged into a mouse shape.

In the winter, it is fun to see Tom snow-machine by our house because he always has a different fur hat on. For awhile, his snowmachine didn't have proper runners on his ski's. And so it was also fun (albeit a bit scary) to see him slipping and sliding every time he attempted to make a turn when he snow-machined by our house in his fur hats. Tom made those fur hats that he wears while snow-machining. In fact, Tom specializes in skin-sewing. With the fur scraps from making his own beaver hats and mittens, Tom has sewn a fur wardrobe for Kusko. When Kusko competed against my dog, Puck, at the local dog show last winter for the "Most Adorable" trophy - I will confess, here and now and with approximately 7 months to prepare for the next local dog show - I was nervous that Kusko's hand-sewn beaver collar and/or Kusko's fur cape with a big, cross-stiched-by-hand-through-a-beaver-pelt letter 'K' (competition was fierce enough that he wouldn't tell me which he was going to use) would trump Puck's big eyes and floppy ears. In the end, however, both Kusko's beaver-fur wardrobe and Puck's natural beauty were trumped by an even smaller dog with a blue feather boa. It kind of hurt – for both of us and the neighborhood. But I think we've all moved along nicely.

Back to my neighbor Tom.

Tom first lived in the one room cabin that he rented from Hoppi. Now he lives in the yellow house that he bought from Hoppi. It's known as "the yellow house." When he has parties, he distributes flyers with directions on how to get there. The directions say "the yellow house." As far as I know, no one has gotten lost yet. He once threw a Halloween party, but his plane got held in Anchorage. Dressed to the hilt of my Carharrt work overalls, I went over to the yellow house a few hours before the party, opened it up and turned on all the lights, built the fire to heat it up (too bad he missed all the entertainment of watching me attempt that!), gave-away some of his capers to the tricker-treaters, and ordered a pizza. By the time Tom's plane finally made it to Bethel, he was throwing one of my favorite Halloween parties......if I don't say so myself.

Tom has a wood stove in his yellow house. He gathers and cuts his own firewood. He has a chainsaw. I won't post pictures of it. But others have. Tom has a set of John Deere silverware. I covet that silverware. Tom also has a John-Deere-green-and-white dirt bike and a John-Deere-green-and-orange boat. I was so impressed the first time I walked by and saw all that John Deere green, I took the dogs on two walks…. and I brought my camera along for that second walk.

Here's a snapshot of Tom's yellow house and his green-and-orange boat and dirt bike:

Clearly that picture is less than sufficient. Clearly I need to remember to open the shutter all the way when I take a picture. Suffice it to say, I was pretty disappointed with it. I was even more disappointed when I tried to go back and take a better photo, only to discover that Tom had put his boat into the water for the summer. Resigned, I was ready to wait until the winter to re-stage this picture that I flubbed so badly. So imagine my excitement when, during one of the dogs' daily constitutionals last week, Tom boated by in his John-Deere-green-boat with orange trim. Actually, it was Tom and my Unalaska friends' Anchorage-based brother, Regan, in the boat. It was a great chance to retake the picture!

First, I waved. Then, I grabbed my camera and (after double-checking to make sure the shutter was fully open) I took this picture:

Clearly, it wasn't a sufficient picture. So, I raced up the trail, and took this picture of Tom as he hooked his John-Deere-green-with-orange-trim boat up to the sea wall just down the hill from his yellow house. I tried to take the picture while Clyde was leaning over the sea wall to watch the activity in the boat below. But my camera is rather slow. So, instead, I got a picture of Tom peeking over the sea wall while Clyde went off in pursuit of discarded salmon heads or the other tasty little tidbits that he has a honed (and stinky) talent for discovering along the sea wall.

Then, I snapped two more pictures of Tom and Regan as they showed us the salmon and the firewood that they had caught.

Then, for reasons I don't really know except to say that I would like to someday have a picture of Puck and Clyde traversing through a meadow of tundra cotton, I took this picture of the tundra cotton that is growing in the ditch outside Tom's yellow house.

Cucumbers, Tundra-grown and Home-pickled

2007-08-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

I haven’t been so remiss since I waited months to tell you all about Puck’s appearance at the local dog show. I should be ashamed. Oh, dear friends, I’ve been sitting on wonderful epiphanies. I’ve meant to share them. I have. But I, sadly, have not. Until now. And so you should chastise me. Be tough. This is a lesson I want to learn. And learn well. I want to know that the next time I learn that there is a local, organic farm growing the sweetest of produce out on the tundra of Southwest Alaska, I’ll be clamoring as soon as I can to the top of the nearest rooftop to shout out the good news as far as I can.

Yes. Bethel has its own local, organic vegetable farm! Actually, Tim and his family have a local, organic vegetable farm – and the town of Bethel is lucky that they share its bounty.

I heard rumours about it. One person cancelled her weekly green'flighted box of organic vegetables from the Lower 48 because she liked the day-to-day interaction with Tim – the farmer - on her way home from work. She mentioned that it was an incredible operation. I even heard stories about the farm on our one radio station. Interviews! There were flyers around town announcing the expected dates of readiness for the various vegetables. A neighbor told me that a firefighter is living on the farm in exchange for help with the crops. I loved that story. But I never just leapt up to see it myself. I may have been shy or something. Not sure how to introduce myself. The bottom line is that it took me a month to get out there myself to see, in person, just how wonderful it is.

What was it, you ask, that finally overtook my well-honed talent of procrastination? How did I finally get around to learning that this mythological farm referenced on the radio was real….and better than I could have dreamed of? It was pickles, my friend. Pickles. I wanted to make pickles. And I wanted these pickles to be ready in time for an upcoming visit from J’s brother, Nate. It will be Nate’s first visit to this area. In 12 days, he’ll be here for 5 days. Rumour has it that he’s coming with a duffel bag full of sweet Iowa corn. I got this news (see, just like that, rumour can become news if you wish hard enough) and I swooned. Oh, yes. Full, giddy swoon. My mind filled with ideas for all that corn! For putting up corn relish. For freezing some corn. For corn puddings. For corn in the middle of winter. For making the corn ice cream I loved so when I lived in Brazil so many lives ago. Caught in a waltz of nostalgia, I thought back to the three particularly delicious jars of homemade salsa with fresh corn we brought back from an Iowa family reunion last summer. I could order some tomatoes and try to make that! I could make all of these wonderful things because Nate was coming to visit us with a whole duffel bag of Iowa corn! And then, with a sudden mental shift that makes sense (I hope) once you get to know me, I decided that I had to make sure that there would be homemade dill pickles waiting for Nate when he arrived. And ever since I’ve been searching for pickle'able cucumbers.

As of this morning, Full Circle Farms hasn’t shipped us out any such cucumbers. To the best of my knowledge, pickle'able cucumbers haven’t been one of the offered options. As of a few days ago, none had appeared at the A.C. On Saturday, with a whim and a prayer, we decided to see if maybe – just maybe – there would be something pickle’able at the summer craft fair at the Cultural Center.

And wouldn’t you know it – but there were the cucumbers I needed. Showcased at the Cultural Center; grown and raised and sold by Tim Meyers and his family on the other end of town. Such treasure! I bought them all. All the pickle’able cucumbers that they had. Yes, folks. I didn’t leave a single pickle’able cucumber behind. I loaded my treasured cache of 12 pickle’able cucmbers into a plastic bag, and with the excitement of a little girl who discovers both an E.T. doll and a Member’s Only coat under a Christmas tree, I raced home to scour my cookbooks for the perfect dill pickle recipe. I found that too. And feeling so lucky and loved by the Fates, I decided to see if I couldn’t find more pickle’able cucumbers. And that’s how - two days after buying out all the ones sold at the Cultural Center, I found myself making a personal appearance at the Meyers’ farm. And, lo and behold, it worked! There were more pickle’able cucumbers to be had! We bought 6 more pickle’able pickles – as well as some cauliflower, broccoli and turnips – all snipped from the plants or pulled out of the ground as we stood there watching.

Yes, folks. Our local, organic farm harvests as you order!

In all honesty, can life get much better than that? I was doing cartwheels of glee! Even J. – this grounded man - was giddy with the extreme freshness and fortune of it all. Maybe it wasn't as giddy as if he'd just seen a grizzly, or just netted a king, or was planning all sorts of adventures for his little brother's first visit to our tundra island. But it was definitely a glee of noticeable proportions.

I made the pickles yesterday. Clearly, I procrastinated a bit. And, of course it will take at least 2 weeks for the flavours to ripen. But, if all goes well and the Fates keep sponsoring the endeavour, there shall be ready-to-eat, tundra-grown and home-pickled dill pickles when Nate arrives with his duffel bag full of fresh-picked Iowa sweet corn.

Wrap me in duct tape and label me a character, but I’m pretty confident that life doesn’t get much better than this. Except, maybe, for Puck. He wasn't quite ready to accept that the pickles were intended for Nate, not him.

Dill Pickles
Recipe is from Sacramental Magic in a Small-Town Café: Recipes and Stories from Brother Juniper’s Café, by Br. Peter Reinhart

Pickling cucumbers (there are many types), picked small or medium, not bruised or cut, and weighed

Pickling spice blend (1 tablespoon per pound of cucumbers): equal parts whole coriander seed, whole mustard seed, whole peppercorns, and whole dill seed

Fresh dill (1 cup, loosely packed, per 20 pounds of cucumbers)

Whole fresh cloves garlic (10 cloves per 20 pounds of cucumbers)

Whole bay leaves (10 per 20 pounds of cucumbers)

Salt (1 cup per gallon of water)

Water, at room temperature

Wash the cucumbers in cold water. Be careful not to bruise or cut the skins. Remove any dirt or extraneous matter. Fill the container(s) almost full (2 inches from the top) with cucumbers, packing tightly but not forcing. Add the spice blend, dill, bay leaves, and garlic. The amount depends on the weight of the cucumbers (see ingredients above). Mix the salt in the water until it dissolves. Cover the cucumbers and spices with the salt solution, filling the tubs until the brine is 2 inches from the top of the container. Allow the cucumbers to ferment for 2 to 4 weeks. Every day or two check to be sure no pickles are exposed to the air. After a few days a whitish scum will form on the surface. Skim this off and discard; if removed regularly, it will not harm the flavor. Add plain water, if necessary, to replace evaporated brine. Taste the brine periodically. The saltiness should give way to a sour flavor within 2 to 4 weeks, but it can happen earlier or later depending on the temperature and other conditions. If any pickles are exposed to the air for a few days they may begin to mold or rot. If so, discard the offenders immediately. When the brine begins to taste pickled, try one of the cucumbers. When the flavor is how you like it, jar up the pickles with enough brine to cover them, and refrigerate. These should keep for a few months with only a gradual change: Remember, the brine is still active so there will continue to be slow fermentation, even in the fridge.

******

p.s. Despite all my intentions, I still haven't managed to pickle even one jam jar's worth of green beans. I haven’t entirely given up on the idea, but I am a little perplexed as to how best to overcome this rather frustrating bout of procrastination. Giving myself the benefit of the doubt, I ordered more. And I am therefore expecting 2 pounds of yellow wax beans in this week’s Green’flighted box of veggies from Full Circle Farms. I assure you I have only the best of intentions to pickle them before the weekend….or, well, maybe during the weekend.

pp.ss. As one final side note: you should definitely try the turnips that grow under the midnight sun! Sweet as apples! No peeling required. Marion Cunningham has a recipe for turnip slaw that I can't wait to try. I would have already tried it, but I didn't do my research in time. I used our Bethel turnips in a bisque with carmelized shallots. Not bad, I suppose. But I couldn't help but notice that it wasn't all those turnips could have been. I'm pretty certain that Alaskan turnips as sweet as apples would be better in Marion Cunningham's turnip slaw.

Love is also .....

2007-07-31T21:05:00.000-07:00

.... the man who graciously consents to walk the dogs every morning because his fiance is scared of getting any more bugbites on her face in the week leading up to Sonya'i Seattle wedding.

In my defense, these are not just your average, ordinary bug bites in surreptious places that can be hidden beneath his hooded sweatshirts. These are no-see-um bites on my face. They don't bite J., these misogynistic no-see-um gnats. But, oh!, do they like me. And though I may have been more patient (and less vain) in past starts of the no-see-um season, this season I'd like to have a little more time to celebrate the departure of my sty before my face is covered with different kinds of blotchy, red marks. And, it's not just for me, dear readers. Oh no. It's not just for my vanity. It's for a bigger, better cause. It's for a friend. It's for Sonya and Sonya's very special day with a man I am so pleased she is marrying. I'm a bridesmaid, you see. I have a duty to preserve my complexion. Don't I? I'm sure I do. And I take my duties seriously. I want to be a good bridesmaid. I'm being vain, maybe - but....it's for Sonya! I'm just trying to be a good friend and a considerate bridesmaid for Sonya and Rodrigo.

Yes - love is the man who knows that the friends of a fiance is part of the family they will form together, and graciously agrees to be the exclusive dogwalker for the 10 days before such a friend's wedding so that her Alaskan bridesmaid won't be a ravishing patchwork of bugbites.

What do you think about this excuse for not walking dogs in the 10 days leading up to Sonya's Seattle wedding?

Puck had the same reaction.......

Love is......

2007-07-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

....the man who, amidst a whirlwind of trials, wakes up at 2 a.m. and then again at 3 a.m. to make hot compresses for my sty-itching eyes with the yellow dishcloths crocheted by his grandmother.

Zucchini and (sigh) My Sty

2007-07-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

I have a huge, humongous, painfully purple sty on my right eye.

It is a new one, though it occupies the exact same place as the wee one that plagued me so last week.

I'm in a bit of shock over it all. Saturday night I was celebrating the passing of the wee one with a long, lovely phone call to a dear friend in Seattle, and within 24 hours a new, humungous one was already raging into its current dynamic of discomfort.

There is gross injustice in this. Gross.

Don't worry. I don't intend to belabor its hideousness. Too much. All I really want to do in this world until this horrible, wretched, purple sty leaves me in peace for good is to dive into my bed and hide. Even from the dogs. That, my friends, is how horridly wretched this sty is. I want to hide even from ones that love me so unconditionally. Even from ones that are color blind!

I did try being public yesterday. I went to the hospital – and got the confirmation that it was indeed a sty and not some communicable public health disaster. I went to work. I attempted to sit at my desk. I even forced myself to appear in meetings and to set up meetings. I forced myself to keep my hand on my desk, or wrapped around a pen, and not let it flutter around my face in a vain attempt to cover my eye. I concentrated all my energies to concentrate on my tasks and to appear professional and calm. But I was miserable, self-conscious, uncomfortable and utterly distressed by all the fidgety discomfort that the people I attempted to communicate with tried to hide. I understand. No one wants to be in close comfort with someone who may have pink eye. And what else could my swollen, purple, twitching eye be? I was in pain. Pain, my friends. Physical pain, and social torture. Oh, it was a miserable attempt to rise above my vanity.

So, today, I have grounded myself. I am home. Taking a sick day and applying hot compresses to my eye in hopes of hastening my return to normal appearances. I did wake up in time to pack my J. a peanut butter sandwich (for lunch) and fry him up an egg sandwich (for breakfast). He's in trial today. I did shuffle myself into the cozy comforts of his hooded sweatshirt. So attired, I did walk the dogs around the neighborhood. Of course, I did time the walk to be when most neighbors had gone to work. I did wear the hood intentionally over my face. I did take these and certain other vanity-preserving methods all intended, specifically, to keep me from any face-to-face interaction with people. My neighbors have seen me in some pretty ....umm, memorable dog walking attire, but somehow I was too shy to show off this sty.

But I wasn't completely anti-social. I was social, in the sense that I had you – dear reader – in mind. For you, I took my camera on the walk. For you – I'm posting these pictures of the sights and scenes of my dog walk this morning. I did do that. For you! Dear reader, for you! And, following doctor's orders, I did – with the hot compresses on my eyes (alternating back and forth to compress both eyes – apparently I have the roots of another sty in my other eye….sigh) - watch some of the Northern Exposure our dear Dad sent us home with on the dvd player that my college roommate had the foresight to predict I would appreciate. (Thankyou, thankyou, thankyou to you both!) It was wonderful, indeed, to be able to escape into someone else's televised reality without having to treck through the local masses down to Video World to rent a movie.

And I did keep my Tuesday date night with J. Our "town council date." Every other week the town council has a meeting. The local radio station airs it. Most of the time, we make a big dinner and listen to the meeting. Sometimes we go down in person. The town council meets just across the street. But most of the time, we stay at home for the entertainment. This time, with the sty and all, I was most certainly going to stay at home. Not even such exciting topics as whether to ban cyanide could drag me into public.

I made this recipe for our dinner. Sort of. It really is a lovely, lovely recipe for zucchini stuffed with feta, pine nuts and dill. I found it on a site called the Sassy Radish. The "stuffing" for these zucchini is exceptional. With the feta, it offers that particular sort of beloved comfort - cheese comfort. Just the kind of comfort that soothes the souls of the afflicted - such as my sty-laden self. But it is not cheese heavy. Oh no. It is lightened and freshened by the fresh dill. In my case, it was further lightened by my glee that I could avail myself of all the fresh dill growing outside my door. (I need such glee, you see. I planted so many fresh herbs this year....and only the dill has returned my love. Sigh. Next year. Next year I'll get the hang of gardening up here.....maybe (please, please) next year I'll even have an actual garden box!) Here's another perk to this recipe - it celebrates what the local grocery store does offer. Such optimism did my soul well. Sometimes we run out of garlic. Cucumbers can be a challenge. And sigh if you want, but milk free of articifical bovine hormones is generally not an option. But, for whatever reason, we almost always have feta cheese and pine nuts. Pricey, sure. But they're there. So not only is this recipe delicious, it is covenient. Particularly convenient for those with rural Alaskan pantries and a sty-provoked shyness that holds them back from going to a grocery store where they would undoubtedly run into the entire town. And let me not end this waxing rhapsody without sharing how easy it is. Incredibly easy. Summed up, one sautees zucchini and onions then tosses it into the food processor to whir up with the other ingredients.

There you go. Summer simple. Decadent. Easy. And (my vanity really embraced this part), pantry-ready ingredients! No last minute trips to the grocery store required! No risk of sty-publicizing! Bliss. Simple, hearty, vanity-preserving bliss!

I did adapt the recipe a bit - for my circumstances, not for taste. With all my self-pity and all, I just couldn't find the extra energy to steam the zucchini for stuffing and broiling. So I just chopped it all up, rather than scooping and steaming. I took instead that extra step of boiling pasta. It seemed easier. But it is really hard to get much easier. I confess. I also added some cherry tomatoes and spinach. Rather than stuff zucchini shells, I tossed the stuffing with the pasta and served it up in a skillet. But I want it to be very clear that this recipe does not need nor benefits from my adaptations. That little splash of additional color gave some lift to my otherwise grey day of pity-party. And, cherry tomatoes and spinach, well – it's just my thing. It's what I do. And I was lazy. Forgive me. I have a huge, wretched, purple, painful, twitching sty. I am, quite simply, out of sorts. Those not seeking distractions from themselves would probably be perfectly satisfied with all the beauty and grace of the original recipe.

Those that do sample it, whether it be in its original form or in the derivations thereof – should let me know if they agree that it would make an exceptional topping for bruschetta.

All summed up, here's my excitement for the day: I successfully dodged all social viewings of my sty. I discovered a recipe that combines zucchini, feta and pine nuts - and it was delicious. Seriously delicious. And the town council meeting, as always, was interesting. Very interesting.

A Glance At Our Life: Taxi-Cabs

2007-07-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

(This picture of the afternoon rush hour on the Kuskokwim River was taken by Genevieve. I borrowed it with hopes of permission. For details of this picture, and the other adventures enjoyed by Dawson and Genevieve in the course of housesitting for Tom, sleeping with Kusko, and bringing home a new baby in the middle of winter to a house-sitted house with a notoriously cold toilet seat, please click here. For pictures of our taxi cabs, please stay tuned. We'll see if I can get one to hold still long enough for my camera to turn on.)

I have recieved several forwarded copies of the same article. Most of them come from friends in New York and Seattle that are pleased as punch about finding an article about Alaska. They are too urban, and suave and free of duct-taped patches to holler it up like I do these days. But, had they as much outdoor frolic space and duct tape as me, I'm sure they'd be doing their own muddy cartwheels of glee about finding an article that compares my tundra island to my former stomping grounds. Since they don't, I expect that they are having much fun talking about it over oysters and a crisp Pacific Northwest vino - and I thank them for all the vicarious living I derive from that image. In any event, I think their enthusiasm is Fate telling me that I need to forward it along.

Enjoy!

Small Alaska town is big on taxicabs
By RACHEL D'ORO
The Associated Press

Bethel, Alaska, has a population of 5,900, but there are 70 taxicabs ferrying riders around the community; that's one cab for every 84 people. Why? Cars have to be flown or barged in.

BETHEL, Alaska — You won't find a luxury hotel or concert hall in Bethel, and you probably can't get a decent bagel here. But this remote Alaska town has at least one advantage over New York City: It may be the nation's taxicab capital.

Situated on the tundra about 400 miles west of Anchorage, Bethel has 70 taxis for a population of just 5,900. That's one cab for every 84 people.

That's better even than New York, the ultimate cab city, where there is one hired vehicle — such as a taxi, commuter van or car — for every 149 people.

"It's most likely by far the highest ratio of taxis per residents in the United States," said Alfred LaGasse with the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association.

Why the big fleet of taxis? Bethel, which is surrounded by thousands of ponds in a delta plain, is inaccessible by road. People must fly cars in or bring them in by barge on the Kuskokwim River, which can cost thousands.

"I bought a small Ford Focus, and it cost $2,000 to fly it in," said Mark Springer, chairman of the local transportation commission. "Then of course, there's the cost of gas, almost $5 a gallon here. Cabs in Bethel are very, very convenient."

Fewer than half the adults have their own car or truck. Some families own snowmobiles, but those are good only in winter.

As a result, taxi drivers — many of them non-Alaskans, mostly Koreans and Albanians — have flocked here to fill the gap. Cabs seem to be everywhere, squeezing in passengers who pay $4 to go anywhere in the main part of town, and $6 to the airport three miles away.

Gim Jong-ihn, 72, was visiting his hometown in South Korea when he saw a TV story about the scores of cabdrivers working in Bethel. He came here two years ago to drive a taxi after retiring from asbestos-removal work in New York.

He may not have realized exactly what he was getting into: When he arrived in Anchorage, he naively asked where he could catch a Greyhound bus to Bethel.

Bethel is largely a collection of utilitarian buildings on stilts, simple homes and shacks, with water and sewer pipes built above ground because the permafrost below the surface is rock-hard.

But the town serves as a commercial hub for the vast region, with visitors from 56 largely Eskimo villages coming here to shop, see their doctor or do other errands. Visitors arrive by plane year-round, by snowmobile in winter and by boat in summer.

Often, taxi passengers do not get a cab all to themselves. As novices soon discover, drivers make constant stops and passengers pile in.

Because cabs are shared, regulars like Bethel resident Joanna Simeon know to leave plenty of time for travel.

"Newcomers think they'll just hop in a cab and go right to work, then it stops 20 times," she said.

"They get to see a lot of Bethel."

A Plum Torte

2007-07-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

It seems like yesterday that I gave my last excuse for not writing. But it was 13 days ago. And now I’m back doing it again. Making excuses. The good news is that I have new excuses. I have, in fact, a whole new slew of them. It's been a whirlwind up here. Feasting. Chatting. Contemplating. Fishing (let’s not talk about how I didn’t actually catch any, and focus instead on being outdoors and on the river and in the company of those who have that magical combination of wit and fishing prowess). An impromptu remodeling of my kitchen. Breaking my camera. Buying a new one. Fixing the old one (i.e. replacing the batteries....sigh.) Thunder and lightening storms. Hot, sunny, bugless days that never get dark. Baking, and roasting, and even some braising.

See? A slew of excuses. They really are some fine excuses, if I do say so myself. Some people have the skill and talent to tell their lives in stories. Some can do it in photographs. It appears that my best chance is with excuses. In any event, I am tardy with the recipe for a 9 hour braised slab of bacon because I have been living well. Very well. And I have the excuses to prove it.

The best excuse is this: we have been very excited to share our tundra island with J’s mom for the past 10 days.

All the way from Iowa! What a fun visit it was. Full of adventure on the Kuskokwim River and the Kwethluk River (we saw owls! a cow moose and her calf! a grizzly!). We bundled her up in approximately 28 layers of warmth, and motored out to try rod & reeling for salmon at the Y and at Magic Creek (fishing spots up the Kwethluk River towards Three Step Mountain, for those that might want to Google Earth it and show me where I was).

She watched her son in a full trial – from voir dire to not-guilty. He would come home for dinner, but then return to the office for late nights. We stayed up talking about family, generations, poetry, beauty, duty and hope. I cooked. In the morning, I found the kitchen all cute and tidied, and all the dishes dried and put away. That, my friends, is most definitely a slice of bliss. Oh, it is lovely to cook for the family I am marrying into! I baked a pork pot pie in a castiron skillet, packed paper bag lunches with meatloaf sandwiches, whipped up some homemade trail mix (re-named, as a result of that fantastic fishing trip, “Captain Marvin’s River Mix”), served J’s favorite banana chocolate chip cookies, piled Greenflighted blueberries (the wild ones not yet ready) and peaches into a pie, plopped plums into a torte, presented Orangette’s beautifully simple yogurt cake to wide exclaim, recreated the bliss of our engagement with another batch of roasted banana ice cream, baked with lemon and dill a fillet of sockeye just netted by Steve and Jesse during an after-work jaunt on Jesse's boat (La Bomba), and roasted a pork shoulder a’la Mark Bittman…….Family, justice, food, conversation, dishless cooking - her visit turned into a vacation of good living for us!

I’ll put all the stories and all the meals into the hopper, and maybe I’ll manage to catch one or two of them for posting here. But, here and now, for purposes of enticing our dear friends not to give up on my ability to update this chronicle of the lives and the kitchen table that we share, I’ll simply segue into this…….

A Plum Torte.

I am so excited to share this recipe. I've coveted it for awhile now....maybe over a year. I originally came upon it in the winter, when plums were not to be found. I saved it into my "conglomeration of findings" on the desktop, and waited until plums were a bit more accessible. And then the lovely day arrived when I found them in my weekly Greenflight box of fruits and veggies, freshly arrived from Full Circle Farms.

The recipe is simple, but I did waiver a few times in the conviction to follow it. I'm glad that I did. What emerged from my stove was delicious. Warm, sugared plums coddled in little spurts of pillowy, subtle cake. Simple, hearty, effortless deliciousness. Summer deliciousness. There is a hint of cinnamon. But it is just enough to evoke the sense of dessert and not nearly enough to define the cake or overpower its simplicity. As an added benefit, for me, I can confess to also doing a little cartwheel of glee over an intuition that I could be friends with the authors of this perfect simple little recipe should we ever happen to bump into each other. You know what I mean. The global small town of simplicity......

With Greg Brown singing in the background and our conversation in that fun banter of two women sitting late night at a kitchen table, J's mother and I finished off half of it between us, split off a quarter of it for J. and took the remaining quarter to the next door neighbors. This was the perfect cake to eat late at night with my future mother-in-law whilst her son prepared for trial the next morning. I hope it made good nutritional bolster for Steve, who is studying for the bar, and Jesse, who is his roommate while he does.

I see a long and bright future with this recipe. It is going to be a standard. I just know it. If my weekly Greenflight of produce pops up again with plums, I'll be making this torte (with this one exception: I have committed myself to making this clafouti the next time I’m gifted with such bounty). If it doesn't, I'm eyeing the A.C. apricots. Apples. Pears. There is so much potential here (though the plums really are perfect and it's hard to imagine exceeding that). I simply love its sweet simplicity! This is certainly the cake I’d whip up for one of those quiet, humble nostalgia dinners when you just want a little something-something and a mug of hot chocolate. It’s also the kind of cake I’d make to celebrate the visit of an old friend visiting me amidst all these new excitements. I can already see us now with a slice of cake, jam jars of [boxed] wine, a tea kettle warming up and years’ worth of catch-up condensed into a few seconds of enriching banter.

But it’s not just a cake for chatting with the mother of the man you love, or for nostalgic dinners and old friends. It’s the kind of simplicity that soars too – I’d have no qualms baking it up for an honored guest coming over for dinner (or, in the case of my fiance’s mother, coming over to spoil our dogs). If Greg Brown were to come over for dinner (not that I know him or anything, just that I love his art – especially that perfect song "Eugene" - and would simply cartwheel myself into a surfeit of glee should I ever be gifted the opportunity to entertain him in our hovel on stilts), I could see myself serving it together with some homemade cloudberry cordial poured into the wood goblets I bartered my fleece for in Zimbabwe…..

All of this is just to say, should Greg Brown, or Marian Burros or Lois Levine (who are the authors of this recipe), or Lynne Rossetto Kasper (who hosts the Splendid Table site where I found this recipe) or Antonella (she knows who she is), ever find themselves up here in this vast corner of the Great White North, this is most certainly the plum torte I’d bake as a celebratory greeting.

(Please do consider that to be an invite. I just know that we’d get along fabulously.)

Original Plum Torte
This recipe was originally published in The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook, by Marian Burros and Lois Levine. I cut-n-paste it, however, from The Splendid Table and re-copy it here - verbatim (accompanying story and all) and with absolutely no quixotic change or kitchen adjustment.

8 Servings

Because of reader demand, this recipe has been published in one form or another in the New York Times almost every year since I went to work there in 1981. Lois brought this recipe, originally called Fruit Torte, to Elegant but Easy, and its appeal comes from its lovely old-fashioned flavor and its speed of preparation.

When I had been married just a couple of years, I had worked out an assembly-line process for making many tortes and putting them in the freezer. A friend who loved the tortes said that in exchange for two she would let me store as many as I wanted in her freezer. A week later she went on vacation for two weeks and her mother stayed with her children. When she returned, my friend called and asked:

"How many of those tortes did you leave in my freezer?"
"Twenty-four, but two of those were for you."
There was a long pause. "Well, I guess my mother either ate twelve of them or gave them away." Her mother must have liked them as much as I do. And the children. And possibly the neighbors.

1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup plus 1 or 2 tablespoons sugar
1 cup unbleached flour, sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs
Pinch salt
24 halves pitted Italian (prune or purple) plums
1 teaspoon cinnamon or more, to taste

1. Arrange a rack in the lower third of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Cream the butter and the 3/4 cup of sugar. Add the flour, baking powder, eggs, and salt and beat to mix well. Spoon the batter into an ungreased 9- or 10-inch springform pan. Cover the top with the plums, skin sides down. Mix the cinnamon with the remaining 1 or 2 tablespoons of sugar and sprinkle over the top.

3. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from the oven and let cool; refrigerate or freeze if desired.

4. To serve, let the torte return to room temperature and reheat at 300 degrees until warm, if desired. Serve plain or with vanilla ice cream.

A Glance Into Our Life

2007-07-06T22:04:00.000-07:00

Summer sun, the Anchorage Daily News freshly arrived on the afternoon jet, and our hooligan hounds playing with the neighborhood kids - all enjoyed whilst we plant greens and stretch out on our Polaris Chaise!

Amelia's Rhubarb Pie

2007-07-05T20:56:00.000-07:00

A month ago, I recieved an email signed "Dad." It was the first time I had ever recieved an email signed Dad. And it contained a recipe - my favorite kind of emails! All around, it was a wonderful email to find waiting for me.

Such was my introduction to the recipe for Amelia's Rhubarb Pie. (I am embarassed to share the story of my introduction to the actual pie itself lest my future in-laws realize that it was me at the family reunion a year ago that was elbowing my way back for seconds and thirds before all the cousins had their proper chance for firsts.) Trust me - this is treasure! There are few things finer than Amelia's Rhubarb Pie. It is delicious. Simple. The perfect blend of tantelizing sharpness and comforting custard. Warm - it is perfect for dinner. Who needs meat? Leftover - it is perfect for breakfast. Set up on a table at a family reunion for self-service after one has consumed twice one's weight in Iowa pork ribs and learned all sorts of tales about the youthful mischief of the man you sincerely hope to marry one day - it is perfect for bliss. It is, my friends, a pie of humble magnitude.

Alas, my two attempts at Amelia's Rhubarb Pie have not produced a pie that even begins to hint at the unforgettable excellence of my father-in-law-to-be's. I'm getting better, but I'm just not there. Fortunately, I'm not giving up. I promise to keep on attempting, and my fiance promises to keep on sampling those attempts. But the good news - the magic of this pie - is that it is so delicious that even my slow learning curve fails to prevent us from doing cartwheels of glee when we eat it. And, I'll be honest, I love this pie for sentimental reasons too. I am looking forward to the day when our kids will be learning directly from their grandfather how to make their great-grandmother's famous rhubarb pie. I'm doing cartwheels of glee in anticipation of that circle of generations. I guess I sort of envision that this pie will be a bit like mashed potatoes were in my family: for whatever reason, my brother and I just make better mashed potatoes than my mom and she - graciously or eagerly - makes no protest to match our determination that we make them every Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, I would like to share the recipe with you. And I'd like to share it with you as I recieved it. I am, generally, of the school that doesn't like the idea of a re-publishing, random forwarding or other informal disclosure of personal email. But this particular email inspires me into cartwheels of glee, and I just can't keep it to myself.

Thankyou, Dad, for such a fine engagement gift. It is treasured, as are the memories of eating it with you for breakfast!

Hi Aileen,

Here is the well worked recipe for rhubarb pie. I’ll call it Amelia’s Rhubarb Pie

4 cups rhubarb cut up (or 3 cups)
3 eggs
1 1/3 sugar (more or less)
a little salt
(1-2 T flour maybe)

Mix eggs, salt and sugar, put rhubarb in unbaked pie crust and pour egg mixture over rhubarb. Bake. It seems like I preheated the oven to 400 then turned it down to 350 or 375 for 40-60 minutes. till the custard seemed like it was getting set in the middle. Sometimes I have had trouble with the crust getting too brown so I have used those crust shield things, I have also added a tablespoon or two of flour to the sugar mixture to help it set up.

Mom just told me the recipe in our kitchen one time and maybe later mentioned the flour or I read it someplace.

Good luck. I bought some rhubarb this morning and hope to make a pie myself.

Much love to you both.

Dad

p.s. Apology for the quality of the picture. I took it with the camera that is now broken - for certain, but has been in a pretty constant state of dilapidation for awhile now. And, truth be told, it wasn't just the camera or my lack of skills with it. J. and I have a hard time holding ourselves back from this pie. We tend to sort of rush at it.....which is why half of it was gone before I even gave that camera a chance to record it.

My Big Happiness, and the Slab of Bacon that Preceded It

2007-07-01T21:00:00.000-07:00

My camera broke.

But to be honest, that's not why this post is so delinquent. The real reason has much more to do with the conundrums of propriety during this era of mass communication. And, well, I suppose it has even more to do with my own lack of talent. I simply didn't know, my friends, how to publicly describe my intensely private jubilations.

We are engaged to be married!

I am ecstatic. And sentimental. And, often, delirously enthused. Occassionally, I've wanted to scream with the inherent frustrations of attempting some sort of planned strategy of announcements but being consistently thwarted by voicemail answer systems and all the problems that sun spots and solstices inflict on our [free but dial-up] internet via satellite! At times I've revelled in the conversations that have arisen with old friends that I had sadly lost contact with. Many times I've simply sat quietly, basking in the summer sun whilst lounging on my snowmachine (who would have guessed it would be more comfortable than any pool chaise I've ever encountered)and appreciating the fresh North air, while my fiance grills our dinner and the neighborhood kids come by to play with the dogs and observe the progress of the plants we had started together.

While my initial instinct was to fiddle this news of our engagement from my hovel-top, there was first a mother to call, and a brother to find who was travelling around Patagonia with hot French circus performers (his description), and so many others to track down and make private announcements before I embarked on the public ones. I found it hard, however, to blog about anything else. This excitement - this extreme compliment from the man I love - it tended to shove out of my writing thoughts any idea that didn't directly arise from the engagement. However, it is true. This kind of news has its own momentum, and the news spread rapidly for me. So admittedly, after a short while, my own private desire to make private announcements was no longer a sufficient excuse for my delay in posting.

But I had another excuse for not posting. I wanted to set the scene. I wanted to share the story. The full story. About the slab of bacon that I braised for 9 hours in boxed wine and dried cherries the night before J. proposed to me on the Hovercraft. About David Lebovitz's roasted banana ice cream - and how I found it on the Traveller's Lunchbox the afternoon before the proposal and had made it for desert that evening before. About how we had left the roasted banana ice cream to churn while we took a gorgeous stroll with our dogs along the Kuskokwim River under the midnight dusk. About being the first couple ever to be engaged on the Hovercraft, and how entertained I was that on this voyage it was delivering the U.S. mail and pallets of Tang upriver to the villages of Akiachak and Akiak. About how I had fallen in the Kuskokwim mud before the proposal, and how I almost didn't get proposed to because I was so busy snapping pictures of the dog team, boats, snowmachines and homemade fish traps that decorated the Akiak beach. About how J. asked me to marry him and I went into shock, my mind unable to grasp his explanation that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me until I suddenly exploded into a rising pitch of "Yes, Yes, Yes!" About how the hovercraft pilot took our picture, and made note that we were probably the first couple ever to get engaged on the hovercraft and it was certain to make front page coverage in the local newspaper. About how J. had planned ahead, with a thermos of coffee, which we popped open to celebrate. Packing champagne, of course, would have constituted the local crime of bootlegging. About the two other couples that were on that same hovercraft with us - and shared this day with us. We had never never met before, but that day we passed around our separately packed snacks and shared a celebration feast of coffee, homemade trail mix, water, and sweet onion potato chips. About how, within hours of the Hovercraft's return to town, the local radio station congratulated us and played "Dancing Cheek to Cheek."

So you see - there was so much I wanted to describe before I even embarked on attempting a description of this sense of happiness and excitement. I think I could buy a couple more weeks of procrastination with this excuse.

And then there is also this excuse - I've been gone. Away from my tundra island, and this kitchen and table that I blog about. Work took me for awhile. And then a friend's bachelorette party in Portland, Oregon, our frolics in my Oregon hometown (where - oh! glee of glee - I do believe we discovered the place we are going to be married!), and our frolics in that fine, fine State of Iowa - well, these delayed me another two weeks.

But I'm back! And very happily so. I hear the fish are running. Less than an hour ago, I saw one of the law clerks walking somewhere with three ziplock bags of marinating chum. The mosquitoes are not so bad in town. We just took a stroll out to the BIA Road, however, and they are definitely swarming on the tundra. The berries aren't yet here - probably won't be for a month - and my herbs aren't lush, but I'm already full swing into planning and plotting to make Genevieve's Baked Salmon with Leeks and Cloudberriers as soon as the Fates permit. The local 4th of July festivities are heating up. Yesterday I paid $2 for a chance that a chicken would poop on my name and phone number, thus gifting me with a $750 grande prize. Father Chuck was on the radio announcing that they will be doing a greased pole competition and, if I heard correctly, a wife-carrying race. I heard someone stole the prop from Hoppi's boat, but she regained her set-net spot right in front of her house. I haven't yet seen Jimbo this summer. But I'm hoping. And this morning I ordered 4 pounds of fresh-flighted organic green beans, with every intention of gracing my pantry with a winter's supply of pickled green beans.

So, now that I'm back in line with this blogging thing my friends, tell me - do you think it's mere coincidence that I braised a slab of bacon for 9 hours in boxed wine and dried cherries, and churned up some roasted banana ice cream, and the very next day my Iowa-born love proposed marriage? I don't.

And though I fully understand if you don't yet trust me, I fully intend to share the recipes.....soon. Girl Scout's Honour! Seriously. I'd do it right now, except I sort of suspect that showering off this afternoon's four applications of Deet might be in my best - and more imminent - self-interest............

The squeaky wheel gets the oil.....

2007-05-17T07:47:00.000-07:00

Is that the saying? I know it's something like that. Well, actually, I guess I just sort of suspect it. I really don't know much at all right now as I'm merely a sip into the first coffee of the day. I may know more later. In the meantime, please consider that it's something near enough like that to give the idea.

What I'm trying to say through this fog of uncaffeinated ignorance is that I think Full Circle Farms is making ripples in the local grocery. The other day I coupled the joy of our greenflighted boxes of organic, sustainably farmed produce with a(n) (albeit mild) complaint about the local absence of hormone-free milk. (OK, I also complained - albeit mildly - about having to pay $30 for a gallon-and-a-half of laundry detergent, but that was funny -right?) Funny or not, mild or not, there is no dispute that within a few days of that post.......Well, check out what I found at the local A.C. grocery store yesterday:

Isn't that pretty? Hormone-free milk! At the A.C.! So pretty, in fact, I think it warrants a high-tech close-up:

Alas, my cartwheel of glee is a little restrained. It's a little pricey. Someone check my measurements and math, but doesn't it come out to around $15 a gallon? That's almost the cost of orange juice! Though I love to see it there, it just seems a bit steep....even for the privilege of freedom from artificial bovine hormones!

Of course, I wouldn't write a whole post just to announce the local availability of hormone-free milk. Well, actually, I would. But I didn't, in this case. I am also writing to share a rather .... hmmmm, [how do I describe this mildly] interesting tundra-island trick that I recently learned about from a neighbor. Apparantly, the thing to do is to wait until the expiration date, when the A.C. will sometimes sell them at half-price, and buy-out all the remaining gallons of milk. When he told me this trick, he was buying only one gallon of the expired milk. And was quite excited about the savings. Obviously, I questioned the penny-saving thought about buying milk that you would have to throw out. One person couldn't drink a whole gallon of it before it started to smell, could they? and they certainly couldn't drink multiple gallons of it! But what I learned - though have never actually followed-up with any type of confirming experiments of my own - is that you freeze it. Frozen, expired milk. Hmmm. It makes the hormone-free stuff sound all the more worth foregoing the orange juice!

Since I'm blogging about the local grocery store, here's a few more snapshots just in case Genevieve is feeling any nostaglia for the good ol' AC........

[In a world of utopian cartwheels, my friends, I'd find a way to persuade blogspot to play Paul Basile's "You Can Get Anything You Want at the A.C. Superstore" while you read this entry. Alas, I can't. But here are some songs that will always remind me of one good coffeeshop and how great a winter Saturday night can be. For those that didn't make it to a Saturday night @ the Coffeeshop, I have no qualms recommending the c.d. for "Montana Sleeps" alone.]

Flying Fava Beans

2007-05-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Four years ago, if I had time and gumption to blog, I probably would have waxed ecstactic and verbose about the Union Square Greenmarket. I loved Union Square. I loved its greenmarket. Luckily, I lived just a mere two blocks away. So it was a love with daily nurturing. It was, maybe, even a love of desperation. Call me melodramatic, but during that Manhattan lifetime and all the various social and professional frenzies that epitomized it, there was always a lingering and consistent suspicion that the very survival of my life-earned personality required lots of time at Union Square. It's just a very good place (generally) and greenmarket (more specifically). (As an even more specific side-thought, it was also an excellent place for stalking ornery, [organic], turnip growers, the independence and gumption of whom I so admired, that I was too shy to ever actually approach lest I end up a frightful spectacle of wretched finance lawyer gushing all sorts of requests to a stranger for advice on how to reverse the embalming of my soul....or perhaps I was simply avoiding the answer I knew but just wasn't yet ready yet to accept....hmmm....)

I tried, after moving to Anchorage, to re-create some of that greenmarket habit. During the summer, there is a Saturday Market in downtown Anchorage - and I could walk to it! Alas, it is a bit touristry. And though there were occassionally some vegetables and herbs, I guess there just weren't enough of them consistently to nudge away from my mind all the "Gruntin' Grizzlies," cruise passengers and incense stands that I had to walk past to get to them. There was also a separate Farmer's Market, which was certainly more local and produce-driven. But I had to drive to it. I never quite got over that. In the end, I adopted the New Sagaya Market as my local stand-in greenmarket. I walked there just about every day. I loved it there. It wasn't necessarily outdoors, but the whole front of the store is made of garage-style doors that roll up and disappear. And they'd put out all these tables and chairs that, though not picnic tables, did allow me to spread out newspapers and be anonymous socially. There were organic vegetables, and seasonal vegetables, and hormone-free milk and meats, and cheese. But, best yet, the cashiers loved Puck. Seriously, loved him. They took turns watching each other's registers to come out and play with him. And I was happy.

And then, quite happily, I moved here. And I do love it here too. But organic vegetables, let alone hormone-free milks, are not really an option outside of the 3-month /summer-gardening/do-it-yourself season. And though I do spend a lot of time at the table and chairs inside the local A.C. grocery store, and love catching up both with the people sitting beside me and the people who are passing through, and I really have no complaints about the local A.C. grocery store other than the fact that laundery detergent is ridiculously priced on sale at $30.00 for a gallon and a half and....ok, this isn't a venue for this......it just isn't a greenmarket.

But, joy of joys, glee of glees, jubilations indeed! - we have a new grocery option! Full Circle Farms, a 260 acre family-owned farm in Washington State, has started doing a weekly, delivered organic CSA. It's not a Greenmarket. It's a Greenflight. Every Thursday, the afternoon jet comes flying into town bearing boxes of organic produce. And there is a whole burgeoning sub-group of town that spends the week practically giddy in anticipation. Granted, I don't get to stalk turnip growers. But I get to eat organic vegetables from family-owned farms practicing sustainable agriculture whilst living in a community full of characters stubborn with principles. I'm sure that the Ornery Turnip Grower of the Union Square Greenmarket would approve.

The first week of Greenflight, I thought I'd explode with the gift of it. Seriously. I could have been all of seven years old again, and hoping hoping hoping to find an E.T. doll and a Members Only Jacket under the Christmas tree. In this case, alas, I didn't find fava beans and rhubarb. (Let's leave for another time whether I may someday be so inundated with fava beans and rhubarb as to hasten a mature disdain for them, as sadly happened years ago with E.T. and Members Only). But - oh! - did I love taking delicious strawberries down to the sea wall as a snack whilst listening to the ice crack. And the leeks and bok choy! I suppose I'll grow old reminiscing about how much fun I had that first week carousing through cookbooks collecting ideas for the artichokes. The salad! The tomatoes! (Don't hate me because they aren't yet seasonal - they were delicious!) It was, folks, exhillerating. Oh goodness....the radishes! So crisp! I ate them the very first night, with a bit of Tillamook butter and a crackling of sea salt. And I swooned.

The second week, we weren't here. I gifted the gift to a friend who loves to cook, and asked him to pick it up and enjoy it. But I did learn a gift - apparantly Full Circle lets you supplement your delivery with specific available items that you might have stalked a greenmarket for, had one been available.

By the third week - this week - I was an old hand at this Greenflighting business. My standard box was supplemented - and not just with fava beans and rhubarb. There was also the supplement of free-range eggs, fresh herbs, fresh garlic that isn't whithered into yellow husks or blooming into green shoots, sweet onions, asparagus......Puffed up with pride though my chest may be, I could - here among friends - perhaps concede that I wasn't such an old hand after all. Perhaps I was actually more of an enthusiastic one. Because when I went to pick up my Full Circle box, I was - I admit - a little surprised, and alarmed, that I actually had three of them waiting for me.

I had ordered, my friends, three boxes worth of glee!

This picture doesn't do it justice. Seriously, produce everywhere. It took a little maneouvering with the fridge, and a drop-off or two to share the surplus with neighbors, but eventually everything found a space. And once it did, what a delight it was to spend the evening, roasting asparagus.....

and shelling fava beans......

all whilst reading about Genevieve's bounty of 250 pounds of Aleutian pollock, cod and salmon and Molly's gorgeous description of her meals in Lyon's bouchons with an affectionately attentive Puck nested at my feet.

Please don't be surprised....I ate the radishes first! I love spring radishes!

Braised Fava Beans and Baby Zucchini with Rosemary and Vermouth

(adapted from Alice Water's recipe for Fava Beans with Olive Oil, Garlic, and Rosemary in Chez Panisse Cooking)

Remove the fava beans from the pods. Parboil them and drain them in a colander. Allow to cool. (Alice Waters calls for you to run them under cold water, but my tap water is orange and my potable water is $3/gallon on sale, and so I don't generally use water as a cooling agent.) Using your fingernail, break the outer skin of the beans and squeeze out the beans. Warm some olive oil in a pan, with some fresh (FRESH !!!!) rosemary and coarsely chopped (FRESH !!!!) garlic. Add some chunks of (FRESH !!!!) baby zucchini, the shucked beans, some water (keeping in mind the goal is not to have soup but rather to soften flavors and textures and then evaporate), salt and pepper. Bring to a low simmer and cook until the vegetables are slightly softened and the water evaporated. (This should take about 20 or 25 minutes.) Right before serving, add a squirt of lemon juice to freshen the tastes. Serve it with salad, roasted asparagus, and hard-boiled free-range eggs. For the Iowa fiance, supplement the joy with a hunk of fried ham.

Prepping for a Remarkable Encounter with Churchhill

2007-04-29T20:48:00.000-07:00

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.
- Sir Winston Churchill -

Despite all the earnestness of last Summer's determination to raise a pig this Spring (and my hopes to name him Churchill and feed him whey), we don't have a pig. The project, alas, has lost momentum.

Fortunately the enthusiasm is still alive and well. Ok, that may be a bit of a stretch too. But the resource library for the project is doing well.

Therefore, I'm glad to report to my Walk-the-Pig Committee (which, if you allow me my soapbox, I must sadly exclaim became simply too far stretched out across the State of Alaska this Winter and you are sorely missed 'round these here parts), the arrival of its most recent addition. I should also report that I expect the imminent arrival of the next addition - Jane Grigson's book on charcuterie and French pork cookery.

Do we get credit, dear The Magistrate's Wife, for this purposeful collection in anticipation of the day that our project actually gets underway? Would it help to show our Churchillian progress if I finally got around to posting about that slab of Oregon bacon (seriously, an honest to goodness slab of it - what fun to be surprised at the A.C.!) that was braised in boxed wine and the vinegars you gifted (with a few dried cherries and bay leaves from my pantry and, of course, the requisite lemon zest) and that turned out so delicious - so surprisingly so - that I'll probably be guilty of telling my future grandchildren that it was this 8 hour braised slab of bacon (an Oregon slab of bacon, by the by) that prompted...........? Oh goodness, for the sake of propriety, I can't finish that sentence. I'm trying to avoid the post-modern conundrum of mass-generated announcements, at least until I find a way to relay the excitement in a more one-on-one way to a few more people.

(Just to stir up some extra inducement, I'll preview with the confession that I did actually cartwheel of glee myself right into the mud of the Kuskokwim River. Muddy, giddy, and pork blessed. Oh the glee of it all!)

A Glance into the Life

2007-04-28T04:21:00.000-07:00

Local Option: WINE AND CHEESE

2007-04-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Just in case there is any doubt out there, that big "ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE" is not a display of my personal decor. It is, in effect, a compliance with a law that is a little….well, unique. How many other towns require arriving travellers to have peppered their luggage with such loudly screaming bumper stickers?

But I don't want to complain. At least not too much. Because of that sticker, I have some assurance that I can pack a few boxes of wine into a suitcase otherwise packed with cheese (and produce!) and not be greeted upon arrival by hyper-chested troopers intent on charging me with the criminal offense of bootlegging.

Does all of this sound melodramatic? weird? gauche (keep in mind that I haven't started to explain how travel outside of Alaska all too often requires the fashioning of duct-taped, home-fashioned substitute stickers)? Let me explain. The State of Alaska has a "Local Option" law. In effect, this state law allows municipalities to implement local laws which restrict the availability of alcohol within their own boundaries. My local law outlaws alcohol, sort of. My town is "damp." We can't buy, sell or make alcohol. But, we can drink it here. In comparison to my "damp" town, there are "dry" towns and "wet" towns. "Dry" towns prohibit it all - the buying and the drinking. Almost all of the towns in my region are dry. (Hence, my often lament that the nearest package store is 500 airmiles away – in Anchorage.) "Wet" towns, like Anchorage.....well, they don't have any of these restrictions. They even have bars and stuff like that. Alas, poor things, their locals are deprived of all the judicial excitement of bootleg charging troopers and all the entertainment of bootleg defending Bush Alaskan trial attorneys. And it all sort of works, I guess, because very few of the dry and damp towns have roads leading to other other towns. (Perhaps I could convey this better if I simply stated that my tundra island is damp.)

One notable nuance to our local law that allows us to drink an ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGE that we are not allowed to buy, make or sell is what I like to call the "public humiliation" tariff. This tariff is based, I'm guessing, on the humiliation-equals-persuasion concept. In my mind, it's a bit akin to my mother telling me that I can shave my legs if I ask my gruff, military-retired, country family doctor to show me how to. (For the record, he was a strong soul and I had great respect and awe for Dr. Pettit. My mother was a smart woman - that tariff cost me at least a good 2 years of smooth shins!)

Here's how it works here. You can import (yep - that's the word they use: import) the alcohol that you can't buy, make or sell, but the whole town gets to know that you are the type that would do so. That less-than-subtle, big, huge, undeniable sticker that proclaims "ALCHOLIC BEVERAGE" on what could otherwise be a sleek, little black bag – that's the price for obtaining wine 'round these parts. And, trust me, in a town that still gathers at the airport for every arrival/departure of every jet, everyone does know. Just in case anyone thinks that you are merely jesting and that there really aren't ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGES in your bag, local law also requires you to "declare" on the outside of your luggage all the types and manner and quantity of ALCOHOLIC BEVERAGEs you're attempting to import. Failure to do so, or failure to do so accurately, could result in your arrival being greeted by the troopers.

But the paperwork doesn't stop there for me. I also pack a declaration or two inside my bag. Admittedly, these declarations are not required by law. But, after the mysterious loss of the case of Two Buck Chuck I attempted to import from California and a rather down-the-rabbit-hole series of conversations with too many people that wine cannot be confiscated from my bag as an unlawful hazardous substance, I also make sure to stash inside my bag a copy (relevant portions emphasized with pink highlighter and underlined written summaries in the margins) of 49 CFR 175.10(a)(17). Without this assistance, I understand that the TSA might reasonably (and - as far as a lost luggage agent is concerned - only arguably mistakenly) declare my boxed wine to be a HAZARDOUS SUBSTANCE doomed to confiscation (aka looting).

And if you think that this is a ridiculous amount of work just to be able to drink boxed wine from a jam jar, well - imagine, just imagine, if you found yourself one day resorting to your lowest point. Oh, it's horrible. But, I did it. Yes. I dissected the box, and cut the bag, and squeezed out the last drops. Oh dear. It's all so horrifying.

But typing all this – trying to explain all this – I suddenly realize: All of this could be so dignified, and simplified, if Alaskan Airlines could just persuade my town to adopt an ordinance adopting a "WINE AND CHEESE" sticker. Let it be white and loud. But if we are to be taxed in humiliation, at least let us proudly declare the true contents of our illicit luggage: WINE AND CHEESE.

Yes – I do believe I might just have to make a personal appearance at the next city council meeting with a proposition to adopt a "WINE AND CHEESE" sticker. Maybe I should start a petition……

Meanwhile – check out my bounty! It's been non-stop cartwheels of glee for days!

(yep! That's radicchio - and there is a post to come about just how delicious radicchio and anchovies can be! In the meanwhile, check out Louisa's more eloquent tilt at the anchovy/radicchio treasure. Genevieve - try it! you'll find yourself with all sorts of new appreciations for the potential of lemon zest! And, yes, you are seeing sunchokes too! I'm still trying to figure out the best way to celebrate those sunchokes. I'm still doing leaps of joy that I found them during such a sprint through Anchorage. Oh, I will always have a special place in my heart for New Sagaya!)

The Top Secret Tartar, and a Weekend of Blessed Buns

2007-04-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

I won't deny it.

My boyfriend has a secret recipe. He makes tartar sauce. From scratch.

He makes it, as noted above, in top secret. Apparantly it is a family secret. I don't know the recipe. Even if I did, I am under the strictest of orders not to blog the recipe. In fact, I wasn't even allowed into the kitchen when it was being concocted. For the dramatic flair, I do like to believe that those strict orders not to enter the kitchen whilst he made it were to prevent me from taking notes....in real world suspicions, however, he was probably accurate that it was the best way from preventing me from taking photos. In any event, I don't remember any restrictions against blogging about my boyfriend making homemade tartar sauce from scratch.

While I'm generally of that type that can't resist sleuthing into culinary secrets, I was so swept off my feet by the seriousness of this boy's insistence that tartar sauce be homemade that I was more than happy to sit back and simply doing my little cartwheels of glee over the discovery of what may just be a new Good Friday tradition.......

Fish Stick Hoagies !!! with Henry Weinhard's Rootbeer !!!

Yes, folks. Fish stick hoagies. It takes me right back to childhood comforts, dolloped with the more mature memory-building moments of my boyfriend contributing the homemade tartar sauce and me contributing the idea of fresh (read a little, just a splash, of irony into that) spinach leaves and a few poignant bites of cherry tomatoes.

Apologies. No recipes to share. The tartar sauce is secret. And I wouldn't even dare to insult your intelligence with a recipe that we all must know, in some form or other, from childhood memories. So, for sharing, I have only this glimpse into a good, no great, Good Friday.

The next morning we had muffins and watched a movie I won't disclose lest the FBI feel compelled to initate a dossier. (For the record, we did rent it from the local video world -albeit with cash - and there were enough scratches to indicate that we weren't the first.) They were banana muffins. Banana Coconut buns, actually. Yes, they came from a borrowed recipe for banana coconut muffins. But I'm not the biggest muffin fan. Some bias, from some unknown reason, that I should probably look into and introspect over. But now that the sun is back, and the fish will be running soon, and my dogs carry into my hovel at least 10 pounds of mud/dust a day....well, I suspect I won't have much time for introspection for approximately 7 months or so. But here's my promise, dear reader. When it's dark again, I'll sit down long and hard and try to figure out what it is about my past that I need so adamantly to categorize muffins as buns.

In the meantime.....

For Easter Sunday, in what had become the blooming Bun theme for Easter Weekend 2007 (minus the hot crossed part, which - ironically enough - was the actual intention when I left work Friday evening), we celebrated with pulled pork sandwiches (see link to recipe below), lime zested potato salad (see gushing rave below), and a lemon dressed ragout of cannellini beans, spinach and cherry tomatoes (why, yes, it is my favorite sidedish and I am quite the fan, separately, of each of spinach, beans and cherry tomatoes).

(First person to guess who's who with the two styles of plating up pulled-pork sandwiches will be the lucky recipient of a special prize!)

I borrowed the recipe for pulled pork from Williams and Sonoma. Truth be told, they called it Pulled Pork with Mint Julep Barbecue Sauce. It sure was delicious. Simple. Humble. Comfortable. Aromatic. Slow-Cooked (I did stretch out the cooking time to, well, yes, 9 hours). And all those other good things that made it a perfect fit for a low-key holiday weekend.

It was the perfect way to cap the kind of weekend I was in need of. After what feels like months of emotional whirlwinds - ups & downs of excitements, festivals, great losses, inspirations, last-minute travel, cancelled travel, celebrations, and heart-breaking scares, I had just what I needed: a quiet, low-key, comfort-fed weekend at home. The continuous compliments from my culinarily ecstactic tartar sauce making, pulled-pork-loving boyfriend were rather nice as well. Of course, I am fairly certain that it could be even better if one had all the ingredients called for! But not bad, at all, with what he had. Quite good. And it makes a ton. A ton, I tell you! I halved the recipe, we've been eating pulled pork fairly steadily since Sunday and yet, nonetheless, I'm on my way out the door to drop off a small ton of it at Tom's.

Happy Spring Holidays and Buns to all - belated, but all the more earnest for the delay!

p.s. Genevieve - you have to try that lime zested potato salad. I think it might be my new favorite! I'm going to take some over to Tom's for a second opinion!

Pork, Vanilla-Brined

2007-04-03T21:50:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend grew up in Iowa. I grew up in Oregon. Somehow I think that explains all his glee at the prospect of pork-featured dinners (or corn-featured dinners, indeed-oh! his cartwheels of glee if there are both pork and corn), as well as all the cartwheels of glee I get from serving that pork with side dishes he wouldn't....well, that he wouldn't order in a restaurant. But it's because I have been hyping one particular pork recipe to certain friends (one of which who grew up in California climes and two of which who grew up under Montana's expansive blue skies), that I am writing this particular post about a particular pork-recipe-inspired cartwheel of glee that joined our Iowa and Oregon versions of cartwheels.

It's not my pork recipe. But I liked it. And, like almost every other recipe posted on Matt Bites, I liked reading about it too. In fact, I hadn't even finished reading Matt's recipe for Vanilla Brined Pork Chops, before I was planning a copy-cat pork feast up here on my tundra island.

Choosing what else to make with such a dish, however, was a little more difficult. It couldn't be too predictable - after all, you wouldn't want a dull companion for such a flirtatious adventure with pork and vanilla. You wouldn't want a novel or distracting side-dish. The instinctual curiousity arising from a pork and vanilla combination needed to be the highlight. And, I needed - for my own ego - to marriage someone else's creative recipe with something of my own. I couldn't be all copy-cat. Somehow all this over-analyzing resulted in a cast-iron skillet of spaghetti squash noodles dressed with lemon and poppyseeds.

Truth be told, my spaghetti squash idea was not simply a burst of creativity. No. It was a culmination, I suppose, of many factors. There was a lot of practicality involved. I had a spaghetti squash that needed to be used and a bag of poppyseeds that I was determined to make my way through. (I have 4 more to work my way through when I finish this bag. Yes. Sigh. I did get a little overzealous with my bush order for poppyseeds.) And there was inspiration from The Red Cat Cookbook, which has a recipe for a pasta dish with zucchini and red bell peppers. (The Red Cat is a restaurant that, in worlds past, was a favorite haunt of mine and one that I can confess I still pine for. Imagine, oh! imagine, my glee to discover that they had come up with a cookbook - with ingredients I could actually obtain....though the zucchini and red bell peppers that could be obtained on this particular day did inspire me adjust the ingredients.) And there were the memories of pasta al limone dating back to even more ancient, yet equally loved, worlds of mine, when I was newly post-collegiate and attempting to be a free-spirit in Tuscany. Finally, as I mentioned before (and as I have a hard time forgetting), there was this world's pantry in a far corner of the Great White North that contains more bags of poppyseeds than any one girl could probably use in a lifetime of worlds.

Nor is the experience of lemon-dressed spaghetti squash with poppyseeds finished. Alas, while thrilled with the prospect and potential, I was not satisfied with the results at my first attempt. I figure I'll work on it a bit more and see if I can't get the spaghetti noodles to be lighter, less gummy and starchy. Then I'll post more than a mere (albeit verbose) reference to it.

In the meantime......

Vanilla Brined Pork Chops - for 2

(based upon Matt's recipe, which came from The Complete Meat Cookbook by Bruce Aidells and Denis Kelly)

Ingredients

3 cups hot water

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/3 of a 1/2 cup of rock salt (sorry if that is confusing - obviously I'm not good with the division of fractions)

1/3 of a 1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoons cracked black peppercorns

a bay leaf (this was my addition: I love the vanilla/bay leaf combination)

2 (1-1/4-inch to 1-1/2-inch thick) center-cut loin pork chops (Matt recommends that they be 1-1/4-inch to 1-1/2-inch thick, I used what I could find - which was, alas, much thinner the recommendation)

Method

Come home for lunch because you realized that in your uncaffeinated morning state you utterly forgot to make the brine before you rushed to work. Survive the greeting at the door from the dogs. Make grilled cheese sandwiches. Realizing how the lunch hour, like the morning, has passed all too quickly. Jump up and start making the brine: stir the hot water, vanilla, sugar, and salt together until the sugar and salt are dissolved. Add the black pepper. Add a bay leaf. Cool to below 45 degrees F.. Matt recommended that this cooling process be done in the refrigerator. Living in Alaska and being near-late for the return to work on a Spring day that was a tropical 9 degrees above, however, I simply stuck the brine outside for a few minutes. I find that the seat of my snowmachine makes a perfect outdoor pantry shelf for such purposes.

Trim any excess external fat from the meat. Submerge the pork in the cooled brine in a large bowl or small crock. Make sure the meat stays under the surface during curing by using a heavy plate to weight it down.

Refrigerate the pork in the cure. The chops should take 4 to 6 hours in the brine.

Remove the meat from the brine and let it come to room temperature. Heat the oven to 375 degrees. The is a good time to walk the dogs and enjoy the Spring weather.

(The recipe continues after the gratuitous pictures of "my boys" enjoying the Spring sunshine.)

5. Turn off your fire alarm, put on a coat, and open your windows. Put a castiron grill skillet in the oven to heat. When the oven and the skillet are sufficiently hot, pull out the skillet and stick it on a medium-hot burner. Dry off the pork chops, and brush on a bit of olive oil. Toss the oiled side down on to the hot grilled skillet. It should sizzle loudly, and leave picturesque little grill marks. Flip it over, and let it decorate the other side. Toss it into the oven for a few minutes until it is popping and sizzling, and cooked to whatever degree you feel comfortable.

[Matt grilled his vanilla brined pork chops. And while this sounds delicious, and I did contemplate it, I eventually decided to wait to bring out our grill until the temperature reaches the sweatshirt weather of the 30's or 40's. For those who live in different climatic conditions, or who deal better than me with my own, my guess is that Matt's outdoor grilled version would be far superior to the oven version. And for everyone, regardless of climatic conditions and/or heartiness, I would recommend checking out his website.]

"Come Over to My Canoe, Big Fish"

2007-03-31T13:47:00.000-07:00

Cama-i 2007 has started.

This is my first one. Last year, due to construction at the highschool, the Cama-i festival was reduced to a one-day Day of Dance. It was wonderful, and an experience that I would never forget and haven't stopped talking about since. (Someday I'll write about the First Catch tradition we participated in at that Day of Dance, and all the hopes and gratitudes it has since inspired.) But yesterday I went to the actual, unabridged, full-out Cama-i Festival. And, well, it's all that it was described as, and more!

The picture above is of the Tsimshians, a Southeast dance group with different dance traditions that came in for the festival, doing their "Come Over to My Canoe, Big Fish" dance.

As a Cama-i volunteer, my task was to arrange transportation to and from the airports for out-of-town dance groups that come in for the festival. (I'll save for another posts my introduction by sink-or-swim to Cama-i village travel, and the lessons I learned about how I could better carry out my task next time - it might be a tad too long for this post.) The Tsimshians, with a keen expectation of the chaos that was to greet the fully packed 3 p.m. arrival of the Alaskan Airlines flight yesterday, disembarked from the jet wearing matching, eye-catching, and distinguishable woven hats. Alas, I didn't get any pictures - of the hats or the scene - but I was most certainly grateful for the courtesy of helping us to easily identify their group.

As for their first impression of my town: Suffice it to say, I didn't know that the local airport could hold so many people. For the hour it took to get groups sorted with rides, and baggage matched with passengers, volunteer drivers tasked with destinations, and solutions forged for the unexpected twists and surprises, I'm quite confident that my little slice of the bush was the most exotic, diverse and happening place of Alaska. And I have to laugh at my original hope of greeting the dancers, and thanking the volunteers, with homemade cookies. I couldn't have baked enough cookies if I had an entire weekend!

The Tsimshians did their first song off-stage, from behind a curtain. The dance leader explained that they did this to honour Bethel and to thank them for the invitation to dance in their land. I can confess to be quite moved by the dignity and breadth of that courtesy. I guess I was moved by their entire performance. Their dances incorporated masks and stories, and almost every one in some way honored non-Tsimshians. For example, one dance was a family dance. The leader explained that there are clans - the Bear Clan, Wolf Clan, Eagle Clan, Raven Clan. Each clan was given a spotlight opportunity to dance. Non-Tsimshians were given the opportunity to dance for the Butterflies - which symbolizes the clan of Non-Tsimshians.

In another dance, which I miserably failed to photograph (so thoroughly engrossed was I in the dance iteself), they asked what had become an incredibly packed highschool gym for 4 adult volunteers. It must have been hard to identify the hands raised by adult volunteers from the sea of eager, hopping children with both hands raised. But they did, and they brought the four relatively adult volunteers to the center of the stage to form a tight circle with their backs faced to each other. Then they did the "Cockle-Squirt Dance," with a camera capturing the facial expressions of each volunteer as they were squirted in the face by a bright orange, mischevious mask-clad figure in a long red cape. At the end of the dance, the Tsimshians thanked the volunteers with gift bags of hooligans.

All in all, and more to be told later - I haven't even started to find the words for describing the local dance groups (a picture of the local response to which is to the side), one evening of Cama-i confirmed that I wouldn't want to live any other place than where I am currently living.

Chocolate Banana Jam...Chocolate Banana Clafouti

2007-03-27T23:44:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that title correctly.

I had 5 pounds of bananas, a 9 oz block of Scharffen Berger chocolate, and definitive plans at home for the evening of March 15th.

5 pounds of bananas! And it only cost me $1.99. Yes, that's right folks. The grand old A.C. had a sale on bananas a Sunday or two ago. I was one of the lucky few that scored.

Of course, there was a reason that those bananas were so cheap on the Sunday that I bought them. And that reason kept accruing relevancy as each subsequent day passed. But I was busy. There was an Iditarod completing, after all. There were cookies to bake for a boyfriend travelling to a village. All these things that distracted me from deciding upon the perfect, new, novel, never before done by me or blogged by others use of 5 pounds of bananas. So I put off using the bananas. And, finally, when procrastination threatened to tip the very bargain of my purchase into waste, I decided the time had come to take a stand and make my blogging name with them.

Will you think me a nerd if I tell you that, once that time had finally come, I spent an entire day eagerly anticipating the joy of coming home and making Christine Ferber's Banana with Bittersweet Chocolate Jam? Before you say anything, please consider that - in these plans - I was going to go all Bush Alaskan Haute. Seriously, haute. Nerds aren't haute. Upon contemplation, maybe it was more "quaint." "Haute" is too French for a town that is located 500 airmiles from the nearest opportunity to purchase wine or brie cheese. No, it wasn't quaint either. Life is too real here to be quaint. Rustic, that's what I was contemplating. Oh, it doesn't matter. Whatever it was, I was going for a design. The only problem is that I'm not much for design. I like it, and all, but I have no instinct for it.

But - despite this - I had all these design plans to seal my chocolate and banana bounty in little quaint jam jars adorned with brown paper labels of "Confit de Banane au Chocolat." I was going to cut little quaint strips of duct tape, rugged perhaps in that every strip would probably be of a different width, to seal the labels to the jars. I even thought about asking my dear, dear friend Dickey to work with me to make my dream seal - the Northern Star, in wax.

Yes. That was my plan.

But, alas, life intervened. There were dogs to be walked. There were college friends planning weddings to touch base with, and college roommates to catch up with. There was a gaggle of best buddies watching the Gonzaga game, with phones intentionally left on in order to recieve calls from a nouveau Alaskan buddy who refuses to purchase television reception but still wants to be in the know. There was a neighbor who stopped by to talk to me about his plan to take devilled eggs with green yolks to work for St. Paddy's Day at the local courthouse. There was a good buddy in Unalaska who leaves comments that inspire me to wage quixotic battles with technology. (I lost those battles, but know I'll win the war. Someday.)

There was, indeed, so much going on, that I can't be blamed, can I?, for so ridiculously skipping past one of the key, crucial ingredients of the recipe and not realizing it until all was said and done and past repair........

Here's what I did. I forgot to add 3 3/4 cups sugar to the banana, water and lemon juice concoction that was to be mixed in with the chocolate. Thus, though tasty and visually intriguing, my jam will probably not set. And I will probably be re-mail ordering another precious shipment of Scharffen Berger Bittersweet Chocolate, and going back to the grocery store to pay full-price for more bananas.

Fortunately, it was still delicious. Just not in the way I had planned for. Because this recipe was still so delicious, despite my own mishap, that I feel it is my civic duty not only to try it again, but also to blog about it here.

Banana with Bittersweet Chocolate
(excerpted from Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber)

21/4 pounds bananas, or 11/2 pounds of peeled and sliced bananas
3 3/4 cups granulated sugar
9 ounces of extra bittersweet chocolate (I've been hoarding a special-ordered bar of Scharffen Berger 70% cacao for just this purpose), melted (mind you - this is a bear of a chore!)
7 ounces water
Juice of 1 small lemon

1. Peel the bananas and cut them into rounds a little less than 1/2 inch thick. In a preserving pan, combine the banana slices, water, sugar and lemon juice. Bring to a simmer. Pour into a ceramic bowl Add the chocolate, grated, and mix until it is melted. Cover the fruit with a sheet of parchment paper and refridgerate overnight.

2. Next day, pour this preparation into a preserving pan. Bring it to a boil, stirring continuously. Skim. Mix very gently. Continue cooking on low heat for about 5 minutes, still stirring. Skim again if need be. Return to a boil. Check the set. Put the jam into jars immediately and seal.

****
a postscript: Delicious, my chocolate banana mix was - but sort of in that way of indicating that it could be so much more so if I had only read and followed Christine Ferber's recipe for chocolate banana jam. [sigh] It did make a great hot fudge sauce. Oh yes, it did make that. Once that potential was identified, we strolled to Video World to rent the movie Gandhi, popped into A.C. on the way back to buy a tub of vanilla ice cream, came home with our bounty and, in a wonderful state of weekend post-trial bliss, sat around, watched movies and ate some very delicious, very easy banana-split-hot-fudge sundaes. I could recommend Christine Ferber's recipe for Chocolate Banana Jam, if only for the opportunity to repeat my mistake and so indulge in its repercussions.

But a couple can only eat a finite number of banana-split-hot-fudge sundaes. So I was very pleased to discover that one can toss a couple ladles of this un-set sauce into the bowl of a Kitchenaid mixer, together with a 1/2 cup of melted butter, a dash of salt, 5 eggs, some smashed up walnuts out of the pantry (which, in the future, I would first toast in the oven) and a cup of flour, pour it into a buttered pie plate, toss it into a 350 degree oven until set (I did wonder if 450 degrees might make it come out puffier) and come out with a simple, quick chocolate banana clafouti that makes my boyfriend a happy internet surfer.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

2007-03-26T22:55:00.000-07:00

Poor Clyde, his buddy is locked up in a kennel. Very little playing going on.

Poor Puck, he's been diagnosed with a bad back (a slipped disc, more precisely), prescribed (via tele-vet'icine) what must seem like an eternity of Kennel Rest (which is actually just until the vet comes to town in a week), and suffered through what must have been excruciatingly amateur (read: painful) attempts (by me) to diagnose him without a vet (or, for that matter, any idea of what I was doing).

Poor Dr. Haggy. I've never met him in person. But he was filling in for our local vet (Dr. Bob, who comes to town for one week a month), and ended up getting my frantic messages. I didn't start off frantic. At least, I started off with control over that franticness. Kind of. But just imagine your little one, clearly in pain, with no way to explain where it hurts. He was shaking. Tremors. Oh, it was awful. And he'd whimper when I moved him, his eyes locked onto mine as if italicize the message. Broke my heart. And then imagine being unable to take him to a vet, because there isn't one. I couldn't even get a vet on the phone. I started sobbing. And that's when I decided to call Alaska Airlines, but that just led me to a very emotional debate about whether to spend the $1000 on the next flight out of town.

Poor local dog mushers - I started calling them when I couldn't find a vet. I begged them to come look at Puck. I'm sure it was an objectively reasonable thing to do. Get a second opinion, and all. Nonetheless, I suspect I'll be blushing every time I run into one of them, every time I go to the grocery store, post-office, local concerts, etc. [Sigh.] But, again, good people for taking my calls in the first place and helping to put me in contact with people that could put me in contact with a vet. Very good people.

Oh, just thinking about it puts me back in the horror of the moment: all that embarrassment from knowing that I could very easily be overreacting, intertwined with all that fear that something preventable could happen to him if I failed to react enough. In any event, that's the state I was in when Dr. Haggy called me back. Fortunately, I was much more....in control of my emotions by the time we hung up. I owe that change to Dr. Haggy. It takes a great vet - and an incredible person - to find a hysterical dog owner in such a state (one that he has never met in person), elicit from her enough coherent responses and observations to form a diagnosis, and provide her with sufficient peace of mind that her mind stops flailing around in worst-case-scenarios.

I'm glad to say that the crisis has passed. I still limit all his activities, and I still watch him hawk-eyed for any sign of paralysis or weakness, but Dr. Haggy's prescription of Kennel Rest appears to be working, Puck is recovering quickly and the experience seems to be translating from fear to good story. I'm not sure if I have recovered enough to tell it, but I'm trying.

As for Clyde, he's still protesting what he perceives to be the unwarranted caging of the playmate he adores being annoyed by.

If only I could protest so thoroughly those things that I'm finding unjust and unconscionable!

In like a lion, out like a lamb......

2007-03-22T20:24:00.000-07:00

Oh goodness! I want to stand on my tin-roof and fiddle a tune all about Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries.

What does that mean, you ask. Do I play the fiddle? Isn't the roof all icy? All of these are very good questions. (And no, I don't play the fiddle - though I wish I did; and yes, the roof is icy. But, my dad played the fiddler in a local playhouse production of Fiddler on the Roof, and all these years later, the tune for "If I were a rich man" can still wrap me up in the warmth of childhood memories.) As for what I mean - the simple version is like this: I discovered Nigel Slater's recipe for "Slow-Roasted Lamb with Mashed Chickepeas," which he described in his kitchen diary entry for February 21 ("A slow roast for a snowy night"). But it's more, really, than simply discovering this new recipe. It's about discovering something new, that arrived with the impromptu packaging of a new tradition. It's a bit about discovering it whilst embracing a family tradition. And it's about the most excellent evening of leftovers - a cold, snowy Sunday evening with a bubbling shepherd's pie. A shepherd's pie so perfect for the moment, in fact, that I was able to persuade my boyfriend to keep me company while I watched a complete, utter, [sigh], chick flick.

I'm sure Mr. Slater would have comment about some random, Alaskan newcomer gushing like a schoolgirl because she was able to reduce his recipe to leftovers so meat-and-potato-esque that a girl could actually persuade a coma-induced boy to watch The Holiday, but it really was that good! I mean, Mr. Slater's incredibly simple recipe is that good. And, oh, so are the lovely leftovers! In any event, I'll take my daily [symbolic] cartwheel of glee as it's gifted, even in the form of British judgment or the too often disdained concept of leftovers!

Quite a few months ago, I bought a leg of lamb and stuck it in my freezer for a good cause that was not then determined. Please understand that, around these parts, one can’t just go to the local store and buy a leg of lamb. No, the local grocery stores don't tend to carry lamb. Not any cut of lamb, actually. Rather, one has to anticipate – and plan accordingly- that some day, in some future, one might develop a hunger for lamb (probably studded with garlic and perfumed with rosemary – purchased and stored in the freezer for similar reasons, for I had never dreamed of lamb served without the accompaniment of rosemary).

This particular leg of lamb was purchased last year in Anchorage on some trip or other. It was carried back here (together with a pork tenderloin, some cuts of beef, several containers of orange juice, a precious cargo of cheese, a bounty of fresh herbs, etc., etc., etc.) in my new favorite suitcase.

Look at this suitcase! Isn’t it perfect? I love it so.

[Ugh. I bet I’ve probably turned off many. After all, this was a frozen leg of lamb. Not fresh. Not from any great butcher. Nope none of that. What kind of food blogger can she be? And she goes off so about a plastic cooler on wheels! Is she seriously saying it is her favorite suitcase? Must she really refer to herself in the third person? Will she next start listing all the things that one can make out of duct tape? I know. I know. You must be wondering why am I going on so…so ecstactic about this stuff. But if you are still reading…… ]

I certainly never imagined that I would be preparing it for St. Paddy’s Day. No – for such a holiday, I would expect to make the traditional and true: my Auntie Donna’s Boiled Corned Beef and Cabbage. This year, however, after a survey of town that led to nothing but artificial-and pink-glop-imbued, plastic-encased pre-corned beef (I couldn’t even find a plain old brisket to corn myself!!), I adjusted my expectations. I decided to stage a protest against the artificial-flavoured, artificial-coloured and mass-marketed, and to celebrate this very important family holiday – instead - with a roast leg of lamb. Leg of lamb was, after all, my Irish grandmother’s favorite dish. So it seemed like a very good kind of adjustment, and I took it out of the freezer and started the thawing process.

But my heart wasn't really in it. I tried, I did, to find enthusiasm for the change, imagining the cannellini beans I could soak, the green beans that could be sautéed with the recent shipment of fresh ginger, and all the other side dishes that could be made to go with a leg of lamb. Maybe there might even be a recent shipment of asparagus at the store. Grandma always insisted on asparagus with her lamb. She loved it too much to be bothered with any fuss over whether or not it was in season. In the end, my friends, I couldn’t seem to reconcile myself to this bend of tradition. And, so, when I was at the store to buy cabbage (because I knew at least one side-dish had to be traditional, but which, “coincidentally”, had gone up $1 a pound in the last few days before St. Paddy’s), I decided I wanted corned beef, even if it was all artificial. Without any foresight beyond this sudden need to hold firmly to a tradition connecting to extended family in connection with this particular holiday, I grabbed one of those plastic packages of corned glop (this is the melting into resigned spontaneity part), purchased it, made it, ate it, and then made and ate some delicious corned beef sandwiches for lunch, and then it was all gone. It had been good. It more than exceeded expectations. St. Paddy’s Day, and its leftovers, were done. Auntie Donna was, as always, toasted.

And when the last of the leftovers were stuffed into the last of the sandwiches, my eyes turned to the lamb. As you can imagine, it was thawed by this point. So I roasted it.

I started after work. The recipe is quite simple. Gloriously so. Just before rushing off to a Camai Committee planning meeting to discuss various logistics for our upcoming festival, I gave my boyfriend quick but pleading instructions to re-baste it every 30 minutes during its 3 hour roasting session. And two hours later, after a windy, cold walk (with not nearly enough layers of mittens, though my ears stayed warm thanks to my boyfriend’s gift of a malakaik), I was welcomed home by (among other things, such as two canine hooligans) the most lovely perfume of….of home: a kitchen’s warmth having perfumed my house with the production of a simple meal.

Served atop my new favorite recipe for mashed chickpeas (jeweled with caramelized red onions as these chickpeas were) and under the roasting juices (all spiked with cumin and mellowed with roasted-garlic-basted-in-butter as these juices were) – well, folks, Nigel Slater’s Slow Roasted Leg of Lamb, nary a hint of rosemary about it, was most certainly the source of that day’s daily [symbolic] cartwheel of glee.

Plus, it turns out (though it was not planned) that this dinner ended up being made on the cusp of the Vernal Equinox (i.e. the last official night of winter before the first official day of spring). I do think there is a new tradition in the works here: a winter braise of a spring delicacy on the night that borders both seasons. Yes. There is most certainly a new tradition here.

And then - that shepherd's pie! So simple. Simply carmelizing an onion, tossing in for a saute some carrots, celery and garlic, tipping in a spoon of flour to cook for awhile, deglazing with some [boxed] red wine, dashing in a bit of [dried] thyme (unlike my good friend who suddenly has access to grocery stores that service fishing boats that stop along the Aleutian Chain, I have no access to the fresh kind), combining it the pan juices and chunks of lamb, pouring the aromatic concoction into the handmade ceramic pot that by boyfriend's father gave us for Christmas, and letting the potential stew for a good long, homey Sunday afternoon before being topped with buttermilk-soothed smashed red potatoes and being baked until hot and bubbly. Served, with a side of simple steamed peas, and ground pepper - sublime.

Yes, sublime! The whole experience - from dish to leftover!

Going back to my original hyperbole - why do I want to fiddle on roofs about all this? I do because I know that at least once before the next St. Paddy’s Day/Vernal Equinox, I shall be taking my “suitcase” back to town and making sure it comes back with a leg of lamb and a brisket amidst its hoarde of frozen pantry items. Next year, I shall anticipate, and plan accordingly, having Auntie Donna’s corned beef and Nigel Slater’s Slow Roasted Lamb. And I won't waste any time or effort trying to choose between the two. I'll simply take both - hence, my new tradition of 2 Roast Week. Where before I had only the traditions of St. Paddy’s Day, I now have also the tradition of bridging the seasons with a leg of lamb. Traditions are lovely, aren't they? So can be their expansions.

And, let's be honest here. Recipes, discoveries, and all the like - they're great. But, I’ve always loved fiddles and admired those who dare their balance to play them from rooftops.

Slow-Roasted Lamb with Mashed Chickpeas
(blatantly, and affectionately, plagiarized from Nigel Slater’s The Kitchen Diaries, p.60)

a leg of lamb, about 5lbs

For the spice rub:
garlic - 2 cloves
sea salt flakes - a generous tablespoon
a pinch of sweet paprika
cumin seeds - a generous tablespoon
fresh thyme leaves - 2 generous tablespoons [I, of course, used dried - sue my grocery store!]
olive oil - 2 generous tablespoons
butter - a thick slice

Set the oven at 325F. Make the spice rub: peel the garlic cloves, then lightly crush them with the salt, using a pestle and mortar. Mix in the sweet paprika, cumin seeds and thyme leaves. Gradually add the olive oil so that you end up with a thicken paste. Melt the butter in a pan and stir it into the spice paste.

Put the lamb into a casserole or roasting tin and rub it all over the spice paste, either with the back of a spoon or with your hands. [Can you guess which option I used?] Put it in the oven and leave for thirty-five minutes. Pour in 1 cup of water and bste the lamb with the liquid, then continue roasting for three hours, basting the meat every hour with the juices that have collected in the bottom of the pan.

Remove the pan from the oven and pour off the top layer of oil, leaving the cloudy, hewrbal sediment in place. [Ok. I had no patience for that. I simply put the castiron pot outside for 5 minutes, it being negative fifteen degrees and all, and then scraped out the fat until only the "healthy" bits were left.] Cover the pan with a lid and set aside for ten minutes or so.

Carve the lamb, serving with the mashed chickpeas below, spooning the pan juices over both as you go.

Chickpea mash:
chickpeas - two 14 oz cans [I used one - we were only 2 after all]
a small onion
olive oil - 4 tablespoons
hot paprika

Drain the chickpeas and put them into a pan of lightly salted water. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a light simmer. You are doing this to warm the chickpeas rather than cook them any further. Peel and finely slice the onion, then let it soften with the olive oil in a pan over a moderate heat. This will seem like too much oil, but bear with me. Let the onion color a little, then stir in a pinch of hot paprika. Drain the chickpeas, then either mash them with a potato masher or, better I think [as did I], in a food processor. Mix in enough olive oil from the cookied onion to give a smooth and luxurious puree. [I also added just a bit of heavy cream to smooth the taste- I know - bad, but it's still winter here - fifteen below - I'm ok with taking my comforts where I can.] Stir in the onion and serve the roast lamb above.

******
The recipe now printed, I’ll return for just a wee bit more of hyperbole: Take some of my favorite comfort foods, and present them to me with a few subtle twists and with an ease I hadn’t contemplated – that seems to be this book. It revels in the actual actions of cooking: the epiphanies of hunger and whim, the meandering and shopping, the harking reminders of a pantry and the enticing calls of market sirens, the logistics of time, and the convening for eating. He does so cleanly, with few words and none of the hyperbole with which I describe him. He doesn’t pontificate or elevate himself to stylized perfection. He doesn’t make you resent your limited work space or lack of direct sunlight, rather he leaves one almost glad for the creativity that hindrances inspire. The spark of this book – what has me fiddling on roofs about it - is not necessarily in what Nigel Slater did, or plated, or the traditions or the twists of the recipes, but rather his eloquent, yet curt and casual, love for the environment of cooking. The culture of it. The tradition of it. The conversation about it!

Truth be told, I probably love it because this is how I learned to cook. Before the world discovered Oregon and the Willamette Valley, before it became a destination, this is the kind of cooking I learned by being raised with daily interactions with stoic farmers and field-gleaning hippies. This is how my decidedly non-hippie Grandpa made a legacy out of a humble adoration of breakfast. This is how my mother, certainly not a hippie herself but definitely enamoured with the idea, raised a family that finds our greatest moments emerging in kitchens and our greatest conversations being the stories involving ingredients and recipe adventures. I love this book because it presents that manner in which I want my own kitchen to be remembered, a reflection of how I want to be remembered in my kitchen. Kitchen Diaries is, I guess, an example of what I deem to be “humble magnitude.”

p.s. If you’d like a picture, an inspiring one, flip to p. 65 of The Kitchen Diaries. He has stylists and light and cameras with lenses and stuff like that. I can’t compete. I wouldn’t even try. I’m thankful, however, that he did.

"What do you usually do for St. Paddy's?"

2007-03-17T09:32:00.000-07:00

Before the sun had risen (it still hasn't), even before the dogs were released for their morning stroll along the Kuskokwim River (they still haven't been), I stood in my dimly lit kitchen heating the teapot and pondering this question that was asked before I came downstairs.

It seemed like such an easy question to answer. St. Paddy's Day isn't complicated, right? But an actual answer, one that felt accurate and complete was evading my pre-caffeinated mind.

My first thought was Irish bars, and the college combination of empty wallet and wealth of time: go early, stay late. The trick was to get in before the start of lines and cover-charges. Then I thought of the St. Paddy's Days in New York, and the young professional's combination of salary and luxury: a coveted reservation at a restaurant and an epicurian nod to matury's effect on one's sense of a "good time." I chuckled at the memory of how - no matter how epicurian the dinner would be on St. Paddy's - I always made a point, afterwards, of stopping at my neighborhood regular before calling it a night. It didn't have to be an Irish regular. But it had to have pints. After that chuckle, my mind meandered back to the St. Paddy's days of my childhood - to the daffodils that would pop up all around my house, to the simmering anticipation of Oregon strawberries and the arrival of Walla Walla Sweets, to that mischievious glee of finding someone - anyone - unfortunate enough to have forgotten to don at least one green item of wardrobe.

Oh, yes. One can love a morning that is decorated with such a random assortment of treasured memories that all seem to compliment each other.

While the water heated for my tea, my mind thought back to last year - my first St. Paddy's Day in this Alaskan smalltown 500 airmiles from the nearest Irish bar and uncountable number of airmiles from the culinary Taj Mahals of my Manhattan days and the daffodils of my childhood ones.

I can't remember what we actually did on that actual day last year. But I remember well that at some point, on or around that date, I made Orangette's recipe of Braised Green Cabbage. Yes, I remember well that recipe! (Such a fine, humble dish that rather embodies for me my dreams of an Alaskan kitchen.....an example, of sorts, of an Alaskan Ambrosia.) And I remember that I made it my heavy cast-iron skillet and loved the simmering perfume of it so much, that I felt compelled to share it. It must have been cold last year (as compared to today's mere 5 below), because I remember being all bundled up in many layers of borrowed winter gear. And I remember my boyfriend and I, on the snowmachine, crossing Mission Lake on the trip to Alligator Acres for an evening of Texas Hold 'Em. And I remember having one-arm wrapped around my boyfriend's stomach, and the other arm carefully laden with a burning-hot, cast-iron skillet of braised cabbage (wrapped in towels to avoid melting my carharrt work bibs) and a jar of pennies. I remember how earnestly I tried to read my boyfriend's body so that I could anticipate turns or bumps and balance my treasures accordingly. Suffice it to say, we arrived with no loss of precious cabbage or of pennies.

Now, here, sitting at my table with a sunrise about to overcome the day and such a fine assortment of memories complimenting my steaming mug of milky tea, my mind tries to find the common thread of all these years of St. Paddy's Day.....the "usual" part.

What do I "usually" do for St. Paddy's?

And it suddenly dawns on me that the answer to this question - the commonality among all the ways I have celebrated St. Paddy's Days over my years and epochs - is this: I call my grandma.

Happy St. Paddy's Day, Grandma.

Sunlight and a Banana Cookie

2007-03-14T20:08:00.000-07:00

See that sun? Ok. You can't see the actual sun. But do you see all that daylight? See that blue sky? See that dust in the road, poking out from the ice cover and just waiting to thaw out into mud?

Oh, yes, it is Spring!

The geese and ducks aren't here yet. That's how Spring arrived last year. But there are some signs in the grocery store of the asparagus and strawberries that are stirring up such Spring restlessness down in the Lower 48. And, oh to my glee, there is sun. Direct. Strong. Long. Daylight for over 11 hours a day. Jubilation!

So, the sun is here, but my boyfriend is not. He is working out-of-town. Travel out here is less predictable. Weather could change. Flights could suddenly be full. Or mysteriously cancelled. Or sometimes so late, that it just kind of blends into the next regularly scheduled flight. You don't know if he'll be stuck at an airport. Or if the restaurants in this out-of-town town, if any, will be closed when he gets there. You don't know if he'll be too tired to find them. So I try to pack him food when he goes on these trips. (Ok. I'll be honest. I look for any opportunity to try out a new recipe. But so it goes.)

For this trip, I set aside a pile of goodies (an assortment of what I find "goody" and what he does) for him to stuff into his backpack. There was a mini-salami. (My kind of treat.) There were two cans of Spaghetti-O's. (His.) There was a peanut-butter sandwich with a swathe of the cloudberry and tundra blueberry jam that a bunch of us made last summer. (Both of us agree: non-perishable staple.) There was some trail-mix. (I think that was more of his kind of goody.) And there were Banana Oatmeal Cookies.

At least that's what I call them when I want the kudos of having prepared something healthy and sustaining for my boyfriend. Tish Boyle, who shared the recipe in her great book the good cookie, calls them Banana-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. Regardless of what you call them, they are good. Very good. Maybe not exciting. I wouldn't take them to a party. But for home, as a context to late night packing and last-minute plots to finish laundering all the clothes that you would like to pack, they are perfect for perfuming the wait for each load. And as a safety-measure for village travel, they are ideal. Hearty. Faintly sweet, embracingly comfortable. Tasty little morsels of home, that travel well and sustain without begging for compliments. And the best part - they taste even better the next day!

[On a side note, they were the cookies that I was baking while Lance Mackey was celebrating his first-place arrival in Nome. Lance Mackey is the Champion of the 35th Iditarod. If I knew how to link to the story, I would. [I learned!] There would be so much I would link to about this Last Great Race. But I don't know how to link yet. So I'll just say that it was exciting and wonderful, that I am very excited for the Mackie family and the Comback Kennel, and that I encourage you to do a google search to see what all the excitement is about!]

Banana-Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

(an almost-verbatim reprint of p. 68 of Tish Boyle's the good cookie)

1 3/4 quick-cooking rolled oats
1 1/2 culs all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter, softened (she specifies unsalted; I use what I can find)

1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate morsels

1 medium-sized ripe but firm banana (peeled and cut into 1/4-inch slices)

1 cup coarsely chopped pecans

1. Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease two baking sheets.

2. In a medium bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars at medium speed until combined, about 1 minute. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat until blended. At low speed, add the flour mixture one-third at a time, mixing until just blended. Using a wooden spoon, stir in the semisweet morsels, banna, and pecans (it's all right if the banana pieces get a little mashed).

4. Drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls on the prepared sheets, spacing the cookies 2 inches apart. Moisten your palm to prefent sticking, and flatten the mounds of dough slightly. Bake, one sheet at a time, for 11 to 13 minutes, until the cookies are golden brown on the bottom. Transfer the cookies to a wire rack and cool completely.

P.S. Here's the attempt to take a picture that prompted me to quickly run outside and snap the one above. I keep reading that the secret to food photography is natural light. I just need to read something about how to get good food photos whilst living in a rather light-less apartment and flitting about with a hand-me-down camera. I guess until I figure it out, I'll be running outside for a quick snap under the Midnight Sun before putting the food on the table! I'll leave for later the conundrum of what to do when the winter darkness is on its way back in........

The Town Dog Show

2007-03-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

I am remiss.

Puck had a public debut. And I am tardy in writing about it.

So, let's go back to February 11th. Puck made his public debut at the Second Annual Dog Show. It was much fun. And cultural, it being held at the local Cultural Center and all.

Competition was fierce. Dogs of all sizes, many breeds (and even more mixes thereof) and all kinds of skills and tricks. My neighborhood made a fine showing, though I think we should have planned better. I think there were probably 4 or 5 of us, and we were all entered in the "Most Adorable" competition. Alas, Puck didn't win Most Adorable, or any of the other shiny happy trophies. But he did have some prime spotlight time as a finalist for both "Best Tail Wag" and "Most Adorable." I know he is a dog and all. But I know he was basquing in all the potential of a trophy. In any event, he made the cover of the local newspaper.

I was so excited, I bought 5 copies of it.

And where was Clyde, you may ask? Well, let's just say that Clyde was more than happy to be the one home enjoying the peace and quiet of Puck's absence, the toy box - finally and at long last - all to himself. Not even the potential of a trophy could top that opportunity!

Battling with Blogger to Post Pictures

2007-01-21T22:26:00.000-08:00

Will it work this time.....It did!

This is the start line, about an hour before the start of the first race - the Bogus Creek 150:

A closer look at the Start/Finish line:

A closer look as the mushers get their teams ready - can you see the dogs poking their heads up from the handmade wood sled?

This is a close-up of the Klejka family getting a team of puppies ready for Jeremiah's first long distance race - a 60 mile "dash":

Race Day

2007-01-20T07:49:00.000-08:00

I was wrong in my last post. Perhaps not wrong, because so many treasures do emerge from surprises. But it's not an exclusive coincidence. Traditions bring about some fine treasures too.

Yesterday I did my daily [symbolic] cartwheel over the start of the 28th Annual Kuskokwim-300 Race.

The K-300 is an Iditarod-qualifiying dogsled race, as well as our winter carnival, our community potluck, and one of the best reasons to make a home in Bethel, Alaska. For a few days every year, a small remote region of Alaska (approximately the size of the State of Oregon) opens up homes, schools, yards, kitchens, cultural centers and hearts to the arrival of dog-mushers and their teams. Mushers and their teams stay with "host families." Kids bake cookies for the mushers, which they pack into little brown lunch bags with endearing notes of encouragement meticulously written onto those sheets of paper with three lines and space for a drawing. The musicians in town, and there are many, kick-off events with a "Benefit Concert," the proceeds of which go to buying fireworks. Kitchens all across town kick into high-gear, producing communal pots of chilis and soups, breads, biscuits, cookies, brownies, lasagne, cheesecake. The radio announces when a musher is coming in for a finish - and the whole town seems to put down whatever task it was in the middle of and make the way down to the river to give a welcoming applause.

There are actually three dogsledding races - the K-300, the Bogus Creek-150 and the Aniak Dash. The Bogus Creek - 150 started yesterday at 5 p.m., the K-300 yesterday at 6 and today will be the start of the Aniak Dash. Three races, two days. All requiring several veterinarians (please keep in mind that this region - the size of the State of Oregon - has only one vet, here in Bethel, that lives in Eagle River and comes out for one week every month), crowds of checkers, checkpoints, trails, trail markers, persons to wait for mushers at certain hard-to-mark corners of the trail, cooks, coffee-makers, volunteers, hay deliverers, truck support, reporters, and more to be dispersed - with gear appropriate for weather conditions that range from last years 60 below to the sweaty balminess of the 30's - throughout a region that has no roads.

It's a miracle of sorts. Except not really. It's all the celebration of a miracle, but all the production, hard-work, selflessness, know-how and social joy of the volunteers.

It all merits so much description. For the moment, however, I must run to finish baking my loaves of bread for the volunteers who have been posted at race headquarters all night long, a batch of banana oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to greet my boyfriend who should shortly be returning from his overnight task of checking at the Bogus Creek checkpoint, and a quiche to refresh him after his 75 mile trek home on a snowmachine.

p.s. So many pictures. Usually Blogger frustrates me by limiting me to just one picture per post. Today, Blogger won't let me post any at all. This is a shame. I wanted to post a picture of the mushers who arrived early for the Bogus-150 Race. My guess is that they hoped to set up before the crowds arrived. If you had looked closely, you would have seen all the different ways in which the dogs arrive. Some make grand entraces in pick-ups the size of tanks, geared-up with every gadget that Black Hawk engineers would have recommended to Detroit had Detroit ever pondered specializing in mushing transportation. Others make more humble entraces, in the homemade wood sleds being towed behind the mushers' snowmachines which they rode in from the village that morning. And you would have seen all the trucks and bulldozers and snowmachines and sleds and four-wheelers and kids being pulled around by mothers in plastic sleds (which I like to call the 'Bethel Strollers'), all - so astonishingly - congregating in the middle of, and on the top of, one of America's strongest, un-dam'ed rivers.

Special of the Day

2007-01-10T21:45:00.000-08:00

Treasure, my friends, is almost always in the surprises. Isn't it?

Imagine my joy - my glee! - my aura of giddiness, when (whilst trying to find a loaf of sandwich bread that had more than 3 days until its expiration) I glanced over my shoulder and discovered 3 little round boxes of real brie shoved into a corner of a refrigerator case. If my giddiness had not already exceeded the Bush Alaska tolerance for dramatics, I might have made a point of pinching myself. It simply felt too amazing to be true. Did I really just find real brie in Bethel?

Now I know that "Ile de France, America's Favorite [Brie] Since 1936" would not qualify as "real" in most places. But here, where desperation has almost brought me more than once to the low point of buying nuclear-proof "brie spread", it is treasure. Truly treasure. Rare treasure.

I snapped one up, elated to forget the bread, and practically skipped through the snow straight home.

Do I eat it with crackers? Could I restrain myself long enough to let it "ripen" to room temperature? Was I fool to think that Ile de France brie needed ripening? To what gods does one pray to find the willpower to hold back long enough to bake a hot, crusty loaf of fresh bread? I poured myself a jam jar of the last of my precious wine (boxed), and contemplated how best to make savour this treat.

In the end, I treated myself to the luxury of a simple dinner of brie (no crackers to distract from my grocery discovery; no bread to delay its gratification) and boxed wine (two precious refills of that jam jar). (I feel the need to explain that I live 500 airmiles from the nearest package store, that there are no roads - except a frozen river - out of my town to that liquor store, that town law prevents the sale of alcohol within the town, and that therefore when one runs out - one is out. Wine is therefore precious. And boxed wine, which stores well and ships easier, starts to taste just fine. Especially when one, like I was, is tipping into one's last box of it.)

Only when I had finished that entire round of cheese, did I lthink to turn over the little round box to look at the price. My 8oz round of Ile de France cost $18.99. There was a big sticker advertising that it was the "Special of the Day." It was a special something alright.

So what does one do when they discover that the brie they just inhaled (despite all attempts to be haute with such rare cuisine) costs approximately $60 a pound?

They chuckle, my friends, whilst they re-layer themselves into the long-johns, sweaters, Carharrt work bibs, fur-ruffed and down-stuffed coat, two layers of gloves & mittens, REI face mask, beaver hat and hand-knit wool scarf that are necessary for the treck back to the store in the 42 below to see if there's any brie left.

There wasn't. Secrets travel fast in the Bush.

Walking the Dogs

2007-01-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

It is 45 below this morning. Admittedly, that is with the wind chill factored in. Without windchill, it is merely 30 below.

The dogs don't care. They want their walk.

Here's my usual dogwalking outfit:

When it gets to 45 below, however, I add a facemask and double the gloves on my hands.

Sometimes I try to be tougher than I really am, and opt not for the attention-grabbing frostbite-saving cover of a facemask. Instead, I wrap around my face (leaving a slant gap beneath my hat for my eyes) the orange and yellow scarf I knitted as last winter's hobby. It is bright. And big. I could see how it could be attention-grabbing, especially when wrapped around my face. For whatever mysterious reasons, however, I am convinced that it is less conspicuous than the simple black facemask that I bought from REI.

As for doubling my gloves, I cover my wind-proof gloves with the double-layered woolen mittens that I nabbed from my little brother (6'4) when he was visiting last year. Because his hands are double the size of mine, they allow ample room for the insertion of activated hand-warmers.

Introduction

2007-01-03T19:45:00.000-08:00

It's funny. I've pondered rather thoroughly how I want to describe myself, but now that I'm sitting down to it, the most important thing to type seems to be an explanation that it is too cold outside to start my boyfriend's truck. It simply won't start. I tried on my own. That didn't work. My boyfriend is travelling in the Outside and was, at that moment, on an airplane. So I couldn't call him. I ended up calling around town until someone gave me the number for Kenny's Towing. Then Skendar, from Kenny's Towing, came over. He is from Albania. He couldn't get it started either. He did the jumper cable thing. We let it charge up for awhile, while we stood around in the 30 below wearing what an Outsider might assume were matching Carharrts and hats. We talked for awhile - nonchalantly about the cold, and how he had once changed the tire on this truck. We tried to start it every now and then. But no luck. It never "turned" (that's how Skendar described the sputtering noise that I was wishing so earnestly not to hear).

It is, quite simply, too cold outside to start-up my boyfriend's pick-up.

So, instead, I've come inside and started a blog.

But that's not really an "introduction". It's more of a "snapshot." Let me try this:

Me. I'm sitting at my kitchen table, still warming up from the outside and wearing my professional attire of jeans and a cardigan beneath the Carharrt work bibs I have not yet taken off. My white coat, freshly dry-cleaned during my own recent trip to the Outside, is propped up on a chair next to the heater, absorbing extra heat for the upcoming dogwalk I could confess to dreading. I just activated two packages of handwarmers, which are perched to the left of my laptop and are kicking up extra heat for the same purpose.

I'm thirty-two. Three years in Alaska, the last one in Bethel. I came on my own gumption to Alaska, and followed a boyfriend to Bethel. Two leaps of faith that ended well. If there is one thing to know about me - I love Bethel, Alaska. If you already know a lot about me, and are just checking-in to see what I'm up to - yes, I still love Bethel, Alaska.

I cook. Prodigously. I intend to write a lot about that.

I wax. Poetic, nostalgic and sometimes rebelliously. Often Quixotically.

I have a dog. Puck. I'll probably write about him a lot too. I'll probably post lots of pictures of him too. For example, I just did. He's quite photogenic, isn't he? Oh, I do adore that little bundle of mischief. I also adore my boyfriend's dog. But I suspect I should get permission before I go posting pictures of him. So - for the moment, I advertise only copious pictures of the Puck'ster.

I don't think I love bacon. But I do tend to eat much of it during the nine months of winter. Fortunately, bacon is not my only winter hobby. I've also taken up knitting, kind of. I bought a banjo and a Pete Seeger guide to teaching one's self to play the banjo, but I haven't been too good with that new hobby. I do practice, every now and then, on my Irish tin whistle. But only because I'm hopelessly pathetic on it, and I find that entertaining. I'm on art and dog mushing committees, and have the luxury of being able to say "Yes" to almost every volunteer opportunity. Dog mushing is my latest. I'm sure I'll be posting a lot about dog mushing. I was in one race last Spring, and got hooked. Not that I've been in any more races, but that I am fully aware of how that one experience has forever transformed my perception of the ingredients for my Good Life.

There is a group of four or five of us, around the same general age and arrival dates in Bethel, that plan on raising a pig in the Spring. My goal...well, it's more of a dream, is to really work on my cheesemaking over the winter, so that I can be prolific enough in that art by Spring as to have lots of whey to feed the pig. I've read that it is the whey leftover from making Parmigiano-Reggiano, that makes the hams of Emilia-Romana so remarkable. I want to call him Churchhill. I also want to try making my own prosciutto. I do suspect that naming the pig makes me less likely to achieve that goal.

All in all, I work less than I hobby. This is a new development. A Bethel one, in fact. I've been dreaming of such a balance, however, for a long time. There was a time in my life when I thought it couldn't exist. I think of how nearly I gave up hope that life could be more than billable hours, and I consider myself lucky. It is that luck that I try to daily celebrate with at least one (symbolic) cartwheel of glee.

And, to wrap it up - at least for the now, I sometimes dream of opening my own little hole in the wall, with brick walls (a rare luxury out here in Bush Alaska), lots of windows (again, rare) and a long row of counter and stools. It will be called, as you might guess, Quixote's Tart. And from its open kitchen and witty clientele, I hope to serve up a cuisine of humble magnitude.

In the meantime, I practice. Often. The cuisine, the humility, and the recognition of true magnitude. I'm getting more adept at creativity and make-do, have managed to learn one or two arctic tundra survival tricks, and am becoming ever more familiar with the potential of pantry items.