apple jelly

I wanted to find a poem about apple picking to go with these pictures,

but Robert Frost seemed too heavy, and besides, 

nobody picks that many bushels of apples in Alaska.

Maybe something then by Mary Oliver?

No, it turns out she and Seamus Heaney were blackberry pickers.

And I'm sorry to say that even though William Carlos Willams ate all the plums

He didn't cover the subject of apples.

I'm sure that somewhere in a dog-eared volume on someones bookshelf there is a perfect verse

that catches the orchard on a dewy morning, humble apple tree boughs heavy with ripe fruit kissing the tops of yarrow and the last of summer's wild grass.

Each apple there, no matter how tiny or large, 

how crisp or pithy or tart hides in its heart a tiny star-shaped secret.  

A remembrance of seasons past and moment of present to memorize the good weight of this fruit in your hand, the satisfying thud as it falls into your basket or bowl. Then your mind wanders 

to a current patch in the forest, stealing the ruby gems in the last of the waning summer sunlight; 

being only human, you begin to scheme what it is you will do with all your orchard spoils

 Later in a steam-filled kitchen, you will dole out samples of crystal jelly to delighted children, 

eyes bright from September adventures and too much sugar

 You, the queen of the apples will look out a rain streaked window pane, and wonder 

how many women have passed an unremarkable moment like this

trying to capture this little bit of summer

in a mason jar.

small starts

 

this week...

Loren had impromptu surgery from getting an almond stuck in his esophagus...

I tell you, its the little things that make or break your week sometimes.

We cut up two caribou.

 We discovered two more good uses for bacon: 1) wrapped around a fresh caribou tenderloin stuffed with blueberries and blue cheese.  OMGood, and 2) baked inside muffin cups with a cute little egg inside.  Such a perfect little breakfast nest!

 I crocheted a hat for a sweet baby boy

 

 We enjoyed some good company...some of the best, in fact.

We knocked some more items off the git-er-done house punch list.

We furminated our poor shedding hounds.  

After a snowy adventure outdoors we ended this quiet Sunday with hot chocolate and snuggles. 

All told, not a bad week really.

sesame duck

I love me some subsistence foods, but I won't lie, duck is not my fave.  That being said, my fella sure does like the waterfowl hunting, so in spite of my best efforts to persuade him otherwise, our freezer is very full of quackers. I am a firm believer in making the best of what you have, and not letting anything go to waste, so I am always looking for new and tasty ways to cook duck.  This one is good.  It is a recipe designed for chicken--but it was very delish with waterfowl.  Let's just say there were no leftovers.

Sesame Duck- Adapted from Doreen P's Perfect Sesame Chicken:

blue green smoothies

 

1 banana + 1 cup frozen tundra blueberries+ 1 cup plain yogurt + 3 cups kale=

1 happy smoothie drinkin' tot.

Sadie's first Ptarmigtan Hunt

Last night while I was teaching pottery class Loren decided to take Sadie on an impromptu Ptarmigan hunt. He texted me the following pictures from his iphone.

note: Smartwool socks as mittens... nice work dad ;)

 

poor Ptarmigan, I always feel bad for them when their plumage changes to white before the snow falls, they kind of seem like sitting... um, Ptarmigan?  I guess they had a sporting chance though,  if they were being hunted by a guy with a blind, deaf Labrador, a spastic 2 year-old Boxer and a one-year-old in an Ergo backpack.

But everyone had a good time (excepting the Ptarmigan, I guess) and Sadie was so tuckered out she slept like an Angel last night...for the first time in months.  

So yay for Sadie's first Ptarmigan hunt!

the littlest berrypicker

 I think today might have been one of Sadie's happiest days ever.

 Finally, she can pick as many plants as she wants...AND there are blueberries (and blackberries) as far as the eye can see.

Its always a little sad when it's time to go home.

the chicken tractor...or what you can do with $150 and a bunch of scrap wood.

A few good hens: 3 Barred Plymoth Rock, 1 Rhode Island Red, and one sassy little red number with white tail feathers:

I've been meaning to post about how this whole backyard chicken operation is going.   About two weeks ago my neighbor Lindsay procured us five free laying hens from a family who was moving and couldn't keep them anymore.  That whole event was kind of sad because they were the kids' pets (lots of tears when they dropped the chickens off, even more tears when Cash proceeded to chase them all, terrified and squawking, around the yard until I could round them up into our shed). We didn't really have a place to put them at first, so they lived in a ramshackle plywood lean-to, until we completed the Chick-Chalet.

 Now, this is not a masterpiece of finish carpentry, to be sure. The fact that we have only $150 into it (which I assure you, is very cheap by Nome standards), and that we came by most of the materials by scavenging, makes this a fairly cost-effective little operation, and also gives it that, ahem, rustic feel.  We decided to go with the mobile "chicken tractor" idea.  If you are interested in other chicken tractor designs, I highly recommend checking out this website--which is full of awesome information about running small scale poultry operations in limited spaces. Why a mobile chicken coop?  Well-- it is nice because your chicks always have some fresh grass to peck on, they clean up grubs and bugs from your yard, and if you move the coop every 1-2 days you never get that super-concentrated, nasty chicken stink going on.  Each time we move this coop we just rake up the dead grass and chicken droppings and in the compost it goes.  The "yard" grows back and then by the end of the chicken coop rotation you start over again.

 Some features of our chicken tractor: A drop down door in the front near the bottom to allow for easy chicken herding (courtesy of Cassius) and also feeding.

 

A state-of-the-art, triangular design with metal roof cap to keep the upstairs roosting and nesting areas dry. An open chicken wire bottom, so our hens can root and scratch in the fresh Bering Sea breeze.

 and on the other side, the top where the roosting and nesting areas are, features two big doors that open for easy cleaning and egg gathering.

 Here is one of our hens giving me the stink eye for disturbing her egg-laying.  As you were, chicken. 

So... there you have it.  My life-long dream of a small flock of backyard chickens checked off the bucket list.  And 4-5 fresh eggs a day... as Borat would say, "very nice!" And miss Sadie Mai, well, she loves the chickens.  If you even mention the word chicken in casual conversation she goes off with a series of "bok-bok'bok" sounds until a chicken-feeding field trip results.

A time to sow.

I have been spending this morning doing one of the best things ever.  Well, actually I started my morning early by taking Sadie on a frosty walk down to NWC to check on the kiln, and I locked myself out of the studio. Not the best, but at least I didn't lock myself out of there while Sadie was still inside.  That would have been really NOT the best.  But you know what is the best? This:

blogAlaska: Nome--First Impressions.

     Nome is a place that is full of contrasts and contradictions.  When we decided to move here and  I came up from Southeast Alaska for a visit it was the middle of December.  It was cold, dark and ugly--a winter wasteland.  I won't lie, I cried about it. For me, the town of Nome itself holds few of the picturesque charms of the southeast.  No turn-of-the-century houses painted bright and cheerful, no boardwalks and twisty stairways clinging tenaciously to steep rock faces. No dense, mysterious stands of cedars shrouded in thick green moss, so quiet you can hear the sound of each raindrop falling on the thick umbrellas of Devil's Club. 
     Nome has its own historical relics and quirks, but the buildings are made to be functional, practical.  Many of the residential areas are HUD homes, which give a nod to the tract housing of suburbia, except in lieu of lush green lawns and manicured yards there are patches of mud with mangy dogs chained to weathered boxes. Rusting carcases of cars or snowmachines litter driveways and yards. Here and there you see the evidence of children at play: a balding doll half submerged in a puddle, a cheaply made plastic three wheeler missing a wheel and a handlebar, mittens, hats and other odd articles of clothing forgotten and pancaked the muddy streets. There is always garbage blowing in the ever-present wind--either tossed on the ground or pulled out of dumpsters by the mischeivous ravens.

canned teriyaki muskox (skip this post if you're squeamish)

Loren and our Friend Lieudell went out this weekend and caught some muskox. For those of you who read this blog and are unfamiliar with the creature it looks like this:

This is the first time Loren has got us a muskox.  Usually we get a moose every year, but this year no moose, and the freezer was looking pretty empty and sad (except  for blueberries and breast milk)... so we are extremely grateful for the meat.  The muskox is a pretty amazing animal really; they weather out some of the ugliest winters in world thanks to their super warm coats and dense underfur known as qiviut.  I will be posting more about qiviut later, but back to the topic at hand.

We have been processing the meat from the muskox, and as with any animal we harvest, we try to use every bit of it that we can.  Its a good rule of thumb not to be wasteful in general, but it is also my personal belief that if you treat your animals respectfully and process them with mindfulness it is the best way to show your gratitude to their spirit.

There are parts of any animal that are tough and chewy, especially wild game.  Some of the back meat and lower leg meat is full of sinew and it is pretty hard to cook it into a texture that is palatable.  Some people use this meat for burger, and others just throw it away (this is me judging them).  Personally, I like to use this meat for canning. After 90 minutes in the pressure cooker the sinew breaks down and you are left with delicious, tender meat (sort of the texture of pulled pork--obviously, a different taste).
So today I decided to can up a batch of teriyaki muskox using the hot-pack canning method. To do this you first brown your meat (so its heated through, but mostly raw in the center still) add it to jars with the broth of your choice (I used Yoshida's gourmet, water, raw onion and garlic to season mine) put your tops on, pop into your pressure canner (you should always use a pressure cooker to can meat!) and process at 10lbs. pressure for 90 minutes.

browning the muskox

yoshida's is yummy, but it does contain HFCS (damn you High Fructose Corn Syrup, why are you in everything?)

cooking meat in my house always brings in at least one kitchen helper, sometimes two or three:)

meat in the jars, ready for lids. Be sure to leave 1" head-space at the top so they can seal!

Wipe jar rims, add lids and screw-on bands...arrange in your canner

follow the instructions that come with your pressure cooker for canning meat.

Canned game is awesome--you can just heat it up and serve over rice (YUM!) use it for sandwich fillings, or in pasta, soup, chili, etc.. You can even win big points by sending some in a care package to your carnivorous little brother who goes to school in California where you, "can't bag any rascals, damnit!" Its a little more time consuming up front, but an awesome thing to have in the pantry.

Thank you muskox!