Cooking for Kodiak

Migrating Visions of Spring

2006-04-22T11:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, my friends, you have your asparagus, and strawberries, and bloom of short-sleeved blouses. I live vicariously through your stories and tales of feasts, and thank you for sharing the season's treats with me. And I certainly want to emphasize the Spring jubilance of the Walla Walla Sweets. No doubt, my hometown is awash with its burst of daffodils, the memory of which still evokes a joy that continues to flavour my adult celebrations to welcome the arrival of Spring. And I smile contentedly with the accounts from friends about the D.C. cherry blossoms, the Manhattan updates on the Union Square picnique tables, the fava beans in Firenze and the Seattle markets.

Such signs of Spring are, you may suspect, not so common up here. Up here, we have this:

The first sighting of birds.

Oh, friends. Different visions of the season and yet still the same result: a glee, my friends. It is a glee to be welcoming the arrival of Spring.

Feast

2006-04-20T19:26:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things about living here is that the word "Feast" is a fairly common word, but it hasn't lost any of the sense of celebration and special gathering that the rarely employed word "Feast" denotes. I've quite happily embraced the privilege of using common vernacular to describe momentous moments. And even after mere months here, I find myself hesitating to resort to my prior descriptions - such as "holidays," "celebrations," "gatherings," "dinners".... they all pale in comparison to the word Feast.

So we didn't have Easter dinner. No, we had an Easter Feast.

And though I may just recently have adopted the privilege of using the word "Feast" to describe our holiday meals (see! how blase is that in comparison to the word FEAST???), I've been preparing them since childhood.

You see I come from a family that loves food and the moments of planning and preparing it. Mom likes to prepare spectacles of food. I like "tasks" and "assignments" - maybe spending the whole day trying to perfect one dish that I've never tried before. My little brother has the traditions - the foods that are the foundations to our feast - which he whips up in quadruple proportions to ensure a sufficient amount of leftovers. And both my little brother and I both like taking turns distracting mom so that we can then take turns sneak butter into the mashed potatoes.

My mom and little brother were far from our Easter table, and undoubtedly enjoying their distance from what turned out to be the Easter Blizzard of 2006 (oh, yes, my friends, we are still very much in the throes of winter up here, albeit with over 15 hours of sunlight a day).

But they were central in my thoughts, and most likely my inspiration for crafting this menu of green things from cans and frozen vegetables:

Amuse
Hot-Cross Buns
Smoked Tillamook Cheddar and Reindeer Salami
Wild Salmon Dip with Dill

Course I
Malfatti in brodo (using broth from my neighbor's chicken)

Course II
Crab salad with lime zest, peas and sparkles of red pepper

Course III
Asparagus Flan (thankyou to Molly of Orangette for the recipe)

Course IV
Smoked Ham with Honey Glaze
Little Brother's Smashed Red Potatoes with Yeoman-Globs of Butter, Sour Cream and Green Onions
Curried Succotash

Course V
Green tea

Course VI
Dark chocolate buttons with cherry ice-cream

Course VII
Homemade Cordial of Willamette Valley Fruits served in wooden goblets carried back from Zimbabwe

p.s. Well, little brother. One of our guests was an old classmate of John McPhee and was out here looking for a sighting of a rare bird that can only be sought here, and in the winter. So I must confess that I felt compelled to open up the bottle of mead that I did so earnestly hide during your visit. But I know you know that a classmate of John McPhee is a rare occasion, and you'll understand. Plus, I want you to know that I made sure to conserve more than enough homemade cordial for when you come up here again. Soon! Come visit soon! This time there will be sunlight - but you'll still get all the snowmachining opportunities you could dream of. Plus, the dogs just got a bunch of new balls and other toys and I just bought myself a banjo and a book of Pete Seeger's handwritten lessons of how to play it. So there will be lots of entertainment. Plus, J. and I finally got our freezer. It's empty, which means that you'd get lots of support for any initiative to assist us in our dream of filling it with a caribou or other staples more appropriate then beef.

And - by the way - I can drive a stick-shift! I just choose not to prove it.

Third Place

2006-04-15T10:08:00.000-07:00

I mushed my first dog-sledding race and scored a third place ribbon.

For the longest time, it looked like I had locked in the second place. But as we got closer to the finish line, I could hear the "pull, pull" from the musher behind me. And then, looking to my left, I could see her lead dog siding up beside my dogs. I kicked the snow beneath the moving sled. I shouted out "good dogs, good dogs" and "pull, pull." And we pulled ahead. Oh, I don't think I'll ever forget the excitement of the dogs. How they were loving this open, exciting sprint.

But then, suddenly, my dogs veered off to the right, towards a ridge of reeds poking out from the sides of the frozen river.

I forgot whether it was "gee" or "haw" that meant "left." So I shouted out both, trying to direct the dogs back to the finish line trail. Unconsciously, I started pointing to the left, as if I could communicate by sign language.

But there was no deterrence.

So I resolved to trust the dogs and, more importantly, enjoy the last few seconds of a race that is undoubtedly one of the top ten highlights of my life so far.

So I finished third and off-the-path. I like this a lot, especially the off-the-path part. I like that I finished on a trail that I followed blind. I guess, all in all, I consider it to be a far more appropriate seat for me to be finishing third and off-the-path than second and on-the-path.

Many thanks to the friends who provided me with pictures of the day!

Addendum

2006-04-01T13:18:00.000-08:00

That last post should be dated today.

But it's not an April Fool's joke. I really am a musher in tomorrow's "rookie" dogsledding race. And I am really adapting my whims to a budget that I voluntarily entered into.

I just lack any technological finesse and don't know how to get Blogger to let me correct the date.

And, as for addendum's, I'm quite excited to say that as soon as I log off I'll be diving into the project of seeing if I can use Mona's recipe for Chocolate - Banana Tea Bread** as a recipe for the chocolate banana cake that I intend to offer as a desert for a "soup and bread" potluck dinner party that we've been invited to tonight. My pantry is absolutely void of any wines, and unless I find room in my budget to have some some flown out from Anchorage, it appears that I'll be spending the next couple of months reciprocating generousities and saying my thank-yous with baked goods forged from the goodies that are in my pantry.

I'm already thinking about saying thank you to the local musher that is lending me his dog-team for tomorrow's race with a cast-iron skillet of sticky buns. But we'll see if time allows me to carry-out the intention.

Hope all is well!

** http://monasapple.blogspot.com/2006/03/chocolate-banana-tea-loaf.html

Employed...and Braising for Sandwiches

2006-03-18T18:59:00.000-08:00

I am employed. Have been, in fact, for awhile. In fact, I've been employed since approximately the date of my last post.

Oh - I can draft contracts. And I can appear in front of a judge. And I'll negotiate. But I still cannot find the way to live with a work-life balance when I'm working. Inevitably something goes. Perhaps it is that I am still under the oddly symbiotic influences of years of Catholic education and my training as a young associate in an old Manhattan law firm....I attempt to redeem myself of my shortcomings (or maybe I'm seeking to masque them) by laboring to minimize their effects on others. In any event, when work cuts into my non-work interests it is always my own private interests (like updating this blog) that get tossed aside first.

I suppose that I'll learn with time how to balance my life to accomodate all my interests, including my goal of improving my communications with friends, family and the community of bloggers. I certainly feel comfortable theorizing that there could be no better place in the world for me to learn this skill than the right here and the right now. Indeed, I can show a vast improvement on balancing in the nearly two years that I've been in Alaska. But, oh yes, there are improvements still to be made. In the meantime, thank you for being patient with me while I've been wretched about keeping up this blog and returning phone calls and emails.

Things here are good. Very good. The ice is still solid and the snow still falls. But the days are long and the sunlight is bright. And direct. Oh - direct sunlight!

Tomorrow, I am in my first dogsledding race! 5 dogs. 7 miles. Down the river. A local musher asked me to race his dogs in the annual "rookie race." I am simultaneously scared to death and exhillerated to life at the prospect of it. I have no idea how to dogsled. I did it once in my life - a $300 trip around the Alyeska Resort, where I was bundled up in my Manhattan concept of what one wears in Alaska and tucked under heavy blankets in the bed of the sled while Dario, the dog-sledder, explained how he spent his summer training his dogs on a glacier. This time it will be me bundled up in the clothes that Alaskans have gifted to me out of pity for the complete insufficiency of my winter gear. And me yelling out "gee" and "haw" and doing all those other necessary, fundamental things that I don't even know what they are. It is quite exciting.

And generally, these past few weeks of non-blogging, I've been busy. The good kind of busy. The working-with-good-people, dog-walking, community volunteering, blog-reading, knitting and quilting, and braising and baking kind of busy. I've even been busy setting up a financial regime to finally sweep some stability into a series of life-changing moves and transitions that pretty much depeleted my financial resources.

Those who know me from my Manhattan days might find that hard to believe. Me - agreeing to a "financial regime"? I admit, it is hard to believe. But it's true. And also true is that I am enjoying it! We had been talking about it for awhile - about getting a handle on the chaos that inevitably follows any move. So, J. and I spent a day cleaning up our hovel on stilts. It was spectacularily clean. (And for those who have visited us, or who can appreciate how difficult it is to make a rented hovel on stilts feel clean, I'm sure you can appreciate the softly jubilant sense of accomplishment that one feels upon the conclusion of the mission.) With our dogs lounging at our feet and taking turns at nibbling on a moose shank bone, we pulled out paper and - for the first time ever in my life - came up with a budget. An actual budget.

Oddly enough, this most wretched of tasks - the formulation of a restrictive budget - produced one of my inspirational bouts of braising and cooking.

For you see, we have decided to forego the $30 a day for lunch (and mind you - that's sharing a sandwich) by making our own. And I decided to take it further by roasting and braising our own lunch meats. This isn't such a surprising move. I do love to roast and braise. And I absolutely can't tolerate paying $10 for 9 slices of lunch meat. So, we've folded this budget-saving move into our Sunday supper routine. Sunday night we have the traditional supper of roast, veg and mash. A hunk of the leftover roast and the veg is saved for hash (with a poached egg from the neighbor's coop). A hunk of the leftover roast and the mash is saved for another dinner. The gravy or jus is saved for soup. But the bulk of the leftover roast is saved for sandwiches.

So far, we've had the pork tenderloin roasted with a crust of garlic and rosemary. We've done the pot roast braised in a simple simmering onion gravy. We did the corned beef (with Molly's carmelized cabbage** - delicious!).

And last Sunday, we did a Honey and Cumin Braised Pork Shoulder. So lovely, that I must break my silence to share it!

Honey and Cumin Braised Pork Shoulder
(adapted from Jaques Pepin's recipe for Braised Pork Roast with Sweet Potatoes - simply because I didn't have any sweet potatoes and truly cannot follow a recipe for the life of me)

1 3-pound shoulder butt pork roast (boneless)
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
2 tbsp cider vinegar
1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp honey
1 tsp cumin
2 large onions (diced)
6 large cloves of garlic

1. Place the pork shoulder in a cast-iron pot with a lid. (I used our 10 inch "chicken fryer.") Add 2 cups water, the soy sauce, Tabsco, vinegar, honey and cumin. Bring to a boil (uncovered).

2. Reduce the heat to very low. Cover and let it simmer for an hour.

3. Add the onions and garlic. Bring back to a boil, uncovered, for about 15 minutes.

4. Uncover and place it in the center of a pre-heated 375 degree oven. Cook for an hour, turning the meat every 15 minutes. (My goal was to get the shoulder to brown uniformly on all 4 "sides" so that it looks like a roast, even though it was braised.)

5. Pull out the roast and let it rest on the cutting board. Reduce the sauce to the desired consistency. (I prefer a roast to rest longer, serving it warm rather than hot. And because I save the jus for broth, I don't usually simmer it down. Instead I serve it as a light drizzle over the meat and potatoes that hints of gravy, but doesn't result in the post-dinner lull that generally follows dinners with gravy.)

It was a lovely Sunday dinner, served with sauteed spinach,Molly's carmelized cabbage and red potatoes smashed with buttermilk. And it has been a lovely week of sandwiches. Rather than hash, I'm anticipating that the last of the leftovers will be ground for tortellini.

I suppose that most readers are not still under the influence of ice and snow these days. Most readers probably have strong inspirations for asparagus and strawberries and other delicacies of Spring. I'll get there too, eventually. But in the meantime, a good pork roast can take one a long way in appreciating a weather pattern that gives you a few extra months to enjoy the winter delights and perfumes of a braised Sunday supper.

** http://orangette.blogspot.com/2006/01/tender-is-cabbage.html

Crepes in the morning, Caribou before bed - Feasting Like a Tundra Queen

2006-01-19T12:55:00.000-08:00

I continue to be broke. I could lament. I could worry. I could complain. I could get a job. Or, I could delve into the project of finding the entertainments of being broke. Not one to turn down entertainment, I’ve selected this last route. And let’s face it, my pantry was stocked for such pursuits.

I should confess that there is probably a family legacy or legend that I just might be trying to live out myself. If one were to settle down for a long chat with my mother (and, do trust me, chats with mum are rarely curt) about short finances and big hungers, my mother would revel in the opportunity to regale you with the culinary sprees and festivities of the 1970’s when my parents found much entertainment in being able to entertain crowds of buddies with the few pennies they had. College budgets that featured oysters, for example, though no one actually had any money. Widely popular dinner parties centered on the proceeds of late-Autumn and social gleanings of the fertile fields of the Willamette Valley. “Potlucks” in the sense that friends would drop off their contributions in the form of raw ingredients, and return in the evenings for the sculptured feasts that Mom would have elegantly heaped on candle-lit tables. There will be poignant examples. Mom, for example, may open up to you and talk about how she painfully struggled to come to grips with the loss of her first baby…how she made great strides in doing so by using her baby’s unusable baby formula to make a feast of pumpkin custards. Even today, she will undoubtedly tell you, Mom takes much pride and happiness in the impromptu visits of long-time friends with hefty chunks of game meat. She rarely has to buy her own meat, and her social calendar is filled with her own impromptu visits when she drops off a dinner platter featuring the gifted game at the home of the giftor.

Apples don’t fall far from the tree.

I am stretching my pennies by resorting to the grocery store for only a few daily-necessary ingredients: water, milk, butter, eggs. The rest is coming from our friends and neighbors, our pantry and our freezer. The bread – I’m kneading it here at home, and doing my cartwheels of glee as the perfume of baking bread warms up our home on those especially cold days. (As a little side note/question: it must mean that I’m becoming more and more Alaskan with each day, as temperatures above 7 degrees seem to me “especially warm.” The humour of the fact that our house is heated to 70 degrees, yet there is frost on the INSIDE of all the windows, probably extends beyond geographical boundaries.) Meat – we’re dining like kings on homemade elk sausage, moose ragu served up as a homemade lasagna baked in a large cast-iron skillet (in proportions big enough to guarantee that thicks slabs of it will be delivered to neighbors and friends the next morning), ground caribou prepared as Albondigas a’ la Rooney (i.e. mixed with parmigiano, fresh herbs, and pine nuts to form meatballs, which are then braised in tomatoes stewed with Guinness and red wine). Our weekend brunches: eggs and toast, with the elk breakfast sausages we made together and the homemade bread. The snacks that I pack up for J. when he goes snow-go’s up and down, and over and all about, or for when he goes out to one of the villages where he camps out in a school gymnasium (there being no hotels or motels) – homemade bierocks stuffed with stewed meat and vegetables. In fact, I make a point of making sure that J. always has enough stash of homemade goodies to feed 4 people stuffed into the “hotdogger.” And I send J. off to work with a little brown bag of sugared crepes, a little note to say that his girlfriend and dogs are thinking fond thoughts of him as we devise a creative dinner.

Sure – I should probably get a job sometime. I’ve so magically, and with such ease!, gone from work-focused corporate attorney to domestic overdose. And I will. I have to. But in the meantime, we feast likes king and queen of the tundra – and I’ve only spent $20 in the past 2 weeks!

Pot Roast, and its progeny

2005-12-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

Oh - this is a delinquent post. It's maybe a month old - actually, a bit more. Mea culpa. So sorry. Hopefully the entry in which I describe the events and craziness of the past few weeks won't take me so long to post. In the meantime: Congratulations to the dear friends having babies. Hugs and kisses to the dear friends who sent me lovely Christmas cards that I still haven't replied to. Thank you's and smiles of gratitudes to all who have been sending J. and I household goodies and warm clothes - especially to J's parents, who gifted me the lovely long johns that keep me warm every day and the Yak Trax that keep me standing up-right when I'm walking outside; and especially to my mother, who gifted me a ticket for my little brother to fly up and help me deal with the last - and the heaviest -- of my stuff in my old Anchorage apartment, as well as a ticket from Anchorage to here, to be our first guest, to celebrate Christmas with us, and to help J. carry that last and heaviest of stuff home from the post-office!

**********

We had a brief warm spell. A tropical spell, actually. The temperature was up to the 30's and everyone in town was up and about, enjoying the chance to stroll about in a mere sweatshirt. But then it started to rain. And the rain, alas, churned up the snow and built ponds across the frozen lakes. And with each day of rain, the puddles and rain-ponds grew and expanded. Eventually, the temperature dipped back down again. Yesterday, for example, it was 7 below. And eventually, all those puddles and rain-ponds froze into slippery sheets of ice with alternating angles and peaks.

So, it's cold and its treachorous. Which makes it the perfect climate for comfort foods like pot-roast with a very important secondary attribute: a good pot roast will provide enough leftovers to alleviate the need to run to the grocery store.

I don't know the exact number of times I flipped past this recipe for Pot Roast. But I know it was more than several, and closer to numerous. And I know that all my reasons for so flippantly dismissing it turned out to be wrong. It is flavourful. It is not too plain. Once I had dismissed what I am now self-diagnosing as a low-grade craving for complication, I allowed myself to embark on a culinary project that reminded me of the hearty satisfaction that emanates from a cast-iron dutch oven filled with humble simplicity. Once the initial culinary project was completed, I then I embarked on a series of them, each intended to further explore that cozy art of leftovers!

Day 1: Pot Roast and Garlic Rosemary Roasted Potatoes
(a/k/a "Schultz Sunday Supper Pot Roast" in The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook)

1. Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil in a dutchoven over medium heat.

2. Season a 3 pound chunk of chuck roast with salt and pepper. When the oil is heated, place the roast in the pot and brown it on both sides (approximately 5 minutes on each side).

3. Add to the pot 1 onion (thinly slided) and 1 cup of boiling water.

4. Cover with a tight lid and let it simmer gently in a 325 degree oven for at least 2.5 hours.

5. Let the meat set before you slice it.

6. You can make gravy with the juices, but I preferred to serve the jus and onions without embellishment.

7. Around an hour before you want to eat, start roasting your potatoes. I like to parboil my potatoes and refridgerate them so that you can pull them into rustic hunks with your fingers (instead of chopping them uniformly with a knife). The pre-step of parboilling is my trick for achieving those roasted chunks of potatoes with crispy, almost carmelized, outsides and soft interiors that I used to order as my dinner at the little take-out, La Spada, near Piazza Santa Maria Novella in Firenze. Not everyone does this. But the basic recipe is fairly standard: toss potatoes (raw or parboiled, baker or reds) with olive oil, finely diced garlic, chopped fresh rosemary and salt and pepper; put on a roasting pan and place in the oven at approximately 350 degrees, and bake until done.

This truly is delicious. The onions and the water form the perfect broth. And the onions bake down into a sweet deliciousness that makes one want to eat them by themselves with a fork. Actually, I guess it bakes down into the perfect onion soup - needing only a bit of a toast and cheese topping to achieve that famous french onion soup entree.

Day 2: Grilled Beef Salad Sandwiches

When I hear "beef salad," I think of seared filet on a bed of arugala, sometimes with a hint of lemongrass. But this seems like the best name for a beef sandwich spread. Basically, I mixed together: chopped up leftover roast, very finely diced onions, diced celery, a little mayonnaise, a little Worcestire Sauce, a little tarragon, salt and pepper. Then, with just the most minimum of Special Reserve Tillamook Cheddar to keep the contents cohesive and with just the most minimum amount of Tillamook butter to give the bread slices that lovely crunch, we proceeded with making an embellished version of grilled cheese sandwiches: the grilled beef salad sandwich. Next time, we'll make sure to have some rye or pumpernickel bread! But it was delicious!

Day 3: Roasted Onions with a Braised Onion Risotto

I remember eating baked onions as I grew up, but I don't remember why I forgot about them once I had grown up enough to be solely responsible for my own meals. Jamie Oliver helped me to remember them, though he perhaps adds a few more steps than the hearty culinary traditions of the Willamette Valley (in those hearty, pre-Pinot Noir days). He boils them for 20 minutes, lets them cool, then scoops out the middle and stuffs them with a filling. Sounds good to me.

I boiled the onions. I let them cool. Then I scooped out the middle, chopped the scooped-out pieces into a fine dice, and used this (together with the risotto-standards of garlic, etc.) as the basis for the risotto. I think everyone has their own way of making a risotto, so I won't delve into the science of it. But I will add that I flavoured my risotto with the syruppy onions that had braised with the pot roast and, when the risotto was done, I tossed in some of the chopped beef, fresh parsley, and parmigiano. I filled the hollowed-out onions with the "french onion risotto", topped them with a sprinkle of cheese, and set them to bake until hot and bubbly.

Delicious. Fun. And, oh!, how lovely a hot stove is when it is so cold outside that there is frost on the INSIDE of your dilapidating hovel on stils heated to the luxurious temperature of 70 degrees!

Cake Love

2005-12-06T11:04:00.000-08:00

I don't mean to plagiarize, so I must give credit for the title of this blog entry to the reformed lawyer in D.C. who traded a law career for a baking dream. He quit his job and opened up a bakery in Washington, D.C. called "Cake Love". He had no bakery experience. Just a love of baking and a cache of gumption. The best part is that the gamble worked! I hear from friends that his business is growing and expanding!

I like the name "Cake Love." Not just because I think of it as fighting words for breaking one's professional chains. I like it because cake really is a manifestation of love. Especially where, as in my current little hovel on stilts, it can take some planning to find the ingredients and there is no electronic mixer to relieve one's arms from the various stages of creaming butters, and whipping in sugars, and mixing in flours.....Under such conditions, baking a cake requires many of the same ingredients for maintaining a relationship: time, concentration, patience, tenderness, preparation, anticipation, goals, appreciation.....

Okay. That was the sentimental start. Here's the practical blog entry: After the fiasco of the hyper-sugared power-ranger-frosted-to-be-a-snowmachiner birthday cake, I decided to cake love J. with a gingered pear upside down cake.

It took a bit longer, I think, than it would have if I had a mixer handy. But it was a fine opportunity to get a little workout for the arms (without venturing out in the freezing cold to the teen center where I understand one can pay $3 to use the weights), and a fine opportunity to listen to the one radio station. And there is a lot of fine entertainment in watching the ecstactic reaction of one's boyfriend when he enters a home perfumed in the aromas of gingerbread late in the evening after having spent an entire day preparing for his first trial ever, which is scheduled (as luck would have it) in the same week as his 16 other trials.

Credits to Macrina Bakery in Seattle, for the recipe and for that post-collegiate year in Seattle when when I used to sneak out of my p.r. job to enjoy Macrina's rocket muffins and potato loaves, and to Molly, of Orangette, for inspiring me to dig out the box in which the Macrina cookbook was packed.

http://orangette.blogspot.com/2005/11/seattlest-macrina-true-love-and-ginger.html

Celebrations and Lessons

2005-12-04T12:36:00.000-08:00

J turned 30 on the day when it was 22 degrees below zero.

We spent the day rummaging for a bit at the Catholic Rummage Sale. Then we lingered for a bit at the VFW Auxiliaries' Christmas Craft Show. Then I spent a couple of hours trying to teach myself how to frost a cake while J. hopped on the snowmachine and ran down the river with his boss, who was trying out a new helmet that stays de-frosted by some mechanism that plugs into the snowmachine.

Although the helmet appeared to work perfectly, I wasn't such a grand instructor in the arts of cake decoration. J. returned just in time to find me covered in green frosting and lamenting that I had just spent all my money on a sugary dada-ism rendition of a snow-machiner. Fortunately he is a good supportive sport - and gave me lots of encouragement in my fervent efforts to make a power-ranger cake tin and 10 tubes of artifically-flavoured-and-colored frosting produce a likeness of him. The symbolism of my boyfriend assuring me of the value of my efforts, while he himself was "frosted" in a white layer of snow and ice (he even had icicles hanging from his eyebrows and eyelashes) and I was "frosted" in green, was not lost on me. We had some good laughs. And I was so appreciative of the good energies he swept into the house with him, that I did some frosting touches to highlight those big, strong biceps!

But I probably will not ever again spend a day decorating a cake with a battery of store-bought and artifically-flavoured-and-colored frosting. That was my first lesson of the day. I guess every thing has to be tried once - and this was my one time trying to decorate a cake....at focusing on the appearance, rather than the taste, of a dessert. Henceforth, I'm sticking to pies, tarts and the carmelized pear gingerbread that I had originally envisioned would be holding his candles.

Around 7, we shimmied into our winter gear, packed up the hyper-sugared cake and headed over to M's house, where we shimmied out of our winter gear and enjoyed a grand evening of corn and potato chowder and Texas Hold 'Em Poker. Entertainment having a prime value here, our crew of 8 made a show of singing happy birthday twice. And J. did so well at the poker, that he came home with heavy pockets brimming with Canadian coins!

Around midnight, we shimmied back into the winter gear and headed home. Just as we got to our driveway, we decided that we should drive over and see what time a store opened up in the morning. J attempted a U-turn, following almost the identical path for u-turns that he has used over-and-over every time we've left the driveway. This time, however, the truck must have been a few inches off.

We got stuck.

It was midnight and the temperature had fallen to almost 27 degrees below. The truck was stuck well - it wouldn't move forward, it wouldn't reverse. J. tried jumping on the back fender simultaneously with my efforts to reverse. We even put the big, 120 pound dog, in the back to see if a little weight would make the tires less likely to spin. (Puck was allowed out too, but after 10 minutes he fleed back to the warmth of the house.) When our efforts succeeded only in getting us more stuck, J. sent me inside, correctly noting that the symptoms of my cold were getting outrageous noticeable in the cold. He followed me in, changed into his layers of arctic gear (adding a face make to the winter attire) and grabbed a rope.

When I came out to check on the progress a half-hour later, I found J. coordinating efforts with a young girl in a big black truck and a neighbor who had decide to combine the opportunity to assist with a chance to let his dog out.

The coordinated efforts worked, and the truck was finally tugged out of the snow ditch around 1:20 a.m.

Smiles, handshakes, deeply-felt gratitude were exchanged. And a very important second lesson for the day was learned: always keep a rope in the truck.

We don't know when we'll need it, either to pull ourselves out or to pass forward the favour of two very generous and kind people who voluntarily ventured out into 27 below temperatures to help a stranger.

How many places are there where people would stay out there in a coldness so cold that it slaps to help a stranger? Especially a stranger hidden by a black face mask? Wouldn't most people just leave it? wait till the daybreak? or tell them to call a tow-truck? How many places are there where people would stay out there, and keep on trying and trying and trying? Refusing to give up until the stranger's problem was fixed?

The third lesson wasn't really a lesson. It was a good reminder.

We are lucky to live here and to have so much to learn!

Akutaq: when reality whips the romance

2005-12-03T15:12:00.000-08:00

My grandfather, who loved French Vanilla Breyers, would sometimes wax nostalgic for the "Eskimo Ice Cream" that he and my grandmother would enjoy when they were stationed up in Alaska during World War II.

I'm not sure if he was waxing nostalgic for the Eskimo ice cream, or for the memories of courting my grandmother in a large wild territory amidst the simultaneously alert and tender days of World War II. But I do know that he was keenly appreciative of the experience of both. He and my grandmother married and were later moved to Germany, where my mother was raised. Eventually they came back to the U.S., but they settled in California. Alaska, however, never strayed far from their thoughts. Sometimes the memories popped up in the form of stories about eskimo ice cream. But more commonly, the memories popped up in stories of the bravery and ingenuity and cultural strength that so impressed my Grandfather about Alaska.

But back to eskimo ice cream....Akutaq is what this Alaskan legend is called in Yup'ik, the most predominant language in town.

Grandpa used to tell me about how, in Alaska, ice cream is made from whipping rendered seal oil into grated reindeer fat. Snow was added to make it cold. Sometimes mashed potatoes or whitefish would be added. But, always, berries would be added to sweeten it.

I have been meaning to try it. And today, while Christmas shopping at a local craft fair at the VFW hall, I finally did. Seeing a woman offering paper cups of akutaq next to the offering of seal mittens and beaver hats, it seemed like the perfect time to transform one of Grandpa's stories into a part of my own story. J. and I bought a cup to share.

But times have changed since Grandpa's day.

Halfway through our cup, we ran into a friend who has been here for 30 years and asked him to settle a debate. J. thought I was joking about ice cream being made from seal oil. He maintained that there was no seal fat in our akutaq. I maintained that there was.

Our friend had a laugh. It appears that we were both kind of right. 30 years ago, akutaq was made from whipping rendered seal oil with reindeer fat. Apparently, however, it is made today by mixing berries with Crisco.

Yes, J. and I had been eating Crisco by the spoonful.

It was delicious .... but .... I just can't help feeling that what was so memorable to my Grandpa, that icecream that kept my Grandfather waxing nostaligic for Alaska, wasn't made with Crisco. But I guess I am also glad that a seal wasn't hunted. So I really don't know where I'm left with my first introduction to Akutaq.

Perhaps my ambivalence is best described as an admiration for a culture that has thrived and survived for thousands of years in the harshest of conditions, and a sad sort of acceptance at how quickly less-admirable influences have seeped in. But I can't help but think that my recent arrival to Alaska, with no winter gear and a headful of romantic notions about living in the last frontier, isn't a bit of an allegory to Crisco itself.

Maybe I'm not going to be eating the akutaq of my grandfather's day, but I guess I'm also not the "pioneer" that he was. I do however get the benefit of my Grandfather's story, as well as my own memory of my own astonishment at realizing that I was eating Crisco by the spoonful....and enjoying it.

Akutaq
(this is a copy verbatim of the recipe originally published by Alice Smith in the local newspaper, the Tundra Drums, and then reprinted in Cooking Alaskan by Alaskans)

"If you use fresh seal oil you don't get the strong taste. Put a handful of Crisco in the bowl. Work it with your hand and add a little cold water. Put in the seal oil and work it more. The real Eskimo way was to make it with reindeer fat, chopped in small pieces. They put it on the stove to melt it. They never used to put sugar in. They used no sugar, just berries. Then later we used to put sugar in. Stir in the sugar. If you keep your hand working it a long time all the sugar melts, it dissolves. It will just fluffy up, now watch. You keep adding water, more water. Every time you put sugar in it will fluff more. Keep working it and you can't smell the seal oil. Then put in the salmonberries. There should be blackberries too. And then I put it up in my little freezer up there, let it coll off and eat it. If you just want to have a little spoonful now, you may."

Yoga and Leftovers

2005-12-02T11:19:00.000-08:00

I went to a yoga class.

Three of us showed up last night at the little log cabin (as compared to the bigger log longhouse where the local band is currently setting up a dance floor for their "concert" on Saturday night), shuffled out of our boots and carhartts, and hung our coats and mittens up to dry. While we pulled our hair back into pony tails and rolled out our mats, our instructor stuffed the yoga class into the community-available dvd player.

It was the first yoga class I've ever taken that was free of charge. And it was in a log cabin, with a ceiling so low that I was prevented from doing the positions that required me to stand up too straight. Even the transportation had a first-time flavour to it. J. and I rode over together on the snowmachine - the first time we had attempted a transportation "coordination." One of those understated moments of couple-significance. He dropped me off, swung around to see if he could pick up our friend who was walking over (which he could, and did), and then spent the hour sporting about outside while M. and I tried to contortion off some off the "extra warmth" we are accumulating. When he returned to pick us up, we decided to pile three on the machine instead of dropping off M. and then returning for me. To add to the comedy, M. was given the driving honour. It was her first time on a snow-machine. So there we were, the three of us, clutching on to each other, laughing and lurching all the way home.

By the time J. and I got home, I was cold. And hungry. Quite a combination with which to enter into a kitchen. I was so cold and hungry, in fact, that I didn't even take the time to shimmy out of my carhartts and boots before I started pulling out pots and pans. I gave only a token greeting to the dogs and didn't even linger to help J. tuck the snowmachine under its cover. Rather, still dressed in full gear (which includes, lest their be doubt, a face mask) I was immediately engrossed in the task of heating up a dinner of leftover meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy.

Now I know that meatloaf (especially leftover meatloaf) has the 50's housewife reputation. It isn't something we ever had in our family growing up. In fact, I had never made it before. But I guess I have a familiarity with it that started in college. I was a hostess the summer after my first year of college at a local restaurant that specialized in meatloaf sandwiches. And, later, meatloaf was a specialty of a family that I lived with in Firenze. And, even more later, I discovered its haute potential while dining in New York. And, now, meatloaf has the kudo's of being one of my cozy favorites as well as fitting right square into my current budget of life-wealth, but monetary-poor.

Despite my appreciation for it, I hadn't really thought about "meatloaf" recently. That is, I hadn't thought about it until I went out for a brunch with J. on Sunday. My two eggs and two pieces of buttered toast cost $6. I thought that steep. But, J's heavily-nuked plate of thin slices of commercial meatloaf, heap of instant mashed potatoes, and steaming globs of powdered gravy cost $15. And I thought that was a steep travesty.

Meatloaf and mashed potatoes with gravy shouldn't be nuked - and it should never be whipped up from powder. That just seems......tragically unnecessary. The cozy comfort of this dish comes from the fact that it is made from humble ingredients for people with whom one has an overwhelming connection of familiarity. Not powder for strangers. I couldn't help but sit there watching this steaming plate of artificial convenience, imagining how glops of glunk had been globbed onto a plate and stuffed roughly into a high-powered commercial microwave. But it was that wide chasm between J's eager expectation and his dissapointment, more than the artificial origins or price of J's meal, that left me thinking that I should set out to see how I could incorporate meatloaf into our culinary fayre here.

And it worked! I used a base recipe from a cookbook I adore for cozy comforts. I adapted it to fit the ingredients already contained in my pantry. I filled our house with the warm welcoming perfume of a homecooked supper on one of the colder nights yet. And a few minutes of mixing produced a big hearty skillet of meatloaf - that has been feeding us dinners, and lunches, and sandwiches, and quick snacks. It was warm, hearty, perfect for leftovers and guaranteed to make us smile with cozy comforts. Where the weather gets cold, and feels even colder because you are scooting around in it on the back of a snowmachine, warm and hearty and cozy are just what is needed.

And when you are coming home from a grand evening of yoga classes in log cabins and side-splitting transportation stories, the access to warm and hearty leftovers is certainly a sign that one is enjoying la vita dolce.

We took our steaming plates of homemade convenience to the couch, plunked Lonesome Dove into the dvd player, and made an evening of it.

[Here's where I confess that I was so enamoured with the ease of eating well without stove time, that I paused the dvd for 5 minutes after we ate to jump up and make a pie plate of brownies from a Duncan Hines mix. Not all cozy comforts, I guess, have to come from scratch - at least not when time can be better spent enjoying the company of cherished ones!]

Pantry Meatloaf
adapted from The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook

butter
a chopped onion
1 cup bread crumbs
a small handful of oatmeal (in deference to a reference from J. about his mother's recipe)
1.3 pounds of lean ground beef
a couple elk bratwursts (freed of their casings)
1 can of diced tomatoes
2 eggs
1 cup of shredded parmesan or romano cheese
some hearty glugs of worcestire sauce
seasonings (salt, pepper, rosemary, sage, basil, cumin, creole seasonings, Old Bay, whatever you have and/or feel like using)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. Heat up a cast-iron skillet, and saute the chopped onion in butter until just golden (around 3 minutes).

3. Mix all of the ingredients in a big bowl. When the onions are done, toss them in too. Mix well.

4. Shape mixture like a football in the cast-iron skillet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with some olive oil. And bake until it is cooked throughout and all sizzly and crisp on the outside (around 1.5 hours).

enough shrugging

2005-11-30T15:44:00.000-08:00

Enough shrugging!

I'm currently in the middle of that clarity of being over a week's distance from a work-week. My ast day in the office was November 15. On November 17, Puck and I boarded a plane and moved to our new home with J. and his dog, Clyde. And in the days between the move and today, I have been baking, sauteeing, roasting and braising. J and I took a sausage-making class together - from which we came home with over 30 homemade elk bratwursts (which made for a fine, fine Thanksgiving meal - all cooked on the "hotdogger" attached to the muffler of the snowmachine when we celebrated the day of Thanksgiving by making our first long-distance voyage to a village down the frozen river). Next week I'm taking a mask-making class. J and I are thinking about doing a weekly radio show on the one local radio station. I'm motivated to unpack, if only to clear space to bring out my sewing machine and start finishing up years-old quilting projects and to sew some Christmas stockings. I make my grocery shopping a daily adventure, and in doing so am slowing improving my snow-machining wherewithall. I guess my habit of losing the trail is also contributing to the fact that I'm learning new snowmachine trails each day. I'm bundling up and taking the dogs out to romp around in snow drifts. And I'm reading. And thinking. And, oh!, I love this: I'm free and available and motivated to socialize and to listen to the local band and to attend the local fiddle dance and to 'machine to the houses of friends for dinners and to meet people and to talk about things. Any ole' things.

In other words, the day-to-day thoughts of "work" seem a world away, and the world seems at my doorstep!

Don't get me wrong, I have much professional items on my to-do list. And I am thinking about how I should go about such professional items as being able to pay my bills and keeping my health insured. But the difference of thinking about these things in my current situation, as compared to thinking about them while I'm in a mental escape from my tasks of perusing contracts or researching briefs, is that the potential for "something different" feels exhilleratingly viable. A breakfast cook? A home chef that delivers soup? A manager of a radio station? A cashier at the grocery store?

It's all possible. It could all be done!

But, here's what I'm committing right now to do: start recording again what I'm cooking! and start recording the stories and sources that are making our meals so memorable.

I can't catch up from the past week and a half, which is quite a shame as J. and I have been dining on some fine recipes. But I can promise to start recording them going forward.

As a bridge, here's a pantry recipe for baked apples:

Half an apple, and core each half. Drizzle lemon juice over each half, and sprinkle the center of the hole with a spritz of cinnamon. In a separate bowl, mix together cinnamon, brown sugar, chopped walnuts, chopped dried apricots, and butter. Put a mound of the mixture into each apple half. Drizzle with birch syrup. And bake in a 350 degree oven until the perfume has filled the house (approximately 30 to 40 minutes).

sisyphus shrugged to sup on stew

2005-11-04T12:16:00.000-08:00

I'm simply not a good mover.

I am, quite honestly, atrocious at it. I can distract myself - dissuade myself - tire myself. I'm a pushover, as far as succumbing to even ridiculous excuses to put off (again) the packing of boxes.

But let's face it: packing and moving and relocating - it all sucks. Even if someone comes walking through the door and does it all for you - it still sucks. It might be a less exhausting experience, but the ease doesn't reduce the discomfort and chaos of having your possessions tucked into cardboard boxes wrapped tightly with duct tape. In my case, I'm doing it - and in the most time consuming way: everything I pack has to be packed to survive the ordeal of being mailed. I can't just pack it for a trip in a U-haul. Nope. It has to be packed with caution and forethought, as well as in accordance with federal postal regulations. Ugh. In any event, no matter how much has been accomplished, by anyone and under whatever circumstances - it always feels like there remains an endless, infinite amount of packing left to do!

So after one good solid day of packing, I decided to reward myself. I went to the store and bought a bottle of Oregon pinot, a can of Irish Guinness, a big thing of beef, and some Matanuska carrots, traceless onions and a bag of Alaskan red potatoes.

And then I unpacked a couple of boxes to dig out my castiron dutch oven and my bay leaves, and embarked on a recipe for a dish that I shall endearingly call "Rooney Stew."

Elise of Simply Recipes, who inspired it, calls it "Irish Beef Stew." http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/001414irish_beef_stew.php

It is a unique recipe for Irish stew, because it calls for red wine AND Guinness. Highly recommended!

Because I made a few minor changes to incorporate an Oregon girl's education in stewmaking (i.e. three times more meat and triple the pour of "tenderizers," hours more of stewing, concerted attention to using leftovers in lieu of listed ingredients, reserving the potatoes to make a bed of stoemp** upon which to ladel the stew instead of stewing them with the meat, and serving it by simply hoisting the castiron dutch oven to the table and giving the guest the honour of ladeling his own), and because I have a very dear friend who shares my Oregon roots and with whom I spent a lot of time in Florence drinking, alternatively, Irish pints of Guinness at the Fiddlers' Elbow or red wine from backpack-sized cartons which - in our collegiate lingo - we called "Buzz in the Box", I named my version after this Irish, red-wine drinking Oregonian: "Rooney Stew." I served it to J. on his 24 hour trip to Anchorage to see the debacle of my packing "progess" and to attend a CLE.

Delicious! Triple the exclamation!

*** Stoemp is the version of mashed potatoes that I learned to love when a poor student in London. Belgo, a Belgian restaurant, had this special where a dish of bangers and mash cost, in pounds, the hour you arrived. So, if you arrived at 3:30 p.m., for example, your bangors and mash only cost 3 quid and change. Instead of typical British "mash," Belgo served those bangors with Belgian stoemp. Now that I live in Alaska, and it is winter, and I never could follow a recipe no matter where I am - I make it by frying some bacon, lifting it out when its crisp, pouring out most of the grease, and sauteeing some onions, carrots, and garlic. I also add something green - preferring savoy cabbage, but using regular cabbage with parsley or kale. Sometimes I use spinach. In any event, when the potatoes are boiled soft, I mash them like normal. (I like boiled red potatoes, skins on and mashed into clumps - not whispy uniformity.) Then I mix in my sautee and add the regular butter, sour cream and bit of milk. It makes a colorful and hearty base for bangers - and for stew! I know that you have to take my word for that - I still don't own a digital camera. But trust me, it's pretty, hearty and delicious!

The only trick to this simple heartiness is to time carefully the sautee of the green ingredient - too early, you lose the vibrancy of the color, and too late you the potatoes get gummy in waiting for them. This trick becomes particularly relevant when the green is spinach.

first snow

2005-10-30T11:31:00.000-08:00

Breathtaking is the morning starlight of the North skies reflecting first up, off the first snowfall of the winter season, and then back down, off a drifting cloud cover.

And taking a stroll in such a sparkling landscape, before anyone else has gotten up to mar the perfection of the fresh snowfall, is quite exhillerating.

Playing catch with your dog in the perfection of a fresh snowfall - well, it's a very pleasant slice of utopia. For me as well as for Puck. He was so pleased with his ability to race around the Park Strip, off-leash and in chase of a frisbee.

It was probably a good thing, however, that Puck and I were out playing catch before anyone else was up. I had to scramble to unpack all the winter things I had packed. And I guess I wasn't too inclined to do so.

So I ended up in a rather ridiculous dog-walking attire. A smorgasboord of winter-appropriate and dog-walking ridiculous. Dress boots, ski-sweater, long-black Italian dress-coat, and stocking cap. I think what ultimately pulled the outfit together was the fact that I had finally decided to stuff my hands into a pair of Iowa wool socks that wick after several minutes of unsuccessfully looking for my gloves.

In any event, I was so inspired by the crisp beauty of this fine Alaskan morning that I made a little trip to the grocery store and purchased a pair of gloves and a roll of duct tape.

Postmodern Frolics in the Last Frontier

2005-10-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

I took myself out on a day long date on Saturday.

I used to do this when I lived in New York. I guess, actually, I've always been doing this, wherever I'm living. Some mornings I just wake up and walk out the door, not knowing what I will be doing - only that I'll be going with the flow of events, and dining with myself, and coming across good reads, and restoring my independence, and nurturing my quirks, and probably stopping somewhere for a Hemingway'esque crisp class of white wine with oysters (ahhh, for the Seattle dates! it's so easy to sweep me off my feet in that town!) or a Dylan Thomas mid-day pint in a dark local with a band of loyal regulars (the most glorious such mid-day pints being Fiddler's Elbow in Florence or, oh!, that one[s!] in Belfast) - until I'm replinished with my necessary doses of randomness, characters, good books, flaneuring, and journal-capturing. I usually come home around midnight, brew a cup of tea and crawl into a fluffy bed to flip through one of the new cookbooks I inevitably picked up at some point during the day's events. And the next morning, waking up from a sleep of blissful contentment, I usually wax poetic about the adventures and the people I met in a group email and then set off to a grocery store to purchase the ingredients for the dishes I fell asleep contemplating.

But, it being now and it being an opportunity to sweep myself off my feet with Anchorage, here's how this girl entertained herself on one cold Saturday at the start of winter:

Brunch of dim sum at a tiny bakery in a commonly-overlooked stripmall, wearing black boots and reading Wittgenstein's Poker at a little table next to a bigger table of young men in their Alaskan khakis (i.e. carhartts), skilled in the arts of slurping noodles without interference from their mature beards and versed in the arts of comparing favorite dumplings. Bustling hum of Asian languages and the clatter of a kitchen spilling out to a room packed with a spicy cross-section of Alaskans, mixed with the chirping queries of toddlers learning the dexterity of chopsticks, and teenagers feigning disinterest in the lively conversation with their parents, and cross-dressers exchanging Friday night stories, and tables of women wearing boots and pearls (with coiffed hair and brazen wit). Strangers leaning over to inquire as to the name of particularly intriguing dish. http://www.anchoragepress.com/archives-2004/eatingoutvol13ed11.shtml

Coffee at a little shop in another, albeit more popular stripmall, with brick walls, mis-matched tables and chairs and a clientele of loyal locals that is nurturing the next generation with "freshly flown-in" gelato. Alaska's roaster since 1975.

Tour of Title Wave - a bookstore with the glorious gift of offering the books that Alaskans have traded in. Lots of second-hand insights into how to build a cabin. Lots of dog-eared tips on homesteading. Cookbooks with hints written into the margin. A poetry aisle that exudes the warmth of a winter stove. And, of course, the constant memory of having watched and listened to John Haines, himself, reading his poetry here last Spring. http://www.wavebooks.com/catalog/events.php

Tour of the Alaskan-authored books at Cook Inlet Books, which has recently been restored from tourist throngs to local customers supporting homegrown writers. They just got a new shipment of the most requested book, so I understand that there is no longer a waiting list for Amanda Brannon's homegrown treatise on rhubarb. http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/matsu/story/6609802p-6494416c.html

Contemplate a glass of wine at Club Paris, but decide that it is to dark there to read my newest acquisition (The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood) and this might be the perfect chance to finally try out Taste of Russia and sup on a bowl of butter-brothed pelmeni, with fresh dill and sour cream.

Opening night of Kafka Dances at Cyrano's Eccentric Theatre Company, attended by the freshly-imported Australian playwright, opened by a band of highschoolers playing traditional bar mitzvah music on a quartet of wind-instruments, and audienced by a diverse crowd of enthusiastic patrons. Some dressed with fashionable attention. Some in jeans. Some in flannels. Some in eye-catching flairs. Of course, there were the requisite young men with mature beards, and older man with trimmed ones. Cyrano's offers Pacific Northwestern wines by the glass, which you can drink throughout the show and replace with a refreshed glass at the pre-order table during intermission. Like attending the opera, or the symphony, your glass at the pre-order table is marked simply by a slip of paper with your first name. No matter how big the event, in the year and so of living here, I've never heard of a pre-ordered drink being lost. And the audience is close and animated, checking in with each other on their new projects and exchanging updates on their kids in New York, Chicago, London, San Francisco. http://www.cyranos.org/whoER.html

Last-hour dash to Barnes & Noble to buy the soundtrack for Fiddler on the Roof and The Man of La Mancha - because I can't be in a hometown theatre company that thrives on local committment without thinking of my father, which of course leads me to buy the Broadway soundtracks for the musicals that he once years ago produced with a bunch of fellow New England accents in the Willamette Valley of the 1970's. To dream, the impossible dream....

And, home, to end my adventure with the dolce of a long, latenight phonecall to J comparing and relaying our days' bounties of tales and characters.

[as a side note, my cookbooks and my pans are all packed in boxes (except, of course, for the skillet in which I am making my daily dinner of poached eggs) - some still in Anchorage, but some already shipped out - so there was no new cookbook nor any morning foray to purchase the ingredients for a new recipe. soon, though. soon. soon, my belongings will be unpacked all in one place, and i'll be able to cook and post.]

a dash of clarification

2005-10-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

I was a bit misleading in my last post about the approach of winter's darkness.

Re-reading it, I realized that I make it sound sudden or ominous. It's actually more of a gradual process. In the Spring, each day is marked by the number of minutes of daylight gained; in the fall, the number of minutes lost. It's a part of the early morning news, as well as the weather. And therefore it's a part of my morning ritual of caffeination and NPR. Throughout the year, there is a daily update about what time the sun will rise, what time the sun will set, how many hours and minutes of daylight there will be total, and how many minutes of daylight will be lost/gained from the day before.

The loss of daylight is gradual - just a matter of minutes each day. One would think it would be a matter of adjustment, not shock. But shock is how I seem to register it. First, comes the shock (sometime around August) that it gets dark at all. Then, comes the sound of the geese leaving again. Then comes the realization that it gets dark by 11 p.m., then by 10 p.m., then by 9 p.m., then by 8 p.m., ..... And sometime, around December, the sun will start setting around 3 p.m. It was right about that point that I started to wonder whether it would come back before I permanantly became a biscuit-baking herit with bad hair roots.

But, at that same point, others are rejoicing. I have a good friend whose mood becomes giddy and gleeful with the return of the dark. After the months of sunshine and dourness, the cold and the dark bring back her jovial, playful and mischievious nature to the forefront. I have to assume this cause-and-effect is not unique to her. Maybe it's the extra personal space after all the tourists have departed. Maybe it's the chance to catch up on sleep after the months without nightfall. Maybe its the upcoming holidays.

But there's just too much joviality, playfulness and mischief in these days of frost and sparkling stars for me to make insinuations of ominous darkness.

The Start of a Winter and My New Love of the Softly Scrambled

2005-10-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

If it was just a matter of identifying that new chill in the air, or trying to explain this sudden urge to embrace it with caramel colored sweaters, I'd tell you that it is Fall in Anchorage.

But the ground is definitely much too cool to be walking barefoot, even over those parts of the lawn that get the day's brightest beams of sun. The ground is cold - ice cold. Gloves and hats are a standard accroutement for mornings and nights, and I suppose even a lot of the days. Tour busses have disappeared. Bars have been restored to their core of regulars. Stores are restocking shelves with goods that are more likely to entice locals than thrill tourists. The price of everything is just a little bit cheaper. My neighbor has mowed his lawn for the last time this year. The picnique table has been moved back to its seasonal perch under the overhanging protection of a big Spruce tree.

But even more than that - it can't just be Fall because there's also the realization that we are well into that time of the year when we are waking up in the dark. We know that in a matter of time, we'll also be spending most of our waking hours in the dark too.

Some say that this is the toughest part of living up here - the dark. Part of me agrees. It is tough to wake up and drag yourself to work and know that the 3 hours of sunlight will be long gone before you get to go anywhere near home. It makes you tired. It makes me addicted to bacon. I'll be honest - it's a bit worse than a mere addiction to bacon. There was a time in the depth of my first winter that I was really scared that the sun would never return and that I might permanantly remain a biscuit-baking hermit with bad hair roots. But part of me loves the dark season - and the chance it gives you to slow down, and breathe, and engage in hobbies, and hone one's wit and read your books, and cook big simmering castiron pots of stews, and write long entries in journals. It's a period of nesting, I guess. Building up the reserves of independence and personality.

And, of course, another part of me sort of realizes that the dark makes everyone just a bit crazy, and it's nice to have that kind of license.

Maybe it's the chill. Maybe it's the dark. But it's definitely the start of winter and it's inevitable craving for warm and substantial foods.

This morning I brightened up my pre-sunrise hours with milky tea, Vogue, and two eggs on toasted Alaskan sourdoug - softly scrambled eggs, with a gentle fold-in of my neighbor's last harvest of parsley, fresh pepper, and romano cheese.

It was a very simple breakfast. Eggs on toast. But these were "softly scrambled", in accordance with a trick I read last night in French Food at Home by Laura Calder: lowest possible heat and stirring in the milk (Oregon organic) and a dollop of Tillamook butter just as the eggs were about to set.

One would think that this mid-set addition of milk wouldn't make such a difference from my habit of adding the milk to the eggs before I pour them in the pan. But it did. Such a difference. I also added some of my neighbor's last-harvest-of-the-year parsley. Laura Calder suggested that the heat be so low that it takes 20 minutes of stirring for the eggs to set. And I was enjoying the Vogue so much that I hoped it would take 20 minutes of patiently stirring and eagerly reading. It took a little less, which I suppose is a good thing as it allowed me plenty of time to properly relish the eating part of this morning.

And with my belly warmed up with a new and improved favorite winter traditions of the "softly scrambled" egg on toast, I was delighted to then discover on my way to work that the neighbors have already started turning on their Christmas lights.

[P.S. Note the language - up here, it's a matter of "turning on" the Christmas lights. The neighbors don't take them down in the summer months of perpetual daylight, they simply turn them off until we go back into the majority months of escalating darkness when its the "fairy lights" (I love the British term) that are perpetual.]

And the Fox Jumped Over the Divider

2005-10-05T10:44:00.000-07:00

"Commuting" in Alaska is never dull.

This is so despite the fact that there are very few roads over which one could commute, as well as the fact that all of these few roads will always end up either (a) nowhere - they just stop, or (b) back where you started - they just go around in circles.

On my commute to work today, for example, a red fox jumped over a divider and past the South-bound traffic on Minnesota. Just as happened a few months ago when a moose and her calf ambled over that same divider on their way from the lake on the one side to the lagoon on the other, traffic respectfully stopped both ways until they passed. He was such a deep red color, with a big bushy tail. And a deep, rusty-red color. And he was quick and smooth as he bounded away.

On my commute to work a few weeks ago - on the first day of my first trial, in fact - J. and I had to maneouver around the parking lot of my skyscraper office building to avoid the moose that appeared to suspect that my little subaru was getting too close to her twin calves. Trust me - it is not easy to dodge an irritated mama moose in reverse, especially when the baby moose[s] that she is trying to protect are nibbling on the decorative shrubs next to each potential escape route. Fortunately, J. was driving!

And a few months ago - on my 31st birthday, in fact - J. and I had to emergency-maneouver ourselves and our two dogs into his pickup truck when we were surprised to find a Kodiak Brown Bear ambling towards us. We had "commuted" down a gravelled Kodiak road to a swimming spot for our dogs. (Are there enough words to profess the kind of love that a girl feels for the man who so patiently endeavours to teach a lapdog who dodges puddles how to swim in rivers of glacier melt?) On our "return" commute, we pulled over to the side of the road and watched another Kodiak Brown Bear diving for salmon in the fishing hole from which he had just chased off a bunch of fisher-girls. The chased-off girls weren't angry, just a little wet and muddy. When the bear took over their hole, they just scrambled up a bank and joined us as we admired his underwater fishing skills from the back of J.'s pick-up.

Alive

2005-10-04T16:26:00.000-07:00

Oh, dear friends, don't give up faith on me.

I am alive. I am intending to keep on writing. I do have plans for those 50 pound bags of beans and rice. I'm just a little slow on the type-up and a little too inundated with practicalities for the fanciful flourishings of words.

But I did get to spend a week working remotely. And while there, I did have moments to craft leftover cornbread into a bread pudding with blueberries and carmalized bananas and a ragout of pork braised in milk and rosemary.*And I did get to send J. off to work in the mornings with some old family favorites: hot cornbread, peanutbutter and jam crepe roll-ups, and omelette sandwiches. I welcomed him home with hot "Irish soup" (potatoes, broccoli and onion). I spent a day simmering a bolognese sauce, and we spent a Friday night rolling out pasta dough and baking a lasagne. We spent Saturday night trying to teach ourselves through trial and error how to make a chicken fried steak.

The fete of these moments is that we did so with very little kitchen equpment. J's suff is still "on the barge" and mine is still in Anchorage. So each of our meals were prepared with only a hunter's knife, a $1.50 dollar skillet, a very flimsy pot**, and a box of plastic spoons.

While there, I attended a local art auction - where an entire table was set out with platters of smoked wild salmon. Free and as much as you could eat. But coffee, cookies and slices of cake cost $1 to $5 each.

I went to a poker tournament among friends at a house that overlooked a wide and open vista of tundra - oh, the tundra at fall is an exceptional feast of colors.

And I doubt that the miracle of watching our road be "plowed" will ever stale. The road is a path of mud. Maybe it was once paved. But now it is a wide, pot-holed swathe of traversible mud. Once a week, a tractor drives down to plow it up. Then it turns around and goes back over it to smooth it down. No more potholes....for at least a day.

* No fresh herbs to be had. And only a few to be had dried.

** "Flimsy" is not an understatement. I would have added to the list of meals a blueberry cornbread crumble, but the pan split as I was pulling it out of the oven. A sad end to a dessert I had looked forward to. But I doubt I will be forgetting anytime soon the mad rush of happiness and laughter as blueberries had to be wiped off every wall and counter space in our little kitchen.

Remote Alaska

2005-09-15T15:54:00.000-07:00

J. and I are moving out to The Bush.

He's already there. I'm working my way there....as of today, I have a HUGE bag of rice, a HUGE bag of beans, a HUGE bag of bread flour, and a case of evaporated milk in the trunk of my car, just waiting for me to the find the right box to mail them, and I've got 1/3 of my cookbooks packed into approximately five, quite heavy, boxes that I just need to drag to the post office.

This morning I mailed off to J. a box of cookies, a box of cleaning supplies, a box of J's favorite foods - like Kraft Maccaroni and Cheese, a "yard of beef,"* and six cans of creamed corn, and a box of staples for me - diced tomatoes, olive oil, vanilla extract, tampons and wool socks.

For those dear readers that know me and the way a sudden, two-second, glimpse of a good "reaffirmation of humanity" can thrill me for weeks, there should be little surprise at how much mirth I derive from sending out a 50 pound box full of day-to-day surprises, at the bush mailing rate of $9, to the following address:

[J]
General Delivery
[Remote Town], Alaska

I'm also starting the transition at work to working "remotely." I have to say, that I have never had better water-cooler conversations than those of these days when discussing with colleagues the ins-and-outs of living in a place where roads don't exist and rivers freeze up, where milk costs $9 a gallon and water is tasteless but brown. I get advice on what kind of a snowmachine to buy - as well as advice on what kind and color of snowmachining attire will be most flattering. And because this is Alaska, I also get caribou recipes and lots of advice on how to help my dog transition into a household where he is no longer the only dog. I won't lie. I also get much advice on how to avoid my dear little Puck from getting eaten or frozen. There is little surprise that I am contemplating purchasing for him an artic fleece body suit. Nor is there a surprise that the only reason why I haven't yet done so is because I haven't yet definitively decided whether to buy it in hunter green or midnight blue, as well as because I'm still hoping that I'll be able to persuade J. to allow me to get one in x-large for his dog.

There are also more serious talks. I don't want to be misleading. Talks of scheduling and logistics, like whether or not I can get fast-speed internet hook-up and the best way to get a printer hooked up for Westlaw. But, all in all, I'm quite confident that the opportunity to work "remotely" (in the entire sense of that word) as a corporate/finance lawyer is my slice of utopia. I get paid. There is no professional set-back. But I get to keep hot stews simmering, and keep dogs entertained, and ride snowmachines to grocery stores to pick up mightily-priced, but specifically-selected, ingredients. In fact, I am forced by the most unbendable of budgetary restrictions to have to start making my own bread every day. I even get to ride snowmachines to deliver lunch to the love of my life, perhaps stopping by the airport to pick up a copy of the freshly flown-in newspaper. And, every now and then, I hop on a plane and fly to Anchorage for a litigation appearance at a hearing before the judge or transaction appearance at negotiations.

I am having much fun researching the ingredients that will keep well, and planning and plotting the kinds of meals that I'll cook from them. And I'm even having fun with the fact that we will have few spare pennies for splurging. I think even fresh cabbage may have to be saved for special occasions. I'm reading the old books, with recipes and stories of the gold rush days, and pouring over books about Alaskan native traditions and the wild ingredients that can be foraged for. I'm just really excited, in no small part because I'm looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish when success requires creativity, and humble appreciation and patience and tolerance and, generally, so much more than mere access to cash.

This is the kind of perk that makes it worth a stint in the sweatshop indentured servitude of a large lawfirm. This is a million times more desirable than a partnership at one of those places, and the guarantee of a lifetime of indentured status that comes with it. This is also one of those reassurances of Fate - yet another example of how she likes to remind me that Alaska was the best thing that ever happened to me.

* I don't really think that a "yard of beef" actually constitutes one of J's favorite foods, but it was fun to buy, fun to mail, and certainly fun to blog about. And it's also practical. No refridgeration required until opened.

Insomnia and its Culinary Daydreamings

2005-08-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

My insomnia has returned.

I crawl through my days, my eyes heavy-lidded and framed with dark circles, until I get to finally crawl into bed. I'm so exhausted that it literally is painful to keep my eyes open. And by 10 p.m., I'm out. Exhausted. Sometimes not even making it into pyjamas.

And at 3 a.m., I'm up again.

Still exhausted maybe, but completely and utterly unable to sleep.

I've taken to reading my cookbooks and planning my pantry recipes for when J. and I move out to the bush.

And I think I'm getting some inspiration from the brief glances in the newspaper at the giant vegetables being showcased at the Alaska State Fair.

In any event, I've been employing my Insomniac Hours reading up on Hungarian recipes for cabbage, and marking those ones that I will be likely to find ingredients for when we move.

O mundo da voltas.

2005-08-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

Life is really just a twirling series of batons, isn't?

Suddenly, here I am again - working much and eating out every day, every meal. And yet I somehow manage to always have a stack of dirty dishes in my sink. I pay a doggy daycare to keep my puppy socialized. I go out, I guess,with co-workers and I call these social endeavours "work." I nightmare about briefs, and motions and courtroom deadlines. I wonder how I'm going to make it to a drycleaner. God knows, some magical perpetuation of crisis keeps me incessantly unable to pay my rent on time. I can get cross over the misplacement of a comma. And worse, oh, the worst sign is that I try to squeeze in time to hear how the day is going for the love of my life - and this fundamental aspect of the genuine life is my luxury.

But it's not so bad.

Oh, I have my raging moments with this new professional endeavour.

But somehow even two hours of reprieve can freshen up my enthusiasm and motivation with a spectacular efficiency far greater and more permanent than two months of reprieve with the Manhattan lawyering stresses.

Somehow this stress, here, is always doable.

One year.....I've been here one year. Well....more than a year. A year and change, I guess. Emphassis on the change. Have I just changed? Or is this a maturity? Or is this an epiphany?

Or is this just life?

Oh. Who knows.

I'm working a lot and cooking nothing. (Well - I take the odd middle of the night moment to practice the art of poached eggs and getting more adept at it.) But I hope - and maybe that's what makes this twirl of the baton greater than all the twirls and pizzaz of Manhattan a year and change ago.

Actually, this current twirl is infinitely improved from the whirls of them in Manhattan. I'm madly in love with a man that sends me over-nighted boxes of fiddlehead ferns he foraged during a hike to view bears. I'm contemplating life changes that will require J. and I to invest in a snowmachine so that we can do such day-to-day things as pick up the mail, buy groceries, etc.

I haven't been cooking.

2005-07-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

I haven't been cooking. At all, really. Not even noodles. Not even tea or coffee. Really. No cooking.

My fridge is pretty much empty of edible foods, but quite full of the non-edible kinds that were once edible but now need to be deposited in the garbage. I don't so deposit, I guess, because I haven't gone to the grocery store enough in the past two months to replenish my supply of grocery/garbage bags.

My house? It's a pit.

My dog? Neurotic.

My spirit? Alternating between scared and exhillerated.

I left BigLaw, maybe for good this time. And decided to see just how much gumption is left in me after, in effect, 8 years of feeling enslaved to it. So I'm busy - but it's the good kind of busy. The superficialities of my life are in complete disarray - but J. and I talk fun developments and upcoming adventures, I like my job, I like my co-workers, and oh! do I like freedom. And I even like that I'm busy - maybe because this is the voluntary kind of busy, not the indentured kind.

And what makes it all sort of laughable, is that amdist the squalor of the superficialities of my current existence, I have had non-stop guests. Every night that I've been home, with the exception of maybe one or two brief respites to quickly wash a few towels and the spare sheets for the next entourage, indeed - even on the mights when I wasn't home because - I have had guests. J's friend, that told me how to make a beaver roast on my engine when I drive to Barrow and showed me how to roast a camus bulb. British guests travelling in a 70's camper picked up down in Seattle, that arrived in Anchorage as friends of friends and left as treasured friends of mine. J's parents (for whom I shuffled all aside to be able to greet them in my home with a cast iron skillet of chicken and dumpling at 1 a.m., after their 7 hours of travel, but who work prevented me from really visiting and I do express an undiminishable amount of guilt for the fact that I dropped them off on the sidewalk outside of the airport....or actually, the fact that I did so for work reasons). The old college crush of a dear college friend, travelling with a different girl who arrived in Alaska as his girlfriend and, I hear, left it as a finacee. Lawyers from Seattle who waited too long to reserve a hotel room. Friends from Alaska who needed a temporary place to crsh.

It has been a very busy summer.

But it wasn't a cooking one.

Having said that, I did go to Kodiak twice during the month of July.

First, I went for my birthday - I turned 31 on Abercrombie beach, in J's arms, in front of a roaring bonfire made out of driftwood, eating Chinese takeout, and watching our dogs engage in a playful game of tag with a roving band of otters. This trip to Kodiak included, actually, many momentous moments - including a very close, scary in that post-event exhillerating kind of way, encounter with a Kodiak Brown Bear and wonderful decisions made jointly with J.

Second, I went out the other weekend with a big bag of beef hash that I had made for J. before the professional madness kicked in. J's friend came over for brunch, and we made a day of gorging on beef and sausage hash (last minute need to extend the portions), poached eggs, and coffee; resting from the feast of it; donning borrowed crab fisherman gear to take the dogs out for a rain-drenched romp on the beach; watching a $5 matinee of War of the Worlds; napping; and dining on halibut sandwiches at Henry's.

And I did get to make chicken and dumplings for J's parents - the leftovers frozen overnight and packed with some scones, bierocks and moose ragu for them to deliver to Kodiak.

So....little on the cooking front, but much on practicing other arts and necessities of living.

Introducing Puck

2005-06-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

.....whilst teaching myself (through trial and error) how to blog.

p.s. Hopefully I've just uploaded a picture of Puck. And with the assumption that I've managed to do so successfully, I feel like I now need to explain that having a picture of my dog taken with Santa Claus was an impromptu opportunity, not a planned-out and scheduled whim. Although he is lap-sized, and even though he is seen here on Santa's lap, I'd like to assure all dear readers that (a) he is quite a solid, rugged, yeomanly Alaskan dog, and (b) no - I am not one of "those" kinds of dog owners. I just happened to be passing by a place that was taking pictures of dogs with Santa at a time when I was getting a lot of requests for pictures of Puck and Alaska but didn't own a camera. (For what it's worth, Puck was quite irate that he had to be dragged away from the huskies and newfies to sit on this stranger's lap while a woman stood in front of him clicking away at a camera and squeeking random dog toys to get him to look away from the dogs standing in line.)

Now that's Puck's yeomanly status, and my rational dog ownership, have been established and defended, I have to say that I'm looking forward to adding pictures. I think this is going to be fun!

Impromptu Dog Parks

2005-06-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

Around midnight, Puck woke me up with an urgent whine. I tried to ignore him. He licked my face. But I rolled over. He hopped out of the bed, sat on the floor and stared at me. I knew he was staring, but I kept my eyes squeezed closed so as to avoid encouraging his determination to wake me up. He just kept staring for awhile. Every now and then he'd give a little whimpering wine of frustration at my refusal to get up. After several minutes, he finally barked. Just once or twice. Just enough to make sure that I was aware that he was serious about getting up.

So I got up, put on a sweatshirt, and kind of stumbled my way up the stairs.

He dashed out the door the second I had turned the doorknob to the front door.

It took me awhile to dash out after him. I think I was still half asleep and I had to find a pair of sandals. But once I did, I realized the reason for the urgency. The neighbors were out. Their frisbees were whirling back and forth. The dogs were in control of the street. And there was no surprise that Puck was part of their antics.

It was a Wednesday night/Thursday morning. Around midnight. And Puck was frolicking about in the sun with a gaggle of big, big dogs chasing frisbees and getting his encouragement and praise from neighbors who knew exactly who he was.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't get the game of frisbee, having only been "socialized" to catch balls and twigs, but there certainly is a sense of elated contentment standing under the Midnight Sun chatting with the neighbors about their summer solstice hikes and parties and watching one's little dog sporting about as athletically and eagerly as the neighborhood's big Alaskan dogs.

We'll be working on the frisbee catching though.

Grilled Buffalo Steaks, Moose Ragu, Pork Bierocks, and Beef Hash

2005-06-21T13:18:00.000-07:00

In thinking back to my meals over this weekend, I realize that I don't really eat vegetables any more. Or fruit. I like vegetables and fruit. But somehow I just don't seem to eat them anymore.

I eat a lot of meat.

In thinking back a little further, I realize that one of my first observations about the very first Alaskan I ever met, my dear college roommate, was that she never ate fruits or vegetables.

And while I'm happy to adopt any and all characteristically Alaskan habits, I recognize that I need to resume eating fruits and vegetables.

So I intentionally went home for lunch, walked Puck around the block, made myself an arucula salad using the arucula I bought this weekend at the Anchorage Farmer's Market (lemon and olive oil dressing), and ate it outside at the picnique table while I read an essay by John Haines and Puck lolled on his back in a sun patch and chewed twigs.

It's the summer solstice and the 10 month landmark of dating J. - and it's sunny and blue-skied, and I ate a salad, and I feel motivated by anticipation of future developments that do incline me towards cartwheels of glee, and Puck is adored by the neighbors for his faithful retrieval of golf balls and badminton birdies, and my neighbor's dad told me I should be very proud for raising such a fine dog.

Oh, que vita dolce!

Landmarks and Notes

2005-06-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

My car dealer just called me to wish me a happy one year anniversary with Sassy Su - my cherry red subaru with a moonroof.

Three days ago, Puck celebrated his first Alaskaversary.

Two weeks ago, I celebrated mine.

As for the notes, J. took back to Kodiak: a bag of Kodiak Carbonnade, a bag of pluot graham scones, a bag of oatmeal scones, a tray of macarroni and cheese with Idaho semillon and onion, a couple fiddlehead and crab quiches (in individual-portion sizes), and a hefty slab of strudel (peach and blackberry, with a lacing of Oregon homemade wildberry freezer jam to supplement the inevitable lack of branch-ripened sweetness in the peaches that are selected with the purpose of surviving the shipment to Alaska).

In one week, we will have dated for 10 months, but I've known that I wanted to date him since the day after my first Alaskaversary.

Discovering the Tenderloin

2005-06-15T12:12:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in Iowa.

I'm not quite sure where to start describing my weekend spent in Iowa....meeting J's family and friends? being greeted in Elkhart with a jumbo-sized bag of popcorn and an endless lawn sparkling with countless fireflies (that everyone else called "lightening bugs")? the farmhouse at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by lush oak trees and growing corn fields? the cake, and strawberries, and Blue Bunny vanilla ice-cream and coffee that greeted me at this farmhouse at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by lush oak trees and growing corn fields? skeet-shooting over bean fields? biking To Ware and Back? the pork ribs and rhubarb pie (J's grandma's recipe made by J's dad) that I feasted on the night before I biked To Ware and Back?

But this is/was intended to be a food blog, so I'll focus on merely describing my discovery of the Iowa "Tenderloin."

Delicious.

A slice of boneless pork loin - pounded, breaded, fried and served in the middle of a bun.

J's mom, having correctly observed her son's nostalgia for the tenderloin and her son's girlfriend's newly blossomed addiction to them, asked if there was any place in Alaska to get them. J. shook his head, winked at me, and announced we'd just have to learn how to make them from scratch ourselves.

I've already printed off 4 or so recipes to start from.

Seymour Lake "Pandowdy, of sorts"

2005-06-03T11:29:00.000-07:00

"Shoo fly pie and apple pandowdy. Makes your eyes light up, your tummy say 'howdy.'" --Hit song from 1946

J. and I cooked together this weekend.

Our feat was a pandowdy.

Given that J. was in town, and given that we were cooking together and given that we had a whole weekend of eating our meals simultaneously, forgive me if I'm inclined to say that "[o]ur FETE was a pandowdy."

In any event, I would be more accurate to call it a "pandowdy, of sorts." And I should probably be quite clear about this: there was no apple in this pandowdy - I just can't do apple desserts until autumn/fall when the orchards are crowned with "U-Pick" signs.

Rather, J and I made a blueberry peach pandowdy.

Actually, in all honesty, it was a blueberry peach pie, baked in a ceramic pie plate, with the bottom crust rolled over like a country gallette and a top crust fashioned out of various shapes of moose and whales placed to frolic in the middle. The blueberries and peaches boiled over the moose and whale shapes. As a result, it came out looking like a pandowdy, which are made by breaking up and submerging parts of the top crust with a fork halfway through the baking of a pie.

Hence the pandowdy name.

We took it to my firm's summer picnique at a co-worker's cabin, and made a day of feasting, laughing, boating, and gatherin' 'round the firepit on Seymour Lake.

Hence, the Seymour Lake Pandowdy.

*recipe: The filling can be made with the usual hodgepodge determined solely by availability - a bag of peaches (which J. peeled and sliced), a handful of frozen Northwestern blueberries (very important to support the sustainable farmers and recognizable farms), a handful of sugar, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a dash of cardamom, sprinkle of salt, grated peel of half a lemon, juice of half a lemon, a couple finger-pushes of cornstarch and a safety dash of flour. The crust was made with 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup of chilled butter, salt and 6 tbsp of water. It was mixed with a pastry cutter and chilled for an hour. Then it was rolled out rough and choppy. I am a country girl at heart - I like my pies to show that the ingredients were gingerly selected, but the pie itself was assembled with bravado - not shy devotion. I divvied up the crust so that most of it was allotted to the bottom crust, which I rolled out especially wide so that I could fold the edge over the filing. I cut out the whale and moose shapes with some Alaskan cookie cutters I've been so eager to use. I put a few chunks of butter over the filling before topping it with the moose and whale crusts. Then I baked it at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, turned the heat down to 350 degrees, and baked it until the filling was bubbly and hot. We let it cool in the back seat of the car on the 2 hour drive to Seymour Lake (of course, that would have been merely a 1 hour and fifteen minute drive, if anyone else but me was driving).

On Bridget's Wedding and the Sentimentalities of the California Avocado

2005-05-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

Bridget is married.

Bridget who is one of the most brilliant people that I have ever met, who loves Star Trek and X-files and debating the effect of Supreme Court decisions on the vitality of the 4th Amendment, who claps her hands with exuberant animation, who falls down flights of stairs to the purple applause of perpetual bruises, who is fundamentally good, wholesome and a social raucous of a time, and who has been one of my very close friends for the past 8 years, is married.

And I have never in those 8 years seen her more content than on the day of her wedding.

Bridget glowed. The sun beamed. Los Angeles was clear and low-80's. Friends reunioned and youthful irreverance took a mature lead. And her old circles feasted with her new circles and we all shared a joy of watching a wonderful person and her loved person carving their niche in each overlapping pageantry of our private circles of history.

****

For an Alaskan perspective on my first trip to the Outside since January, I am still stunned, amazed, and exhillerated by the experience of, nostaligic for, the incredibly fresh guacomole I ate the morning of her wedding (with crab cakes) and the morning after (with quesadillas). Oh! I think the taste of fresh California avocadoes really is one of the most luxurious and delightful perks of a lifetime. It's maybe not the appropriate memory for a wedding celebration, except that it does underscore the circles of history that weddings always epitomize for me....but this guacomole, on this fresh-produce starved tongue, reminded me of how my family prepped for the wit and irreverance of my Great Uncle Gene's wake by stopping at his house after the funeral to pick the avocadoes from his tree one last time. We cried. We laughed. We tossed back and forth the avocado-picker-basket. We lifted the babies high and helped them wield the avocado-picker-basket. We drank a "First of the Day" with the neighbor who came to regale us with stories of Great Uncle Gene winking at the ladies when he picked up his newspaper in the morning. We encouraged my grandma to share the stories of their childhood mischief. We filled my grandma's town car with the bounty, and I flew back east with my avocado. I ate it, I believe, with some Maryland Blue Crab, a few days later in a private bout of thankful nostalgia - thinking that Uncle Gene would have urged me to buy a bottle of Jack Daniels and invite a crowd. The more, the mischief.

For an Oregon girl, I do have a lot of memories connected to the stun, amazement, exhilleration and nostalgia for a good, ripe California avocado.

Love is

2005-05-25T20:14:00.000-07:00

an airmail delivery of a box of fiddlehead fern tips that my boyfriend picked for me while trecking about Kodiak.

I swoon and my face is permanently streched into a wide and utterly ecstactic grin.

Pantry Strudel: Alaskan Girls' Gab-n-Grub

2005-05-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

Making new girlfriends might just be the hardest part of any move.

It's not hard to make friends that are girls, or girls that could be friends, or even, for that matter, acquaintances. Indeed, it's quite easy to make girl-acquaintances. But there really is something difficult about establishing the trust and the interest and the curiousity and the loyalty of a good girlfriend after a move to a new city.

When I moved to Alaska, I thought I'd be moving closer to my oldest girlfriends, gathered as they predominately are down in Seattle. And I was quite confident that I would have persuaded all of my girlfriends to fill my calendar with winter visits.

But things just didn't work that way. On the very same day I moved from Alaska, my best friend moved from Seattle to Manhattan. And the winter visits didn't occur with the frequency that I had anticipated. In fact, they didn't occur at all. (On that note, I am probably the only one surprised that most have announced the intention to visit, but a determination that it not be in the winter.) And there is also the factor to consider that my original travel budget, which I thought would fund a new epoch of visits to Seattle, has been re-directed to finance trips to Kodiak and Out to weddings.

So I haven't really had renewed proximity to the tried and true girlfriends that I had anticipated. And, I guess there is something about the Alaska winter that makes the Outside feel a world away. At a certain point, anything outside Alaska feels far and long, no matter how many actual hours the journey would require. So I didn't get to spend much time with my girlfriends and sometimes it feels like I am far from getting to do so.

But I'm making some Alaskan girlfriends, and I find this quite exciting. An achievement, as well as another indication of Fate's general blessing on this move to Alaska.

Recently, an Alaskan girlfriend threw a "Girls' Gab-n-Grub." I knew it was going to be a fun event for me when it was simply assumed that I'd be there even though I never responded, rsvp'd or demonstrating any of the other respectable ways of showing gratitude and allowing a hostess a full and fair opportunity to prepare for her party. I knew I was on the brim of establishing a good circle, when my consistently poor communication but fervent committment inspired much witty and merry banter, not frustration or irritation.

But before I had a chance to confirm this suspicion at the Gab-n-Grub, I had only 2 minutes between leaving work and the start of the party to prepare my contribution to the feast, which meant it was the perfect opportunity to whip up an ever-loved Pantry Strudel..........

1. Rush home from work. Wash feet or switch to shoes with socks. Alaskans don't wear shoes in the house, ever. So one must always be prepared to walk about barefoot as a sign of courtesy.

2. Take out frozen blueberries and blackberries from the freezer. Toss in a handful of each into a bowl. Toss a couple of spoonfuls of cornstarch and sugar in. Toss in a dash of salt and liberal sprinkles of cardamom and cinnamon. A spoonful of flour may also be good. Snap a lid onto the bowl. Put the covered bull in a plastic shopping bag. Put a handful of frozen cranberries into a ziploc bag - toss this into the plastic shopping bag too.

3. Take out the puff pastry from the box. Pull out one of the sheets of pastry, wrap it in aluminum foil, and put in the plastic shopping bag.

4. Take out a chocolate bar and a bottle of birch syrup from the cabinet. Put in the plastic shopping bag.

5. Debate whether or not to bring your dog.

6. Drive to the party.

7. Drink beer from a growler or wine from exorbitantly priced bottles. Even if you drink the beer - keep an eye out for someone opening up a gerwertzaminner or champagne. While meeting everyone, casually prowl around the kitchen for a saucepan. Pour the cranberries out of their bag into the saucepan, toss in some water and some sugar - and some gertie or champagne if you can. Boil it for awhile. When the cranberries are soft, smush them, and let it boil a little longer. Turn off the heat. Go back to being fully engaged in the banter.

8. Eat - taking bites of dinner between guffaws of laughter and exchanges of witty irreverances.

9. When dinner is pretty much done, and everyone is lolling around with full bellies and nourished wit, pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees, grab one of the empty bottles of wine, pull out the puff pastry sheet, and roll it out flat.

10. Spoon the cranberry mush over the rolled out pastry sheet.

11. Un-clip the bowl with the corn-starched berries, and spread those out.

12. Borrow a meat cleaver, and bang up the chocolate bar until it's in little pieces. This also works at adding to the crescendo of the jokes. Sprinkle the little pieces all over the rolled out pastry sheet and berries.

13. Dribble the birch syrup over it all.

14. Fold in the side edges, and then carefully roll it up and pinch the seams.

15. Put it on a bakesheet and bake for 30 minutes or so.

16. Let it cool at first, if you are allowed to.

17. Serve - standing up around the stove. There's just something extra fabulous about irreverant conversations with girlfriends, next to a stove, eating chocolate.

Geographic Variations on the Couple Skate

2005-05-23T18:45:00.000-07:00

I had lunch at the outdoor deck at the Snow Goose last Friday.

Anchorage was blue-sky'd, sunny, warm and brimming with its sudden explosion of blooms, blossoms and Alaskans exuberant with the opportunities to finally expose arms and legs to the sun again. After a week of preparing for, and two hours of participating in, my very first mediation settlement discussions ever, lunch needed to be outside. And in a city that has such a richness of vantage points and breath-taking views, there is a remarkable poverty of places with outdoor seating for those days when outdoor seating is the only acceptable option. And so it was to the Snow Goose that I went with a colleague.

The Snow Goose is a pretty straight-forward place. It's a brew-pub. Serves food - salads, burgers, pizzas, etc. But there is something quite Alaskan about it too. Something more than the tourist-friendly references to salmon and halibut on the menu. I think it may have more to do with the combination of the outdoor roof-patio, an expansive and million-dollar view, esquisite air (seriously), a general social wit honed by winter's humours but radiant in summer's splendours, tables that can expand to fit as many seats as can be pulled away from other tables, hearty welcomings for each arrival of a friend, and Alaskan-brewed ales served in pitchers and drunk from plastic glasses. And it has nostaligic value for me: my first pop-tart maneouver in last summer's season-long endeavour to give a permanant form to my instantaneous crush on J. took place there - I feigned a need for everyone in our bar review course to meet each other, but I was really just trying to find a way to approach J. without giving it all away with my all too easy blushings.

Anyways, it was to the Snow Goose that my fellow associate and I felt compelled to go to celebrate our power-team performance at my very first mediation.

And it was at the Snow Goose that I discovered that my colleague used to couple-skate backwards. What I mean to say, is that my fellow associate explained to me that at her childhood rolling skating rink, the "cool" guys skated backwards during the couple skate. Indeed, she wouldn't couple-skate with any guy unless and until he could do the couple-skate backwards. I thought that was weird. She thought it was lame to couple-skate, as the "cool" ones did at my childhood rolling skating rink, side-to-side.*

Maybe that's also why I think of the Snow Goose as a pretty straight-forward place: it can be the scenic stage for a lifetime's most important poptart antic AND it can be a sporty background for toning down legal adrenalines by debating whether it is more cool to couple-skate side to side or with the guy skating backwards.

* It's probably worth noting that we both grew up in Oregon. Obviously, of course, in different regions of Oregon - I hail from one of the side-to-side regions; she, from the South. But it's those Oregon roots, I'm sure, that can explain to the Eastly Incredulous why two Alaskan attorneys could have the most effective lunch of a client/matter discussing the various pros/cons of the side-to-side versus front-to-front of the timeless couple-skate.

Progress and Development

2005-05-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of issues going on up here.

I'll keep my opinions on them to myself. Except for this one: I really, truly can't believe that after barb-wiring, and dam'ing, and efficiencying our farmlands until the family farm is disappearing and sustainable practices and tradition are not profitable enough, and "improving" the run of rivers, and razing, and strip-malling, and sub-dividing, and condo'ing.....after so much of our country's most beautiful and engaging places have either been plastered under commercialism, squeezed into a bottom line on a corporate spreadsheet or quarantined into ever shrinking refuges....a majority of Americans still believe that "development" is progress.

Ok - it's one opinion, and a plea.

Consider that 200 years ago, our continent was wilderness, yet today so few Americans have ever seen true wilderness. Including myself. And within the next few years, we'll be drilling and building roads through our country's last opportunities to experience the bounty of open space that people once believed could never be used up.

I know that there are a lot of issues today. A lot of things that really, truly matter. And I recognize that each person has to assess and prioritize them on his own and pursuant to his own set of priorities. But what is happening up here - what could happen......it matters. It really, truly matters.

Here's an interesting article from the USA Today, that finds a way to underscore some of the ways it matters to everyone regardless of their physical proximity to or interest in Alaska. On a side note - the author of this article spoke at the Alaska Bar Convention - about bears.

***

Alaska thanks you
By Nick JansWed May 18, 6:25 AM ET

As you stand at the gas pump this summer, think of Alaska. No, not as a fantasy to escape the heat or the price of your latest fill-up. Instead, consider that each spin of the pump's meter means money slurping north, straight from your wallet.

If you live in Texas, Georgia, Florida or New Jersey, that steady siphon is a certainty - your gas tax dollars are funding a procession of lavish road and bridge projects thousands of miles away, including a pile of boondoggles that we Alaskans don't need, and that many of us don't want.
It's a fact: For every dollar we Alaskans pay in at-the-pump gas taxes, we get $6.60 back, thanks to you generous, unwitting donors.

According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a non-partisan watchdog group in Washington, that breaks down to $1,150 for every Alaskan in "earmark" funding for in-state projects alone, 25 times what the average American garners for his or her home state.

How could this be? Alaska is so rich that residents not only pay no state income tax, but we get individual yearly checks as our share of the oil wealth. Why should your gas taxes, which are supposed to fill potholes in your local interstate or repair your decaying bridges, end up so far from home?

Bringing it home

Simple. We have Don Young. You don't.

As chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, our lone congressman has incredible clout in determining where federal funding (provided by your tax dollars) ends up. The six-year, $295 billion behemoth of a transportation bill was approved in the House of Representatives and easily passed in the Senate on Tuesday. Young has bragged that the bill is "stuffed like a turkey" with high-dollar projects earmarked for his home state, totaling $721 million. In fact, Young is so fond of the bill that he named it TEA-LU, after his wife, Lu.

Here's a sampling of projects for Alaska funded by the Transportation Equity Act:

• $223 million to build a bridge nearly as long as the Golden Gate and higher than the Brooklyn Bridge, to connect the town of Ketchikan (population 8,900) to the city airport on Gravina Island (population 50). Currently, the link is provided by a 10-minute ferry ride that has worked for years. This proposed project won Young a "Golden Fleece Award" from Taxpayers for Common Sense - an award he has told supporters he cherishes.

• $200 million for another "bridge to nowhere," which would lead from Anchorage, the state's largest city, to a rural port that has one tenant and a handful of homes. Total cost for the project has been estimated at upwards of $1.5 billion. Not even the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce wants it.

• $15 million to begin work on a 68-mile, $284 million access road to Juneau, the state capital, even though a majority of area residents have said they would prefer improving service in the existing ferry system instead. The proposed road would compromise so many ecologically sensitive areas that the Environmental Protection Agency, in an extremely unusual move, has stated its opposition to the project.

Of course, the ultimate beneficiaries are a handful of corporate interests (such as Couer Alaska, which is developing a large mine on the path of the proposed Juneau road), private individuals, timber companies and Young himself. By proving once again that he's Alaska's sugar daddy, the congressman cements his position for another term in office.

Meanwhile, transportation infrastructure across the nation suffers from neglect: More than 150,000 bridges, 7,500 miles of interstate highway and more than 28,000 miles of other roads are in immediate need of repair.

When both the arch-conservative Cato Institute and the ultra-green Sierra Club preach the same message - fix what's here before we build more - you know there's a problem.

Young is unfazed by any opposition, the essential unfairness of his actions, or the fact that he's squandering federal taxes at a time of record deficits.

"We make no apologies," he says. "If I hadn't done fairly well for our state, I'd be ashamed of myself."

His solution to budgetary shortfalls in TEA-LU? Rather than cut back, he actually proposed raising federal gas taxes further, though the notion failed for lack of support.

While Young may be the poster child for this new wave of tax-and-spend Republicans, he has plenty of company on both sides of the aisle. For example, Democratic Sens. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Robert Byrd of West Virginia share a legendary ability to bring home the bacon. And according to the watchdog organization Citizens Against Government Waste, Young's fellow Alaskan in the Senate, Republican Ted Stevens, consistently has led the entire congressional delegation in his ability to pack on the pork.

'Oinkers' in Congress

Paying homage to the senior Stevens' success, Young once told an Alaska audience, "I want to be a little oinker, myself."

The fact is, most legislators want to be oinkers. Their constituents expect them to use every shred of influence and power to direct every possible dollar of funding home, as if their political lives depend on it - which they do. Don Young isn't any different or worse; he's just better positioned.

Finally, the problem far transcends the boundaries of TEA-LU, the excesses of which are mere symptoms of a deeply flawed funding process in dire need of reform. Even funding for the war on terrorism, with national security at stake, is tainted by abuse and waste, as are armed services appropriations; congressmen fight with the same tooth-and-nail ardor over useless weapons systems, bases and facilities as they do over funding for bridges and bus stops.
The antiquated system of earmarking pork barrel projects based on seniority or clout is, in itself, a costly bridge to nowhere - one we can no longer afford. A fair formula for distributing federal funds is certainly within reach; all that would have been required to drastically cut and reform TEA-LU was a simple amendment to cull all earmarks. Despite a few modest rumblings, nothing was done. Unless action is taken in the final conference stage, it'll be up to the president to carry through his threat of a veto of this monument to waste and excess, sending it back to the House, back into Young's lap.

Focus down, and think about it next time you're standing at the gas pump, all you donors. That steady gurgle is the sound of your money draining away.

Alaskan writer Nick Jans is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors. He also is author of the forthcoming book The Grizzly Maze, to be published in July.

Affirmations of Fate and the Tale of the Purple-Cross-Eyed-Sun

2005-05-21T16:12:00.000-07:00

For twelve years, I have been convinced that I got the wrong tattoo.

I don't mean that twelve years ago I chose the wrong tattoo. I mean that twelve years ago, I left a tattoo shop in Spokane, Washington with a completely different tattoo than what I had painstakingly chosen. The error was only partially my own: people who are emphatically and unreasonably scared of needles, and hence simply are incapable of watching the tattoo be applied, should not get a tattoo. However, a tattoo artist that spends 2 hours sitting with you helping you choose a tattoo probably should not inadvertently put on the wrong tattoo. Nor should such tattoo artist get flustered when his error is discovered mid-tattoo because you say something so innocent as "Why would anyone ever tattoo a face onto their body - it would be so eery," such that the face he is at that moment permanantly and mistakingly tattooing on your body ends up cross-eyed. Nor, probably, should the friend who persistantly encouraged you to get the tattoo to cure your fear of needles have tried to save the day by persistantly insisting that the face would be invisible if the tattoo was just filled in with purple.

And, well, just generally, probably no one should have a purple, cross-eyed sun, for any reason, tattooed on the left side of the abdomen, just below the jean line but outside of the bikini line.

Hence, dear reader, I'm sure you can appreciate how for twelve years I have been called upon by old friends to relay to new friends the great and ridiculous story of the purple cross-eyed sun on my belly. And why, for twelve years, I have earnestly thought that I had the wrong tattoo.

But last week I went to my very first trial ever, and while I waited for a partner to clear security I looked up and realized that the Anchorage courthouse is decorated with several glass sculptures of purple suns with wide grins.

Granted, these purple suns with wide grins are not cross-eyed, but they are pieces of Native Alaskan art imported from The Bush, installed in front of airy windows, and the Alaska sunlight beams through them.

Just as they were, the discovery of these purple Alaskan suns with wide grins pretty much confirmed to me at that moment that Fate is a whimsical lady, but boy is she determined to make her point.

Public Displays [of long distance] Angst

2005-05-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

I spent twenty-four hours mired in the pits of all the reasons why, statistically, most long-distance relationships don't work.

But what I believe was most frustrating, of all those things that made those twenty-four hours so miserably frustrating, was that I had spent the previous week frolicking in that jubilation of reunion when one gets to spend a significant chunk of time with the long-distance love.

I don't know how to resolve the distance and I seem to be parched for some assurance that it will be resolved. And I'm cognisant that perhaps I might need more assurance than I would otherwise due to some novel conviction that the distance must be resolved, or the plan for resolution be finalized, before I head into another winter. I can't fathom, actually, another winter of distance. And I think maybe that this complete and utter absence of imagination might be rendering me a little stringent and stubborn during this summer.

It was truly wonderful to see J. I adore him. And I find myself literally beaming with some ridiculous grin whenever we are together. I beamed with a grin AND pride, and oh! yes, a burst of fresh optimism, when someone commented at the airport on what a "great couple" we make while we were standing in line for the first latte's of the day. Somehow, however, as my time with J. approached its conclusion, as our plane was flying over Yakutat and Cordova, I felt my teeth grinding, my mind whirling and my shoulders tensing. Maybe the elephant in the room was growing, exponentially, the closer we came to separating without a plan or even discussion of a plan. I think maybe I was ready to fight for a plan. Or maybe I was ready to withdraw from the world and marinate my frustrations in a bout of unsocial self-pity because there was no plan, served with a side of bacon.

But I didn't withdraw. I ended up fighting with J. in public. In parking lots, to be more specific. Though the fights had the opposite effect - making us both wonder why we'd want to plan to be together. And then he left. I was so miserably beligerant by the time of the departure, that none of the scones, or the ziploc bags of Kodiak Carbonnade, nor the trays of Mac & Oregon Cheddar with Idaho Semillon left my freezer for Kodiak.

I eventually calmed myself down last night - with a pizza from Bear's Tooth and an evening of watching the Bachelor with girlfriends while our dogs frolicked with their various moose toys.

But I must still be angry, because I have no motivation to cook extras.

And I must be sad. Very, very sad. Because I have no motivation to cook.

Breakfasting with John Haines

2005-05-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

"The way we live nowadays seems intended to prevent closeness to anything outside this incubator world we have built around us....It seems all too characteristic of us as a people that we tend to limit and confine ourselves, to specialize and restrict....If Alaska is the last frontier it may be because it represents the last full-scale attempt in North America to built a society worthy of human life, worthy of the claims made for America at the beginning. "
John Haines, Living Off the Country

It has been a little over a year since I discovered Alaska's poet, John Haines, in a poem dedicated to him by Alaska's Fiddling Poet, Ken Waldman.

It has been ten days since I was gifted an opportunity to hear John Haines read his poetry.

And since that reading, it has been ten days of treasuring a morning ritual of waking early to bake scones (whilst listening to NPR), fixing a large mug of milky tea, and spending a good hour reading and reflecting on the opinions, and perspectives, and background of John Haines.

It's hard to convey the genius of John Haines with mere snippets of paragraphs or sentences. But it is a genius that is rendered all the more poignent for the slow steeping and steady polishing of his thoughts, of the roots of these thoughts in solitude and a desire for earnest living, and of their wings in their humble magnitude in these times of frenzied and self-consumed superficialities. His is a voice that is earnest, and tested, patient but aloof. He speaks to give voice, not to be heard. Whitman'esque, in that he can prompt a personal renaissaince, Thoreau'esque in his gumption, Poe'esque in the voice reflective of a nurtured solitude, and, generally, I believe, today's finest example of the transcendalitst ambitions which inspired so many good things in America's historical renaissance. And I find him to be a captivating breakfast companion, not least because I can imagine how he might scoff at my fluffy, cozy, hyperbolic description of the rugged and real work he sets out to do.

Today, I breakfasted on graham scones with pluots and meyer lemons (one for me, one stashed in the freezer for J. together with the previous scone endeavours of this John Haines-inspired scone baking phase, and 6 plunked into the bike basket and pedalled to the office ), a mug of milky Earl Grey, and reflected on this:

"Digging in the soil, picking away at rock, uprooting stumps, I became in time a grower of things sufficient to feed myself and another...I learned that is is land, place, that makes people, provides for them the possibilities they will have of becoming something more than mere lumps of sucking matter...Few of us these days are really residents anywhere, in the deep sense of that term. We live off the surface of things and places, the culture as well as the land; ours is a derivative life: we take what we find without thought, without regard for origin or consequence, unaware for the most part that the resources, both natural and cultural, are fast diminishing."
John Haines, Living Off the Country

Graham Scones with Pluots, Meyer Lemon and Cardamom

1. Mix 1 cup flour, 2 tsps of baking powder, and 1/2 tsp of salt.

2. Mix in 1 cup graham flour and 1/3 cup granulated sugar.

3. Cut in 1/2 cup of cold butter with a pastry cutter, until the size of spring peas.

4. Mix in the zest of lemon, juice of 1/2 a lemon, cardamom, cinnamon, and two diced up pluots (skinless).

5. Mix in a dollop of sour cream.

6. Mix together an egg and 1/2 cup of orange, banana and pineapple juice. Pour into flour mixture and mix lightly. The dough will be sticky and a little wet.

7. Place dough on a floured surface and knead just enough to get it into a cohesive ball shape. Pat out into a flat circle. Cut in half, then in fourths, then in eights (i.e. to make eight triangles from the circle). Place on a silpat mat on a baking tray. Brush with the leftovers of the egg and juice (which such mixture has been expanded with a bit of milk).

8. Bake in a pre-heated 450 degree oven for 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

Based on the graham scone recipe of the Domestic Goddess.

Galette's Budget

2005-05-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I was invited out to a friend's cabin on Big Lake to celebrate the melting of the last vestiges of ice and the pulling-out of the boats and hammocks from the winter shed.

Puck and I were both invited.

To say an earnest thank you in a way that would survive the drive to Big Lake, I decided to bake a galette and set off to New Sagaya with Puck (he likes to be tied up next to the door and basque in the attentions of the cashiers and shoppers while I peruse the aisles) to buy the ingredients. There were apples, but that seemed to staid for such a bright, warm morning. There were oranges, but that seemed too citrus for a barbeque next to a recently melted Alaskan lake. And there were mangoes, from the Phillipines, which seemed....Well, it tempted me to relive my Brazil days by buying a sack of them, propping myself up in some sunny perch, and making a morning out of "chupar"ing mangoes, which means they seemed too nostalgic for the humble magnitude of a friend's cabin in a contemporary adventure.

So I picked up a sack of "freshly imported" pluots.

The first shock was the cost: $25 for the fruit alone, $50 total. (I had to buy cream and sour cream and a sack of organic flour, some fancy sugar and, because there were no cheap ones that day, a package of "fresh" Meyer lemons. And Puck was due for a new bag of Yummy Chummy salmon treats - so I bought him two bags. This sun - it inspires high living and generous times.)

The second rose from the research: pluot's aren't imported - they are a domestic ambition to merge plums and apricots.

But they are good. They were "fresh."

And one know that he or she is solidly on the path of a life well led when they can show up at a friend's Alaskan cabin, with the sun shining, the lake melted, the geese honking, the dog in tow, and bearing a dainty galette of pluot baked in a well-loved cast-iron skillet.

"airfresh"

2005-04-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

New Sagaya has marketing spots on all the local radio stations spotlighting the availability of "airfresh" corn on the cob - just flown in from California.

I succumbed.

Or rather, I shall succumb. Tonight the picnique table will be hosting a welcome grill for two new neighbors "airfresh" from Back East. That corn will go perfectly with the Domestic Goddess' coffee-marinated steak. I think I shall pedal by New Sagaya on my way home, and toss a couple into the bike basket.

Oh. Sun and summer is a fabulous thing - and what a good thing that long, cold, dark winter was, because I see now that it gave me the priceless ability to welcome summer with the same exhillerating enthusiasm that I haven't really felt since I was a child walking home after the last day of school thinking that I had a whole summer of fun ahead of me. I am giddy with it. And my eyes have adjusted, so I am giddy AND immersed in it.

****

Lest anyone think that this is a one time anomoly in the world of Alaskan marketing, my favorite burger spot makes a point of noting that their chicken is flown in daily from Washington State. And there is a cottage industry here for doughnuts - many a fundraiser and many an entrepreneur in need of a quick cash influx, has set up a tent in some parking lot or another with large signs advertising the "Krispy Kreme Doughnuts Flown in Just That Morning." Sometimes, instead of a tent, the salesman is selling Krisy Kreme doughnuts from a U-Haul filled to its brim with boxes. It's generally much easier to pass by the u-haul untempted, as I am convinced that more than one local entrepreneur has attempted to make his millions driving up the Al-Can Highway with a U-Haul full of Seattle Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It's a 3 day trip - probably 7 if anyone were crazy enough to let me drive it.

quality, simplicity, healthy appetitites, and adored eaters

2005-04-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

The picnique table was pulled out last night from its winter perch beneath the spruce tree to its summer throne in the middle of our yards.

Oh - it is summer!

It's just a simple picnique table. Wood. Painted green. Chipped with the years. Guardian'ed by the neighbor that actually owns two of the four units that cherish it, who followed a call of adventure by hopping into a van and catching a 1970's ride to Alaska. And simply gifted to each subsequent generation of renters.

But like most simple things, it is one of the joys of the season.

In this case, the picnique table has come to epitomize for me the joys of Alaska living. Don't get me wrong - I could spend days identifying things that epitomize the joys of Alaskan living. Coming to a dead stop on a "freeway" to let a moose and her baby cross from a pond on one side to a lake on the other - epitomizes. Looking out my window at work to a landscape humbled by a range of massive mountains, peopled by bikers or skijorers (pick your season) frolicking on the Tony Knowles trail, brightened by the sun reflecting off the waters of the Cook Inlet, emblazoned by the brilliant sunsets that gold-sheath the skies, mountains and water in hues of yellows, oranges, reds and blues, and rendered priceless by red foxes leaping up from snow piles, bald eagles soaring past, and whales spouting in the Cook Inlet - epitomizes. Rock stubborn colleagues with belly-splitting wit - epitomizes. Strangers that fill your freezer with wild salmon - epitomizes. Friends that won't laugh at you (mean-spiritedly, at least) for thinking that pigtails are the perfect hairstyle for borrowed men's fishing waders or for not being able to catch your own salmon because you are too distracted by the regal sight of all the bald eagles - epitomizes. The log cabin, reachable only by float plane or snowmachine, that was built completely by the hand and determination of my college roommate's father, and the pride with which he hangs the toilet seat next to the fire because he believes a cold seat is an avoidable travesty no matter how many feet of snow one has to trudge through to get to the outhouse - epitomizes. First dates with a boyfriend that involves the introduction of puppies and the grilling of steaks - epitomizes.

Yes, there are many ways to epitomize the joy of Alaskan living. The picnique table, though - well, it's a good one. It sits between two duplexes. Someone always sticks a bottle of wine on it....within 10 minutes, we all seem to find ourselves sitting around it. We each bring our own glass, our own backgrounds (so wildly diverging, yet so comfortingly similar in that they involve lots of adventures and travels before arriving there) and a cache of stories. Puck gets to run around, catching tosses from a crowd. And if I somehow fail to appear with my glass, the neighbors never fail to grab Puck from my apartment and let him enjoy the impromptu reunion. So many conversations - of current events, of civic art projects, of philosophy, of politics, of food, of stories, of romance, of trying to stay on the good side of that fine line between really living and merely making one - have occurred at this table. So much advice on Alaskan living was relayed to me at its benches, especially as the days grew shorter and winter was looming. And in the cycle of seasons, today the days grow longer, winter wanes, my picnique table is back where I love it to be and I'm solidly in cahoots with my neighbors in the burgeoning plans for a summer season of dinner fetes.

I know that this doesn't really seem to be a food blog - all this constant exuberance over sunlight and summer.

But sometimes one has to revel a little in the context of the food - enumerating, if you will, the reasons and backgrounds and social cohesiveness that makes food so worthy of all the celebrations: like quality, simplicity, healthy appetitites, and adored eaters.

Salmonberries, Blueberries and Thwarted Coyness

2005-04-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

The sun is up! It was already up, when I got up at 6 a.m., made a cup of tea, grabbed the newspaper and set myself up outside at the picnic table while Puck frolicked about. It was so up and bright, in fact, and the sky was so blue with the air being crisp with more than a nuance of warmth, that I pulled my bike out of the winter shed in the back and biked to work. At lunch, I even walked down to Mike's Gourmet Dogs. He wasn't there today. But the walk was beautiful. So many people about. Everyone was smiling.

It's over 60 degrees.

Exhillerating.

I've decided that it is simply irrational, poor form, perhaps a little pathetic, to keep waiting until I get to live on the same land mass as J, as this long-distance arrangement appears destined to outlast its hoped expiration. So I've got to get some gumption now and start picking berries on my own. Salmonberries. Blueberries. Maybe pick some fireweed and attempt a mead. Yes - I know that the sun is just back, so the berries aren't ready for picking yet. I even know it's going to be awhile yet. But since the sun started returning, I've traded in the daily dose of bacon for the daily devouring of Euell Gibbon's Stalking the Wild Asparagus , a chapter a night, and now I am quite enthusiastically planning on picking and foraging enough this summer not just to bake pies, but to send family and friends bottles of jams, syrups, even pickles.........

Truth is, though, I'm scared of the bears.

This weekend I told J. that I might be a little jealous that he goes traipsing about this fine state, and I'm only traipsing when he gears me up and guides me out.....so I told him I'm going to make new trail buddies so that I don't have to depend on him. He said that sounded like fun.

It's really quite frustrating to try and make the even-keeled jealous.

Then, perhaps trying to be coy, I lamented that I didn't know anyone with a dog I trusted to defend me from the bears like I trust his dog.

He said he'd put his faith in Puck.

I'm not going to back-talk Puck's manly ferociousness. He is quite the man, you know - especially now that he's on his million-dollar-a-month fish & potato diet

(with his good-boy-treats being pieces of dried salmon - indeed, his larder could outfit a Manhattan delicatassen, that Alaskan Puck),

and is therefore sprouting hair on his belly again, as well as lush tufts of blondeness on either side of his nose that curl up like a well-coiffed mustache. But I could hear the suppressed guffaw in J's voice. It wasn't rude. It wasn't obvious. It was just a fine performance of understated subtley. I decided that, strategically, I was best off not responding to that.

Maybe I will take Puck. I mean, what's the other option? Admittedly, I'm petrified of getting eaten by a bear because I take a blueberry that he considers to be his own. But I was independent before I came out here, and an illogical and irrational fear

(well, not completely illogical or irrational as such day-to-day activities as dog walking and jogging have all lead to several bear attacks since I started reading the Anchorage Daily News on a daily basis)

shouldn't prevent me from traipsing about this fine state and picking berries. Especially because I have such fine plans for the pies that I want to bake with those berries. My current plan is to buy a firepit and spend a fine summer really making use of my collection of cast iron, by teaching myself the ins and outs and nuances of baking pies and breads and grilling fish and fruits over an open fire. No mere grills for me! I'm enthusiastically embracing the potential of a fire pit. (Of course, it's a fire pit with a copper sheen, and really quite stunning, and I've been eyeing it ever since I went to a birthday party last summer that was lit up with several of them all placed rather strategically to keep the mosquitoes away from the feasting table which boasted of a veritable parade of platters of grilled salmon and halibut and scallops, all caught and prepared by the various partygoers pursuant to their various secret family recipes.)

Oh! This sun and its fine inspirations!

I can already see the cobbler that will be stewing in the cast iron dutch oven!

SHF: Homestead Aebleskivers in Spruce Tip Syrup

2005-04-22T17:31:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of filing a reply to an opposition to a motion for a preliminary injunction, and this little first time foray into being a real attorney (instead of merely a corporate one) has wreaked havoc on the personal intentions of this week....

I can't write down the recipe.

I didn't buy the camera to take the picture.

But I took the traditional aebleskiver recipe from "The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook" (that I love, by the by), and I added molasses and other spices like cardamom, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger, and I substituted the spruce tip syrup that I was going to make after a sunny Alaskan spring afternoon of traipsing about and gathering spring spruce tips with the kind of spruce tip syrup that one can buy from the organic store that is made by a woman down in Haines, Alaska (her best friend maintains the display and keeps the store stocked out of friendship and support, not money - and I like that), and I dusted it with powder sugar.

The idea is supposed to be like the Montreal recipe of dumplings baked in maple syrup.

But - it makes use of molassess and other spices that can keep easily in a pantry (oh for the day that I live from a pantry and bi-weekly airdrops of replenishments), it is an aebleskiver, baked in a castiron aebleskiver pan (called a monk's pan, and I like that too), but coddled in Alaska's spring ingredient: spruce tips.

The recipe to follow.

Maybe pictures will follow.

I need to buy that camera.

La Vita Dolce

2005-04-19T15:25:00.000-07:00

What's the secret ingredient to the sweet life?

I couldn't keep to the $177 budget.

I'm thinking, however, that my life could be a lot sweeter if I could.

Aebleskivers

2005-04-13T17:49:00.000-07:00

There is a diner in the Village called Shopsins. It used to be a diner in a townhouse in the Village called Shopsins. Now it has a prime corner address, two walls of big wide windows, and an awning announcing its name. What has not changed, however, are the Shopsins. The Shopsins are in the kitchen and in the restaurant and pretty much everywhere in the experience of dining there. In fact, Shopsins (the restaurant) is the benchmark from which I now determine how "family-owned" other family-owned restaurants are. Sometimes you get to eat massive plates of eggs in the middle of a family battle. Sometimes you eat those eggs in the middle of a family reunion. Sometimes you eat them in silence. Sometimes it feels like the whole restaurant is eating them with big dollops of laughter. Pretty much always, though, you're eating something with Shopsin (the family) personality.

Shopsin's menu is long. Many pages. And it gets revised often, though not often consistently. So it is completely possible that each of the four people at your table (you're only allowed to come in groups of 4 or less, and all will be kicked out if one dares to show a cell phone) will be looking at different versions of menus. It is also completely possible that you will order something because it sounds interesting, but noone will remember what it was originally intended to be. The food items can be pretty standard; and they can be pretty bizarre. Shopsin (the father and the chef), I'm told, has been known to sit down with his kids, make-up a country, and then invent the native cuisine for the made-up country. And sometimes the native cuisine of known countries gets grabbed, and Shopsin'ified, and served back at you.

That's how it was with Ebelskivers.

Or, at least, that's how I learned that something called Ebelskivers can go deliciously with coffee. There was a random line in one of the appetizer sections, this particular one on a page that was crammed with possibly 200 or so various soups, that said, simply and without explanation: ebelskiver $3.50

It had to be ordered.

It was remembered.

This weekend I made the purchase that will allow me to attempt to recreate a piece of Shopsins in Alaska. It was an inadvertent purchase. J. was shopping for binoculars and gear at the Sportsman Warehouse. He found it entertaining, but perhaps not surprising, that I somehow managed to find and get absorbed in an entire aisle devoted to cast-iron pots and tin tea kettles in the middle of an outdoor gear store.

The prize, the thing that still has me smiling in anticipation four days later: I found, finally, and bought, and brought home, and can't wait to use a heavy, plain, cast-iron aebleskiver pan.

I know I should probably write out a recipe, or maybe a description of aebleskivers/ebelskivers.

But somehow I think one has to stumble across the discovery.

Obviously, I'd encourage everyone to go to Shopsin's for this stumble. I've learned that they may not necessarily be "traditional" there, but they're an experience.

But if you can't make it to Shopsin's to see if they are on your version of the menu, stay tuned: I'll be posting the trials and errors of teaching myself how to make traditional aebleskivers. The process will involve a knitting needle.

In the meantime, perhaps the mere mirth of the word "ebelskiver" or the spelling of "aebleskiver" will be hook enough.

Day 11: Broke and Beaming

2005-04-11T15:55:00.000-07:00

I learned that it is a struggle to live on $177 a month and still enjoy the privilege of making J. weekend breakfasts of wild mushroom omelettes, maple sausages, milky Scottish breakfast tea, herb dutch babies, family-farmed and thick-sliced bacon and blueberry sourdough hotcakes. Though I did make cornmeal biscuits, all with stuff from the cabinents, my rules don't require me to deduct the tickets to eat oysters and prime rib at The Anchorage Museum Annual Gala, and J. gifted me to a fry-up feast at the White Spot. So, there's still enough in the grocery kitty to keep me going even though I did splurge over the weekend. It's just going to be a lot of extra budgeting. I'd budget even harder for the chance to make and eat more meals together.

J. was in town for a long weekend.

He left last night, with a full cooler.

My freezer is empty, its contents having been cooler'ed to Kodiak.

My mind is brimming with ideas of how to re-fill it.

My budget is....busted, which makes the ideas even more entertaining (to think how much entertainment I was losing when all of my problem-solving energies were necessarily focused on maintaining billable hours in a deflated economy!).

And while I'm still radiating smiles from getting to see him, I'll confess to already looking forward to next month when we rendezvous in Juneau.

****

My herb dutch baby flopped. I think it may have to do with having tossed in a dash of heavy cheese pieces.

But my wild mushroom omelette - tasty, easy and the first time I ever made one to flip without breaking. I think the secret was using four room temperature eggs, a HOT pan with a liberal amount of HOT olive oil, and salting the olive oil rather than the eggs. To make the filling: Saute shallots and garlic in olive oil on a very low temperature. Salt and pepper. When golden, drop in chopped mushrooms and a dollop of butter. Shake the pan every now and then. Salt, pepper. Add fresh thyme. Add chopped up spinach, just before starting the eggs in another pan for the omelette. Time it so the spinach will wilt, and get the glisten of the butter, but not lose its greenness. Usually I'm making the omelette for myself - so I only use 1 egg. And I thought I sucked at omelettes. But now I've learned that I just have to wait for the chance to cook them for a crowd.

I'm still going to practice.

***

One last note: I haven't done a good job of recording the recipes I've attempted. I'm really going to try and do better. Noone else probably reads this, but sometimes I go back and re-read them and I think sometimes there are these glimpses of where I want this all to end up: when I'm cooking with the generous simplicity of the folks that taught me the human and the civic importance of good food and I'm reveling in the urban excitements of discoveries and excessive feats. Sometimes I have to wonder if my best chance for finding a middle ground is in food.

One of my favorite books is The Dud Avocado. I had to go to England to buy it (though one less in need of a constant fix of story could probably purchase it from amazon.com). There's no reason to share this favorite or how I acquired it, except the last sentence of the previous paragraph plunked into my head the image of the protagonist walking through the streets of Paris one morning, poor, hungover, hungry and deliciously happy, wearing a purple ball gown because she had just dropped off everything else she owned to be laundered and en route to a good story yet to be determined.

***

Ok. THIS is the final note. It's 7 p.m. I'm wearing sunglasses at my desk. I always wear sunglasses at my desk now. The sun rose at 6:30 a.m. today, and is setting around 9:30 pm. We're gaining approximately 6 minutes a day, though each day the gain gets a bigger spread. In a few more weeks, I'll have to go Outside to see stars.

Day 5: Asparagus, Truffles, Gruyere, Champagne and Spam

2005-04-05T19:27:00.000-07:00

Oh. I jinxed myself with that last post.

I'm down to $131.60 by the time I type this post.

I splurged last night. $23.52 spent at New Sagaya: a bunch of asparagus ($5), a block of gruyere ($7), a bag of spinach ($4), a jar of Oregon Hazelnut Butter ($5.99)....and other things, I can't remember right now.

I discovered Orangette's blog - she wrote about asparagus, and Seattle springs - and I extrapolated from that (and an email from my best friend) a sudden nostalgic urge to dine on truffled egg toast with roasted asparagus.

[Add to the nostalgia for bagels - a weekday, late dinner with wine, a good friend and truffled egg toast at 'ino.]

But, in a sudden, last-minute shopping line moment of budgetary-consciousness, I ran back to the Aroma aisle and put back my loaf of rosemary bread because it was too expensive. Somehow the fact that I could make it myself made it so. Oh - this $177 a month budget!

But I don't complain: I didn't really need the bread. My dinner was roasted asparagus, topped at the last minute, with grated gruyere. I even opted out of the bread and truffle oil, thinking that I might save the last precious drops of the truffle oil I brought to Alaska with me to make truffled egg toast when I can dine on it with a friend.

And, today, for lunch - roast beef sandwich from the Sandwich Deck ($5.95).

Goodness knows what will happen to this budget this weekend. A colleague is performing at the opening weekend of the Fly By Night Club.

All Spam appetizers are half-off with the order of a bottle of champagne.

****

A friend forwarded me a picture of her nieces picking daffodils in Portland. The pictures were flush with greens and bright yellows and, well, it is just that kind of picture that makes an Oregon girl love her roots no matter how many years and miles it's been since she was last an Oregon girl. When I was little one, I remember setting out first thing in the morning to pick as many as I could, and would still have loads more beckoning me from the hill behind my house by the evening. My mom would always thank me for the daffodils and tell me how beautiful they were, but then she'd always sigh and ask, inquisitively and only theoretically - as if it was an idea that had just hit her and she was pondering aloud, whether daffodils weren't the prettiest when they were sprouting up and waving to us from the hills.

Here, things are yellow too - but the mottled, muddy kind. There are no daffodils to be seen. Outside. The yellow is the grass, just emerging after months of snow-buried darkness. I'm not complaining. Merely explaining. There are still wide swathes of snowy yards. Chunks of ice, alternatively white-capped with snow and grunge-marked with mud, still float around in the Cook Inlet. And cars, perhaps, are the most obvious and mud-dust indicator that it is still break-up around here.

But there were daffodils to announce spring in Anchorage. It's just that here, the daffodils don't spring up overnight on hills, they announce their arrival for weeks before, arrive regally on an Alaskan Air flight from Seattle, and are then joyously distributed about town as part of a fundraising campaign for cancer awareness. I can't remember the name of the group right now. I just remember that everyone was volunteering to distribute them, everyone was gifting them, and my office gave me a handful, closed-budded and held together with a rubber band.

At first my bundle of closed-budded daffodils felt little like a Spring. In fact, they almost felt like the opposite....like getting sushi from the deli section fo a convenience store. They were, at first, just close enough to a daffodil to evoke the bucolic memories, but not bucolic enough to appease them.

But then they opened.

And yes, mom, daffodils are pretty in hills, waving at little Oregon girls and begging to be picked for their mothers.

But - oh the smile they can bring to an Alaska cheechako when they open up, bright and yellow, a gift and a good cause and kicking off the return of the sun.

In any event, this is a verbose way of saying that life these days can feel like a bombardment of marketing, and talking points, and trends, and hypes. But there are these simple things that can evoke more memories and smiles than any PR Pitch.

Asparagus and Daffodils in Spring.
Truffled Egg Toast with Friends.
Champagne and Spam.
Friends that play live music.
Being known by my first name at the sandwich counters, espresso stands and supermarkets.
Emails from friends that remind me of all that makes my life dolce.
Tarts.

All things that have the timeless and unaffected quality of making me smile, broadly, warmly and instinctively.

****

Hi, 'N!

Day 4: A Lunch Splurge

2005-04-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

I'm down to $161.07 because I lunched on an egg salad sandwich from the Sandwich Deck.

$5.95.

It came with a bag of cheeto-os.

A colleague gifted me with the afternoon latte from Snow City Cafe.

Another colleague gifted me with pretzels. She keeps a Costco-bag of them on her desk. I snack. Often. Far too often to be cordial or grazing about it.

And the office gifted me with a mini-Twix.

***

I woke up this morning to find it snowing. I'm leaving the office, now, into blue skies and bright sun. There is snow on the ground, but the ice-way of my drive-way is almost entirely melted.

J is almost in town. Tonight I'm splurging on more hazelnut butter, with the intent of sending him back after the weekend with a big log of frozen hazelnut chocolate cookie dough that he can cut-off of and bake in his own oven. I know he eats the dough instead of baking the cookies. But every now and then, he mentions burning a batch. At least I know that my endeavours here are perfuming his abode there - even if the perfume shortly transforms into a fire alarm.

***

A friend once asked me what I would do if I knew I couldn't fail.

That was awhile ago. Part of the reason I left the city was that I couldn't answer that question. I simply didn't know. So much energy required to make it through what I was doing, that I had forgotten the things that I'd rather be doing. I had forgotten how to want more. Maybe it's this sun - bright and promising of many antics and stories to come. Or the break-up of the ice. Or the freedom, and encouragement, to be outside. But I find myself pondering this question a lot - and wondering just how much the fear of failure is still holding me back.

Random Insight to Practicing Law in Alaska

2005-04-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

There is a weekly column in Anchorage's daily newspaper called The Ear.

I have been remiss in sharing my giggling contentment from last week's column.

Apparently one of the approximately 2,500 esteemed and practicing members of the bar in the State of Alaska became frustrated by the new security machine set up at the Anchorage courthouse. It kept beeping. A line of lawyers trying to get upstairs was building up behind him. Everyone was mad that noone bothered to notify them that a new security system would delay their entry, and they were all (as a result) late. Even after taking off his shoes, and then his belt, he still beeped.

So he took off his pants.

Then he walked through without a beep, put his pants back on, and apparently went upstairs and carried out his professional purpose for being there.

The Ear gave his name, but then showed restraint and refused to name the two girls from Fairbanks that went to David Copperfield's show then followed him back to Vegas.

Day 3: Molasses'ing to Independence

2005-04-03T16:37:00.000-07:00

Trying to reign in my Manhattan spending habits has not been easy. It has, however, had success and I do think I'm closer to living the life that doesn't need to be sustained by a desk-chain-salary.

Travel, clothes, dining out, going out and paying someone to remind me to breathe - I've curbed these addictions. Quite remarkably, actually, given the percentage of my income that they once ate up. Books...well, I'm far from The Strand. I'm far from my secret hide-out of used book shopping in the Flatiron. I'll admit, I splurge occassionally at Title Wave. But not every week. The book splurge habit, therefore, could technically be considered curbed....though I can admit to further improvement possible.

But cooking.

This is the splurge that I haven't yet curbed. This is the one that I'm really working on now.

My setback with this splurge is that I can pretty much still persuade myself to purchase any ingredient at any cost with a mere acquiescence to curiousity. When it comes to grocery shopping, I am an impulsive shopper with reckless budgetary rejections. No matter how expensive an ingredient is, trust me: I can justify it.

So what makes this $177 budget particularly hard is that it bludgeons my most instinctive reaction to new ingredients - I can't just buy them and uphold my commitment to exercising consumer power beneficially. If I want to keep buying foods from community-enhancing businesses, I have to keep myself to the most basic of ingredients.

The pizzaz must, by the very nature of the budget, come from the creativity and/or comfort.

That'w why I'm particularly excited about this upcoming Sugar High Friday Competition: Molasses.

The pantry staple being called upon to produce a special occassion. And it's already in my pantry.

I can't help but think that this Sugar High Friday is the perfect competition for one trying to develop an instinctual cooking repetoire for use in the long-term goal of living in a place where groceries get delivered by a plane-taxi every other week or so.

****

On another little front that can't possibly be interesting to anyone else, I've re-embraced the chicken soup budget. Chicken broth. Baby carrots (great for snacking and chopping). A head of broccolli. Frozen peas. Pasta (I found Italian at $1.99 a bag - not the best pasta I could find here, but approximately $8 cheaper than that best). Easy to make. Aromatic. Warm. Light. Cheap. Chop as you need. And, this is really just a side-benefit to the chicken soup budget, I'm hoping that the combination of my reliance on it during this $177 month and the daily invitation of the sun to take Puck on long walks, might just actually reverse some of the more cumbersome repercussions of having spent the winter bribing myself to wake up in the dark with breakfasts of bacon.

****

On a sourdough front, I had a successful attempt at my sourdough hotcakes this morning. FOR ONE: 1/2 cup starter (that I had fed the night before). 1 egg. And some sugar, salt, soda, and vanilla extract. I also added a glug of olive oil. Lightly buttered. Drizzled with spruce-tip syrup. There's still room for improvement, but in the comparison to the first batch attempted, there was lots of evidence of the improvements already made.

****

I'm down to $167.02 (bag of flour-$3.99; dozen brown cageless eggs - $2.99; a 16 ounce latte from New Sagaya during a morning jaunt with Puck before coming into the office - $3).

Day 2 in the Mile: Dutch Babies

2005-04-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

First off, I lost my credit card. I'm sure it's somewhere. It just might as well be snowhere for all I know. I should cancel it, but no one else is using it and I find its absence is making cost-saving remarkably easier.

Which means, I still have $177 left in my budget of $177.

However, I have the generousity of Alaskans to thank for that. Yesterday I was treated by a friend to a glass of pinot blanc and a plate of grilled shrimp, marinated grilled meats, crab spread on sourdough toast points and chicken wings.

I've also raided in the cabinents.

This morning I tried to make an apple, cranberry and blueberry dutch baby for breakfast. I only had 2 eggs left in the fridge and a dash of only whole wheat flour.

But it worked.

Dutch Babies

Heat the oven to 425.

Put a 6 inch cast iron skillet on a hot stove. Let it heat up.

Mix: 2 eggs. 1/3 cup flour. 1/3 (plus a small amount more as measured by instinct) cup milk. Salt. Sugar. Dash of vanilla. Hint of nutmeg or cinnamon.

When the skillet is really hot, toss in a dollop of butter. When that's melted, pour in the batter. Put immediately in the hot stove. Close the door. Set the timer for around 20 minutes. And don't open the door until the time is almost out.

Add dried fruits to the batter. Or bake apples in the skillet before you add the batter. Or set out frozen berries to thaw in a strainer over the sink and add those to the batter. Oh - and try to let the eggs come to room temperature before you start cooking. The whole point is to make it effortless....the kind of thing you can set out, hot and puffy, to start out your guests' days and ensure that they never forget your dream fishing lodge. Or the kind of thing I practice now so that I can effortlessly whip it up for J. when he's here next weekend.

Purple Spelt Pilaf

2005-03-31T12:39:00.000-08:00

I hope that there will always be days when fine inspirations lead to new creations.

Yesterday, for example, I was inspired by Oslo Foodie's blog entry about spelt bread (http://canard.typepad.com/oslo_foodie/) to dig out from the back of a cupboard a bag of farro that I had leftover from Thanksgiving Dinner.

[Spelt in English is Farro in Italian. I'm sure that for many this is obvious. But I was an Italian major in college, lived in Italy off and on several times, taking cooking classes here and there while there, and have spent the past 8 or so years loving the nutty crunch and heartiness of farro dishes. I never realized that farro was spelt. I didn't, in fact, know that the word spelt existed. It took me a few years after discovering the word and ingredient spelt (it was discovered as the basic ingredient to a fine, fine mushroom pizza on spelt crust at a favorite pizza place just at the cusp of East Village), to realize that Farro in Italian is Spelt in English. This is the first tangent.]

In any event, I had all this farro leftover from Thanksgiving dinner, when I decided to celebrate my first Thanksgiving in Alaska AND and a chance to spend a weekend with with J. by braising a moose loin gifted to me by a colleague and served on a platter with a bed of farro stewed in a hearty winter broth of pinot noir, winter root vegetables and moose broth.

[In case there is any doubt, that it a one-pot meal made in my huge, hefty and beloved castiron dutch oven. We also roasted a turkey, glazed with spruce-tip sytrup and stuffed with a saute of homemade beer bread, wild mushrooms and reindeer sausage. J. rolled out sweet potato rolls with cardamom and dried Yakima Valley Cherries. And together we simmered Oregon cranberries in English port, smashed an entire five pounds of Alaskan red potatoes with roasted garlic, sour cream from a family owned dairy in Oregon and chives, and baked a cast-iron skillet of green bean casserole. It wasn't my first feast with J., but it was the feast that inspired a winter of cooking. J. had to borrow a suitcase for the leftovers. And that, as background, is how I first started cooking for Kodiak. Second tangent.]

In any event, distracting references to background aside....

I loved Oslo Foodie's post on spelt and I had a bag of farro in my cupboard.

So, I softly softened a chopped up onion in butter and olive oil. When it started to golden, I tossed in a bit of diced garlic to steam. Finally, I added some chopped carrots. Then I tossed in enough farro.

THEN....

I got creative.

I added Forbidden Rice. Just a handful.

[You see, I was tempted by a little bag of "Forbidden Rice" in my cupboard, that I had purchased during some past ramble through New Sagaya but had never opened, to add a dash of creativity. The Forbidden Rice, is apparently, the preferred and secret rice of Chinese emperors for generations. I know. I know. There is no currently throned Chinese Emperor. But if there were, I'm sure he'd prefer Forbbiden Rice. Forbidden Rice are small, black kernels of rice. Fourth Tangent]

[For those that know me, yes - I did think of my lambada tapes and cd's when I found the bag of Forbidden Rice at New Sagaya and yes, I was also playing Lambada tapes and cd's when I decided to toss in a handful of Forbidden Rice cooking. Fourth-Plus Tangent.]

I thought the little black kernels of Forbidden Rice would add a nice contrast of color. Little black specks of curiousity, you know? Almost like wild rice.

Yes, I thought that the Forbidden Rice would cook up like Wild Rice.

So I added that handful of Forbbiden Rice, then poured in a box of vegetable broth. Salted & peppered. Stirred. Brought it back to a simmer. And then started doing some dishes, intending that the farro would just cook itself up. Little watching required with farro.

But when I turned around to give the pot a complimentary stir, I noticed it was bubbling up purple.

Little Vesuvius' of purple.

I stirred.

The purple faded, making the whole pot a little grey'ish.

Each time I returned to stir, there was more purple to mix in.

Apparently, Forbidden Rice cooks up purple.

By the end of the 40 minute stewing, it was more purple than any other color description.

And that is why J. was set to have a couple of ziploc bags full of frozen Purple Spelt Pilaf. I had some entertainment imagining him trying to figure out what crazy concoction I had attempted.

But then I had the sudden fancy idea of browning up some beef, tossing in some cans of diced tomatoes, a can or two of cannellini beans, some chili spices and a big ol' pot's worth of well-seasoned but atrociously-colored spelt.

J. has a couple of ziploc bag of frozen chili.

White Easter

2005-03-28T09:50:00.000-08:00

I woke up Easter morning to discover that it was a White Easter in Anchorage, Alaska.

Overnight, it snowed about 4 inches. Then it continued to snow all Easter long. It is, in fact, still snowing.

It's a beautiful snowfall. It is the kind of snow that is perfect for building playful things - like snowmen and snowballs. Light and sugar-like. And I over-baked two trays of Hot Cross Buns because I apparently was too slow to persuade Puck to stop playing in the beautifully playful snow.

There is scientific proof that a good snowful can muffle sound. Today I theorize that it can also distort the perception of time. Because when I put the hot cross buns in the oven on Easter morning, I was thinking that I had 10 minutes to skip outside and throw snowballs for Puck. We played some chase. We tossed a frisbee. And to be safe, I played it short - deciding to check on the buns after what felt like a mere 5 minutes. It turned out to be 20.

So the buns were a little burnt.

Far worse things can happen.

A bunch of the other neighbors were outside too. Granted, this time they were bundled up. But they were outside - skiing their dogs around the block.

Sunny Days and Sourdough Bagels

2005-03-26T13:23:00.000-08:00

Today could not be more beautiful in Anchorage, Alaska. The skies are blue. The sun is bright and warm, so everyone is outside walking dogs, jogging or just strolling. Without jackets. But the ground is still cold enough that everything is solid frozen, not squshy muddy or slippery slushy.

Last night, my neighbors had a big barbeque. They wore jackets, and had a fire roaring in the fire pit, but they were outside.

Summer is so close.

****

As for Cooking for Kodiak, I have a batch of sourdough bagels kneaded, rolled-out, shaped and rising on my counter. J's getting sworn in today. On the top of a mountain. He and the swearing in judge started their hike early this morning.

As for cooking for myself, I'm making hot cross buns for Easter tomorrow. I couldn't find sultanas at New Sagaya so I'm making do with organic California raisins and chopped dates. To add an Alaskan flair, I do contemplate adding chopped up cranberries (currently frozen, but that only makes them easier to chop).

Puck and I will be driving out to Eagle River for Easter Dinner. We were both invited to a colleague's family's reunion.

Oh - how can one not love a place where Easter Dinner is a family reunion and an open invitation to everyone and anyone and the invitations are extended with equal warm to everyone and anyone's dogs?

To make it better, how can one not love a place where social opportunities are so democratic and Life is such that one has the leisure to make his contribution personalized and from scratch?

Best Wishes and Warm Regards from Alaska for your Easter or Passover or Spring Frolics.

$177 a month: Walking a Mile

2005-03-24T14:33:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to report that my rant is over. It must be the full moon that's approaching or the gale of particularly complex transaction that is already hit my desk. I like to think I'm not usually such a ranter, at least I'm not usually a ranter absent a bad day. But I do apologize for yesterday.

In more timely events, I woke up early this morning (though it was already daylight!), so I treated myself to breakfast at the White Spot. Few things are as fine as eggs on toast, in a good diner, with the accompaniments of a few fine personalities for casual banter and an Anchorage Daily News for its always interesting letters to the editor.

There was an opinion column in today's fine Anchorage Daily that particularly hit home. Or rather, it inspired me. Perhaps I'll just say "challenged" and then resist opportunities to go digging for other words. In describing a culinary challenge, it inspired me to try my hand at it.

The column was titled "Take a Walk in Someone Else's Shoes."

http://www.adn.com/opinion/guest_columns/story/6304667p-6180796c.html

To sum it up, it described the aims of a program called "Walk-A-Mile" which asks state lawmakers and community leaders to live for one month on a food stamp budget that was based on the size of their own families. PARDON THE PLAGIARIZING FROM THE ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS: "The program had two basic premises: Personal experience is the best way to understand an issue, and mutual respect grows from personal relationships in which individuals have the opportunity to see life from another person's point of view -- by walking a mile in their shoes. The hope was to dispel stereotypes. Grossman found that when she asked the welfare recipients to give her the first thoughts that came to their minds when they heard the word "politician" they said things like, liars, cheaters, men, lazy, etc. When lawmakers were asked the same question regarding welfare recipients, many used the same descriptive terminology -- lazy, cheats, etc. However, lawmakers often said "women" instead of 'men.'"

Sitting there at the White Spot, I decided to give myself a walk. I mean, here I am paying absurd amounts of money on a regular basis to get ingredients that may be affordable elsewhere, but not here. I'm still shopping like a New Yorker. So my grocery list requires me to pick up a chunk of real parmigiano-reggiano, and not only do I have to sleuth for awhile to find it, but I have to buy it at $30 a pound. Fennel - I bought 3 bulbs for a pork loin, I paid $12 (and that doesn't include the $12 for the loin itself, or the $15 for the cheap bottle of wine it was braised in, or the costs of the leeks and apples that had to be shipped up before they got tossed in). Steak for $10 a slab. Tomatoes at $6 a pound. And I'm watching all the food blog "events," getting inspired and planning what to make, all my attention on finding my beloved ingredients rather than practicing my take on the available ingredients.

So now I'm going to embark on my own private event and see what nature of homemade meals I can freeze up for J. on a monthly budget of $177 a month. That's the maximum amount that one eligible person living in an urban area of Alaska can recieve. According to the Alaska website, the maximum benefit food stamp for a family of two is $377. But I don't think we'd qualify as a "family" given that there is at least one large body of water (not to mention many land miles) between us.

So, my new food budget is $177 a month.

I'm going to start April 1......I need some time to prepare and do a little research. And, just for the record, I'm making the executive decision not to include Puck's hoighty-toighty Fish & Potato food in that budget (though it won't be the first time that boy's costs exceed my own).

I think the hardest challenge will be balancing the desire to keep myself to the budget so that I have a standing to confirm my suspicion (and undoubtedly to pontificate) that it is an unkeepable budget, and also wanting to continue with my committment to paying whatever premium is necessary to support the family-owned small farms and enterprises.

If anyone else is interested in seeing if they can cook for a month under their state/country's budget, I'd really love to read about your efforts/frustrations/successes/etc.!

***

As for Cooking for Kodiak, I made and sent to J. a batch of hazelnut chocolate chip cookies to his office. It was a first attempt, and I used the recipe on the back of the bag of ghiardelli chocolate chips (which, now that I gave myself reign to talk costs, were cheaper here in Alaska than a bag of Nestle) for chocolate chip cookies. All I did was add big dollops of Oregon hazelnut butter to the dough...and a little extra sugar and vanilla. It was too sweet. My next plan is to add chocolate chips to a peanut butter cookie recipe (that has been, of course, adapted to hazelnut butter).

I mailed the package of cookies to the wrong address. Those who know me know I'm not very good at keeping good track on addresses and phone numbers.

Fortunately, the person who recieved them gave them to J. with a note asking that he ask me to start sending my cookie packages to the right address because the City of Kodiak (where I sent it) wasn't in the business of mail delivery.

Dan Savage

2005-03-23T22:03:00.000-08:00

One of my constant surprises is that there is a simmering rivalry between Manhattan and Alaska.

We all know about Yankees vs Boston, LA Colors vs New York chic, New York vs London opportunities and adventures, New York vs that whole wide morass of red.....

But there's also the New York vs Alaska rivalry, and it goes beyond the astonishly identical yet clashing comment of "Why would anyone want to live there?" that is the instant reaction to anyone hearing about the other place.

Professionally, for example, I am now on my fifth time in the last week and a half of having my opinion be dismissed as grounds for "de-programming the New York out of me." My time in New York, and the negotiating skills I may have picked up there, at times are a point of interest, sometimes a challenge, sometimes an invitation to put me in my place and sometimes, apparantly, just a source of annoyance.

Culinarily, for example, the clerks at New Sagaya like to laugh about how there is always one thing in my basket that they've never seen before and have no idea how to ring up. My love of the obscure delicacies of the Alaskan grocery, I guess, is explainable when it comes to light that I moved here relatively sight unseen from Manhattan.

Friend-wise, for example, I think Alaskan friends love to hear me gush about how much my life has improved (it is, actually, a Life - and I'm still a corporate lawyer - knock it down as an Alaskan Miracle); New York friends are still patiently waiting for this "phase" to pass and for me to go running back.

But perhaps the greatest rivalry of all comes in the dating world.

You see it is very different. Monumentally different. And while there may be some Alaskan guys playing games, this rare occurrence is only an amateur's attempt at the standard mastery of a Manhattan guy. And the misery of the single woman....here, it's just a funny joke, an untimely delay. It's not a despair or a deep and genuine fear of growing old alone. You don't hear many Alaskan girls lament that they are getting worried that their futures will revolve around cats. (Admittedly, everyone out here seems to own dogs and its a sign of civic pride to have one's life revolve around them - but that's a matter for another post.) And maybe not all Manhattan single girls feel this stereotypical way. In fact, I know that they don't. But there are, maybe, more that do than out here. So when a guy plays a game here, well...you walk away. When he offers you choices, but none of the choices approximates the anticipated...you walk away. Most of the time, though, they are brutally honest not heartbreakingly evasive or strategically ambiguous. Sometimes honest in the flattering way, sometimes honest in the "I'm going to see you and hear about you and we know everyone and everyone knows us and we're never going to have lives that are more than 1 degree separated from each other so let's be clear and avoid the melodrama of a misunderstanding" sort of way. New York dating, in contrast, thrives on the assumption that you never have to see any person again. You don't have to deal with their friends or their family. No matter how ruthless or misleading, you know the legend of the story will always pale against some other guy's worse transgression and that chances are you'll never have to deal with it again.

This is really a long way of saying that Dan Savage advocated renaming the State of Alaska to "Alaskan National Damaged Goods Refuge" in this week's weekly Village Voice. http://www.theonionavclub.com/savagelove/index.php?issue=4112

It's not that such things aren't heard a lot. A famous saying out here is "Alaska: Where the Odds are Good and the Goods are Odd." And while I laughed and found it humerous, I do have to just pause and question the ludicrousness of a New York article flinging deragatory monikers at a state where dating still denotes a bit of dignity, the necessity of honesty, and the respect of full-disclosure.

But perhaps I just need to be de-programmed of my Manhattan dating memories.

In any event, ignore this entire post. It's just a rant. And I really have no basis for describing the Alaska scene. I met J. my second day here.

Bierocks

2005-03-22T11:04:00.000-08:00

Meat buns.

They have all sorts of different names. I always called them humbows. Apparently, they can also be called bierocks.

As a child, humbows were special treats. Sometimes Mom would take us to Portland and give us kids the honour of requesting the humbows from the circulating dim sum carts. Sometimes the honour would come in the San Francisco Chinatown. Later, in those sweet adult years of the immediately post-college, first fulltime job phase, I used to take a long lunch break to walk down to the Pike Place Market in Seattle and lunch from the humbow shop (with a detour through the flower stalls, then along the water, towards a preferred coffeeshop so that I could enjoy the return stroll to the office with a steaming latte).

In any event, and through all venues and eras, humbows were always, simultaneously, treat and honour.

So, yesterday, flipping through cookbooks trying to figure out how best to cook up the pork ($3.30 for a pound) and the cilantro ($.69 a bunch) that I picked up at New Sagaya, I was very pleased to stumble across the recipe for Mennonite bierocks in my Saveur America cookbook.

Admittedly, bierocks don't have the barbequed pork in plum sauce that I love so much about humbows, and the dough is a little heavier and less sweet, but the idea of the bierock is the fabulous and comforting same as the humbow: meat in a bun.

They are astonishing quick to prepare. The dough has short rising times, and the meat browns quickly. And the whole time that I was kneading and browning and assembling, I was entertained by the fun notion that J. might wake up one morning to find that the Kodiak sun is boisterously holding back the Kodiak rain clouds, and want to jump out of bed and hike to the top of a mountain and back again before the fates switch favours. Given the speed in which Kodiak fates can switch favours, I notioned that he might not even want to delay long enough to make one of his delicious salami sandwiches for the hike. So instead, in my kneading, browning and assembling notions, J was simply grabbing a bierock out of the freezer, stuffing it into his pack, and by the time he had clamoured to the top of his sunny Kodiak destination, the bierock was thawed and, as he prefers his trail sandwiches to be, slightly smushed.

If served right out of the oven, though, they are warm and filling. And after the teasing aroma of their baking, it is hard to restrain one's self from tearing into one as soon as they are pulled out of the oven.

Of course, I can't follow a recipe. So I put cardamom into the dough. And made the filling with: ground pork, carmalized onions, leeks, asiago cheese, corn, and a hefty dollop of the homemade mustard made by a colleague (also a corporate lawyer) that won last year's blue ribbon at the Alaska State Fair.

By the way, I still have that bunch of cilantro, if anyone has any ideas on what I could make with it that would survive the winter of my freezer until I see J..

On a second by the way, yesterday was the official day of Spring....in other words, I am enjoying just as much daylight as everyone else everywhere else and each day that arrives will give me even more sunlight as everyone else. I don't mean to be competitive. Seriously. It's more a revelry. Most importantly, it is a revelry not just of the sunlight but also the confirmation that I survived my first Alaskan winter. There are few accomplishments I am more proud of.

Bierocks stuffed with Pork, Leeks and Blue Ribbon Mustard
(recipe to follow)

A Sourdough Question

2005-03-19T15:57:00.000-08:00

I don't think anyone reads this.

But if there is someone who reads this despite the fact that it includes descriptions of my ridiculous reaction to sunlight and Puck's ridiculous reaction to god knows what......

My sourdough pot keeps crusting over.

Is this normal?

Should I even be worried about this crust? Am I already doing the only thing I can/should do by stirring the sourdough pot every morning and every night?

I added more water, but that doesn't stop it. I added more flour, thinking that maybe it was crusting because it had run out of food, but this didn't help either.

Spring Sunlight (with Ricotta Pancakes and Plum Butter)

2005-03-19T15:03:00.000-08:00

It is hard to believe that it once felt perpetually dark.

The return of the sun and the display of a particularly enticing bin of plums at New Sagaya, inspired me to make J. a breakfast of:

Dollar-Sized Ricotta Pancakes with Plum-Raspberry-Cranberry Butter.

I had the plum-raspberry-cranberry butter from earlier in the week. I had made a big batch of it, first adding the raspberries for the sweetness then adding the cranberries for a tart enhancement of color, earlier in the week. Some of it I used to make a savoury plum sauce (with shallots and balsamic vinegar) for a tenderloin of pork that I pot-roasted with fennel, apples and leeks. But I made so much of it, that J. will be eating plums as savoury sauces, as pancake syrups, as ice-creaming topping, etc. Fortunately, I think it's delicious enough that there won't be many complaints.

In any event, it is a particularly perfect accompaniment to ricotta pancakes.

*****

Ricotta Pancakes (from Garden Way's Bread Book)

1. Blend 3 eggs with 1 cup of ricotta cheese until light and airy.

2. Blend in 3 tablespoons of honey and 5 tablespoons of melted butter.

3. In a separate bowl, sift together 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg. Add to the cheese mixture and blend together.

4. Pour about 2 tbsps of batter, at a time, onto a hot (and lightly greased) griddle.

* My little comment to J. in the note stashed into the freezer-locked ziplock bag of pancakes: Before making these (or in J's case, reheating them in the skillet), fry up some bacon. Drain out the grease, and then wipe it out with a paper towel so that there's maybe just enough grease left to keep a feather from sticking to the pan. Make the ricotta pancakes in this pan and serve with the bacon on the side. I didn't do it this way, but I have a pretty hefty certainty that there will be something about the bacon (its crunch? its saltiness?) that will bring out the subtle taste of nutmeg in the pancakes and the sweet simplicity of the barely sweetened plum butter.

Plum-Raspberry-Cranberry Butter (inspired by recipe for plum butter in Native Harvest - exact name to be added)

Skin, pit and chop a bunch of plums. Put fruit pieces in a heavy pot. Add raspberries, if you like, for sweetness. Add cranberries, if you like, for tartness and colors. Add, in fact, anything you'd like. Pour in some water. Not too much - you don't want it runny. Not too little - you don't want scalded fruit bits. Add some honey. I also added cinnamon, cloves and cardamom - but only enough to bring out the fruits' flavours, not enough to taste. Simmer softly for awhile until fruit starts to liquify and congeal - about 30 minutes. (If there are cranberries, it may need to simmer longer). The actual recipe suggested using a blender to get a uniform consistency. I like the chunks of fruit, and the delight of having each bite taste a little bit different. Truth - I'm not a big fan of uniform consistency. So I keep my fruit butters "rustic"...I think that is the currently coiffed coin of term for 'real'.

On an unculinary note.....I don't know how or why I can or would say this....but sometimes it almost feels TOO bright. There. I've confessed it. It's crazy to say that though, isn't? It is! And yet, I've had this perpetual headache for about a week. I hesitate also to call it a headache. It's more like an eye strain or something. My theory is that I...that my EYES have become dis-habituated to sunlight.

I remember, when I first moved here last June, how I was constantly surprised by the general use of shades and sheets and other sunlight blockers. When I came into the office, I thought it odd that colleagues had blocked off their amazing, million dollar views out to Cook Inlet by closing their blinds. In contrast, my post-Manhattan reaction to all this crisp, exhillerating air and perpetual sunlight was to throw open windows and shades and linger as much as possible in all of the sunrays pouring in.

Today, however, my blinds are closed.

Not because I don't appreciate the sun. I do. I'm so happy it's back. In fact, I'm exhillerated that it's back. I have loads of energy. A suddenly replenished cache of creative plots and a burgeoning chest of courageous aspirations. I even drive faster. My binds are closed because my eyes, I think, have not yet adjusted to it. They will, I'm sure. But for the moment, I fear I'm still in the opportunity to appreciate the adventure of the mole just emerging from its dark tunnels.

Though it is lovely sun, we're still in the season that is called "Break Up." In other words, the ice is starting to thaw. So things can get a little muddy. Puddles can swamp a street or a yard overnight. And it's still cold. Not cold enough to preserve the freeze, but cold enough to require mittens and a hat at times. Having said all this, it really is just a matter of weeks until my neighbors and I will drag out the picnic table from its winter perch beneath the shelter of the big spruce back to his summer throne in the middle of the yard between our houses. And therefore it is a mere matter of weeks until I'll be drinking my morning coffee and reading my Alaskan newspaper at its benches whilst Puck frolics around the yard (chewing on, more than likely, random twigs).

As for other Alaskan observations....J left me a voicemail on St. Paddy's Day that still stirs up a broad grin every time I recall it. With a wry undertone, and an understated actual tone, J. told me about how he was sitting at his desk during the lunch hour, watching the bald eagles outside his window and contemplating a particular argument asserted in a particular motion. He heard bagpipes. Coming closer. Thinking that it must be Kodiak's St. Paddy's Day Parade, he stepped outside to watch it pass. He was happy to report that all five people in the parade looked they were having a great time.

Cooking for Puck

2005-03-15T18:56:00.000-08:00

Puck is officially on a diet.

Not because he's chunky. Not because he's too lean.

Puck is on a diet because he's balding in the belly.

I've noticed the balding belly for awhile. I even mentioned it to his "after hours" vet (the doctor that usually gives him his health voucher when we fly to Kodiak because her clinic is open after work closes) and to his daycare owner. They both suggested that his balding was due to having short legs and the likelihood that his belly was rubbing on the ground.

In contrast, Dr. Hurley, his official vet immediately subjected him to several tests. He's had blood drawn. He's been fondled by multiple women simultaneously scouring his belly for signs of skin irritation or some other (read disgusting) trace of a fixable condition. But he passed all those tests.

So, the most current prognosis (as of yesterday) is that Puck is (i) allergic to wheat, (ii) allergic to red meat, (iii) allergic to the absence of the sun for the past couple of months, or (iv) allergic to castration.

Thinking that the wheat and mean allergy options would be easiest to address, Puck is now on the fish & potato diet.

And I, now, have to make his treats.

Here is the recipe for Puck's Tidbits that was given to me courtesy after Puck's $150 vet visit:

1. Scoop one can of Response Formula FP into a mixing bowl. Stir well into an even consistency.

2. On a non-stick cookie sheet, place heaping teaspoonful of Response FP (2 and 1/2 inches apart). Pat flat into a 1/2 inch cookie shape (about 1/4 inch thick).

3. Bake in 350 degree oven for approximately one hour or until cookies have dehydrated enough to make a firm snack.

4. Cool on rack. Store in plastic bags or tubs in refridgerator. Best if used within one week. Extra may be stored in freezer if sealed well.

5. One can of Response FP makes approximately two dozen Fish & Potato "Treats".

p.s. Interestingly enough, J's dog Clyde is also on the fish & potato diet after his allergy to wheat and/or red meat nearly transformed him into a scaly, rather than furry, rottweiller. Dr. Hurley, who also owns rottweillers and counsels me on how (as a small dog owner) to date a big dog owner, suggested that I go ahead and make bit batches of Puck's Tidbits for Clyde too. Apparently, it is advised to make as many as you can at once as it takes awhile for the odor of fish to disperse.

Headbanging under the Alaskan Sun (it's back!)

2005-03-10T12:53:00.000-08:00

I get an extra 6 minutes of sunlight each day.

It doesn't seem like much, when you think of it that way. Just a few minutes extra each day. But, to put it into perspective, it feels like merely a few weeks ago that I thought the joy of driving to work at 9:30 while the sun was rising was rendering me delirious with effervescent bubbles of hope. A few weeks before that, I thought the absence of day (in fact, it was the absence of any direct sunlight whatsoever) was going to make me crazy, or at the very least, a biscuit-baking-hermit-with-atrocious-hair-roots. But, now, it's perfect. Daybreak when you get up. Sunset a couple of hours after you leave the office. Snow on the ground (enough, at least, to keep Puck from running out of the yard lest he get over his head in the adventure of it, but less than you folks Back East). Iditarod talk of stats and strategies all over town - best overheard, of course, while eating salmon hero sandwiches at my favorite lunch bar. The lakes are still frozen, so there's ice-skating just down the street and every house has ice skates dangling off the porch.

Of course, be prepared. In a mere few weeks more, it will always and only be daylight.

No doubt I'll have comments.

As for my big news, J. was in town last weekend. He was Kodiak highschool's coach for their mocktrial team. Apparently Kodiak Island just discovered Metallica, Twisted Sister, Def Leppard, etc. For awhile, I got the honour of being one of the Anchorage chauffers for the Kodiak mocktrial team. Once they taught me how to use the cd player, my sassy little soccor-mom subaru (cherry red just to keep it hinting at youth and a moonroof to keep it cooool) was quickly transformed into a moveable Revival of 80's Heavy Metal, complete with a gaggle of teenagers headbanging in the back.

At least in this rendition of the 80's, I was only uncool because I was old. Not because my hair genetically refuses to be big.

I sent Josh back with a cooler full of frozen meals and a big loaf of frozen chocolate chip cookie dough. Apparently he ate the cookie dough first. Then he dove into the pappardelle al ragu. Last night he mentioned that he embellished the leftover pappardelle with a couple of the Pinot braised meatballs stuffed with Maytag Blue Cheese.

The meatballs were based off a recipe in Helen Brown's West Coast Cookbook. (recipe to be posted) She called them Oregon Meatballs, and envisioned them braised in Oregon pinot noir and stuffed with Oregon's Blue Cheese. Using Alaskan ingredients, however, they were braised in Australian shiraz and stuffed with Iowa blue cheese.

As for big news, Alaska-wise, Olive had a big adventure at the airport: http://www.adn.com/iditarod/news/story/6254053p-6131366c.html

Sourdough

2005-03-03T13:37:00.000-08:00

I'm a cheechako merely nurturing a sourdough.

I look forward to being the sourdough that gets to nurture a cheechako - one of those "pay it forward" ways, I suppose, for showing my immense gratitude to all the Alaskans that help me settle into the life up here.

In any event, my actual sourdough is going to be three weeks old tomorrow. It's bubbling away in a porcelain bowl on top of my fridge. It's quite aromatic. And hungry. I read that feeding it too much sugar makes it rubbery, which would be bad. But it is so much fun to see it respond, that I can admit to perhaps being indulgent with it.

Three weeks is when, according to Ruth Allman, a sourdough can first be considered a sourdough. Of course, she mentions those that believe it takes 10 years, maybe even 50 years, perhaps 3 generations, to really achieve that status. But she wrote that in the pioneer days. Nowdays, there's more pioneering about than most other places I've lived, but there's a lot of Outside influence too. So I'm going to start considering it a sourdough tomorrow night at 9 p.m.

J. will be in town for the momentous development. He's been coaching Kodiak's highschool mocktrial team, and the competition is this weekend here in Anchorage. I'm judging. It doesn't matter that I will probably only get to see him under the chaperonage of a gaggle of highschoolers who are really most excited about the fact that their hotel is across a street from Applebees. It doesn't matter that I'll probably end up spending a significant portion of my weekend at Applebees, even though I do officially boycott that place and for the sake of decorum will be forced to refrain from my usual pontifications about the horrors of consumer spending at places that drain the community's resources with automatic cash-sweeps to out-of-state conglomerates. I'm simply so excited to see him.

I think what most excites me is that we'll both me doing interesting things, not just on the same landmass, but in the same building. Like a real couple. Doing community things, separately, but together. That there will be looks across a room, or simple waves, or maybe (tartacious me) a wink. I don't know - I guess there will lots of those humble simple moments of relationship that one doesn't ordinarily get to enjoy when the relationship is long-distance.

We're staying at a hotel, because it didn't seem....well, it just seemed inappropriate to drag him away from the reason that he's in town. So we're staying there and I can't really make him the sourdough hotcakes on Sunday morning that I thought would be fun. Instead, I'm going to bake a bunch of sourdough rolls that he can take back, frozen, to Kodiak.

Here's the recipe for sourdough starter:

Put a bunch of Alaskan red potatoes into a big pot of water. Boil and boil until they are so done that the skins are falling off. Let cool. Remove the skins from the potatoes, then mash up the skinless potatoes with the cooking water. There should be at least 3 cups of this potatoe water. The thicker the better. And clumps aren't really a problem, if you're willing to wait for the sourdough to thicken. One of the treats of sourdough seems to be that it works out any lumps itself. Put 3 cups of thick potato water into your sourdough bowl. (Use the leftover to thicken a soup.) Add 2 cups of flour and two big spoons of sugar. Stir with a wooden spoon. Cover with a towel Put in a warm place. It can be used in 3 days. Or it can be fed at the third day with a bit more sugar and some flour, and then used later.

The Bamix, RIP

2005-02-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

After over twelve years of loyalty and companionship in random reunions of cooking opportunities and personality-laden eaters, the Bamix whirs no more.

I don't really know why it came to be called The Bamix.

I don't know why, this time, the act of whipping butter was too strenuous.

But in the course of making shortbread cookies with dried cranberries (in the shapes of moose, bears, whales and the State of Alaska), The Bamix burned up the last of its gumption halfway into the process of creaming the butter and sugar. I held on to it for a few days afterwards, plugging it in now and then just to see if it might have revived itself with a little rest. But it stayed silent and unresponsive and last night I officially gave up the hope.

Perhaps not with a tear, but certainly with great nostalgia, I deposited The Bamix into the garbage on my way to work today.

****

The Bamix was a hand-held blender that my mother gave me as a college-house-warming gift. It "whirred." Its heyday, looking back, was back during the College Days of pasta dinners in my Little Red House where it was an integral component of all of those dinners, some planned, some not, some with tartacious purposes, some merely to celebrate the gathering of peoples for the annual night of Melrose Place. But even after the heyday it continued to be an integral component of my kitchen. So, the Bamix era started in Spokane, Washington but waited for me while I lived in Italy, reunited with me in Seattle, and then travelled with me to Washington, DC and New York and, finally, to Alaska.

Maybe it's a sign that I am old enough to invest in a stand-alone mixer, or something like that. But I am thinking about interpreting my loss as an opportunity to learn to cope with big bowls, wooden spoons, and the timeless gumption of mixing by hand.

Food Blogging

2005-02-26T15:16:00.000-08:00

After months of perusing and surfing through food blogs, I have decided to "re-brand" from a blog filled with random thoughts, perhaps also a bit melodramatic or touchy-feely thoughts or some other description of thoughts that accurately encapsulates why I have hesitated to let anyone know that I thought I'd try blogging, to a food blog.

For months now - ever since, indeed, I first wrote an entry in this blog - I've been, as I call it, practicing and enhancing my cooking skills for the day when I might run a fishing lodge, then packaging up my learning tools as frozen meals for my Kodiak Boyfriend. Planning meals, cooking the meals, sampling and tasting and experimenting and sometimes just making stuff up. Then I wrap up the creation and freeze it, with little notes for Josh to unearth whenever the frozen packages finally make it to Kodiak.

The goal is to learn to cook with the ingredients that are easily available in a way that tastes fresh and creative, hearty and warming, and communal and feasting. I want to cook effortlessly and creatively. By instinct (learned or natural). And with the kinds of ingredients that encourage a warmth and openness in the people eating them: High quality, Low pretension.

I've made roasted salmon, and salmon risotto, and pasta with salmon. I've practiced Alaska's famous recipe for trick halibut, and have plans for trying the "Poor Man's Lobster." I've made a lot of meatballs. All different ways, with all different sauces and accompaniments. I've made biscuits and soda breads. I've made flatbreads, with onion, grueyer and poppyseeds, and pork balls, stuffed with leeks and basil.

I've even started a sourdough, and get a daily glee every time I see it bubbling away on top of my fridge. I've braised cabbage, and mashed potatoes. I've stewed chicken and simmered beef.

I've surfed for freezer recipes, I've poured through cookbooks looking for things that my Kodiak Boyfriend may never have thought he'd like.

I found out last night that my searches succeeded when the Kodiak Boyfriend called to ask what was that red stuff in that chard stuff that he liked so much. Answer: Braised Swiss Red Chard, that had been packaged up with thick-cut pork chops braised in balsamic vinegar.

The fact is, that I have loved these months of cooking. Of planning. Of shopping. Of trying to figure out the exoctic aspects of the family-owned Alaskan grocery. Of brightening my winter, and closing the gap between my land mass and that of my Kodiak Boyfriend's, by cooking dinners that we can share. Admittedly, I eat my half of the meal a few months before he does. But we're still sharing them. I have loved these months of writing little notes to freeze with the meals. I have loved the challenges of learning to cook locally. I have loved that I learned about Maytag Blue Cheese and corn pudding from researching into the things that my Kodiak Boyfriend may have grown up eating. I have loved the braising, and the sauteeing, and the simmering that has gone into the meals intended to share with him the things that I grew up eating. I have loved that I plan an entire meal, only to discover that there are no - for example - porcini mushrooms to be had that day....I have loved the discoveries and confidence I've gained from cooking when the recipe's relevance cannot possibly be more, due to the sheer logistics of the instructed recipes being unavailable, than merely an initial inspiration.

I'm ready to foodblog.

And, I guess that means, I'm ready to share with others that I'm trying a blog. To go from the hidden delight of random musings to the shared joys of cooking. I'm ready to admit that I live in Alaska now, not New York. I'm ready to admit that my freezer is filled with wild halibut and salmon that was gifted to me by a colleague at work, and Alaskans might be the world's experts in expectationless generousity.

[Of course, I should also admit that for a week now I have been panging, absolutely panging, for a bagel. A real bagel. Not one that is puffy and full of spongy-air like Wonderbread, or something that gets crumby and flakey when toasted. But a chewy bagel. Split not by a bagel-cutter, or stuffed into a toaster. But a bagel that is quickly grabbed up and split by a guy who knows me well enough not to require me to say what I want, but doesn't know my name, and tossed into a big pizza-oven'ish toaster that is smeared heavily with cream cheese and tossed to me as soon as the line lets me up to the cashier, together with my coffee with milk....all in less than 3 minutes. A pang that shocks me, if truth be told, because it is a craving that might have me tempted to even board a plane. And I do miss the Greenmarket in Union Square - I can't hear "fingerling" without my mind being rushed right back to my old Saturday traditions. ]

But, the crabs are here. The days are longer - long enough, in fact, that I'm inspired to think about all the fishing I'm going to try to do now that I don't have to worry about spending the summer studying for the bar exam. And Anchorage is decorated with both ice and snow sculptures. And there are dogsleds racing all about town.

So, I think I shall order a few H&H bagels over the internet (only because I don't think Murray's are available yet) - but I'll be making the Kodiak Boyfriend a big thick chicken stew to go with the Irish Soda Bread I made him last night (with lemon rind, scallions and dried cranberries).

I have one week before he comes to town and I can give him this month's collection of shared meals.

Weekend Workers

2005-01-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

I can still remember living with the assumption of a working weekend, when a particularly langorous weekend jaunt before going to the office was a treat and a bold decision not to go at all was a euphoria until a doubled level of angst befell me on Sunday night.

Working on the weekend was simply caveated into any social promise I attempted to make.

So, now, that I'm working today, it is sort of an opportunity to compare. What made those working weekends intolerable, these ones .... almost relaxing.

I ponder. I work the question. And at comes a simple explanation: the absence of expectation, the presence of appreciation.

I am choosing to be here, and that choice is recognized and noted.

How much of my life is improved simply because my efforts are now relevant?

Winter Homecomings

2005-01-06T18:59:00.000-08:00

I spent the past eleven days in California.

Direct sunlight is a mood-enhancer.

Sweater-weather is a delight.

But I was glad to be back.

So glad, in fact, that I didn't balk when our flight arrived at 1 a.m., instead of midnight, after approximately 18 hours of travel through four different airports.

And I was pleasantly calm despite the discovery that I had left my lights on, causing my battery to be dead and requiring us to attempt to recoup sleep in the car while waiting the 2 hours for the battery-jumper to arrive.

It's the air here.

It simply suppresses irritation at things beyond control.

Today's theory is that the air here is so crisp, so pristine, that it serves as an ever-present reminder of the value of quality: quality of life, of friends, of boyfriends, of roots, of dreams, of the stuggle to maintain one's slice of utopia when lucky enough to find it.

2004-12-14T17:11:00.000-08:00

It is interesting to be the person thawing out in a state that is freezing in.

Random things get me to pondering: plump snowflakes that gather like pussywillows on stop signs, the vitality of the morning starlight, the elderly neighbor that greats me with a warm "Merry Christmas" as I walk by with my puppy, the co-workers who decorate their office doors as giant gifts, the ever-consistent, yet shockingly-reliable, way which my day improves, dramatically, by virtue of having woken up to my boyfriend's voice, the eagerness of my puppy to jump into a pile of snow.

I still haven't gotten to the point where I am beyond pausing, suddently, stricken a bit with the sheer fortune of having found this place.

Of course, I'm still also at the point where I can be stricken with the terror of being forgotten, or outdated, or .... there really is just one term for this. I am still also at the point where I can be stricken with the terror of being non-NY.

But those terrors generally fade. I can reason myself down from that panic.

The differences between the accolades of "success" and the success of finding a way to be securely happy are many. Seriously. I no longer know the new restaurants. I haven't recieved any insider emails or been on any list in over 7 months. I haven't, because I couldn't, bought anything that would have panache enough to even get me into the Hollywood Diner. But I don't worry about getting fired. I don't worry about "taking the hit" for someone else, or insincere overtures, or whether I'm in the know enough to pepper my stories with the appropriate nuances of cocktail banter about products and vacation destinations. No guy has told me to change my outfit. I don't need to escape to a spa in order to remember how to breathe and I wouldn't dream of using vacation to go to one.....It was a 60% pay cut, and 200% life gain.

Yet it takes a diligence and commitment to keep myself reminded of that. Fortunately, where my own diligence and commitment lapses, the snow, my neighbors, my co-workers, my puppy, the generousity of spirit that thrives up here, more than compensate.

And maybe I can take comfort in knowing that I have proof that I lived NY well: the experience is still living in me.

But that's enough waxing for the night.

Reindeer Walking

2004-12-13T18:31:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I took Puck for a drive to Blockbuster.

I stopped at the quilt store, but didn't buy anything.

I paid a fine ($35) for the movies I had failed to return, then rented two more that I'll probably fail to return.

This is why I never owned a vcr machine.

I fail to return the movies.

[It should be noted, though, that towards the end of summer, and with the days getting ominously shorter, Carolyn got a little concerned about the fact that I didn't own a vcr and that I refused to get cable. So, with that Alaskan knack of generousity and wisdom, she gifted me (together with many other more than generous gifts) a dvd player for my 30th birthday. In any event, I'm now an owner of a dvd player so I'm trying to be better about things like returning a movie. We'll see.]

Anyways, Puck and I were driving around. He likes it. I think he likes matching the piping on the bag he drives around in. To reward him for his good "staying in the bag" performance, I stopped off by the Park Strip and let him out to play in the snow.

We weren't the only ones enjoying the Park Strip. There were a lot of dogs, with owners tossing frisbees or in arctic jogging gear.

There was a man walking his reindeer.

On a leash.