The World Looks Better in Green

The world looks better in green. And I’m not talking about being in the jungles of Costa Rica rather than the snowy Arctic Circle—although that would be a definite improvement too. No, I’m talking about food.

Dr. Seuss had it right. Green in a diet is the way to go. Although, I don't think green eggs is a very good idea. Salmonella comes to mind. But green vegetables rock! In fact, produce of any kind is enough to cause a stampede in these parts.

We got a phone call today saying that the local grocery store had just gotten in a shipment of fruit, vegetables, and eggs. Around these parts, that’s as good as yelling “Gold!” And you know what happens in Alaska when there’s a gold strike. But those early miners had nothing on a bunch of Alaska Bush teachers chasing after apples and carrots. It was most exciting.

In fact, I was so caught up in the thrill of it all, that my brain turned to mush. Not a thought was processing right. It was beautiful outside! It was promising spring! I half expected robins to start singing in the bare treetops—at which point they would instantly fall out of said treetops, frozen stiff. But still—it was beautiful outside!

So when Keri ran home and revved up the snow machine, Taco and I raced out and jumped on—in clothing fit for a day at the beach. Well, maybe not the beach—but certainly not for our terrain either. Knowing that we were going to be running full throttle over the frozen Yukon River amid unending fields of snow and ice—you’d think it would have occurred to me that maybe gloves and a hat would be a good idea. But NO! I was sucked in by the misleading image of a sun in the sky. By the time we got to the store, I was a popsicle. Frozen through.

Keri and Taco

But not to fear. Just the sight of that glorious produce was enough to warm me from head to toe. It was lovely! An entire portable tabletop holding nothing but boxes of big fat onions, withered potatoes, brown spotted bananas, beautiful red apples and bruised yellow ones, soft mushy oranges, pale green broccoli, hard green pears wrapped in paper, and a single kiwi.

Taco grabbed that kiwi up real fast. It was a steal at only $2.00. And we filled our little carry basket with some of everything. It was heavenly!

But that wasn’t all. In the back of the store, I discovered a stash of lettuce in the cooler next to the eggs. Of course, there was a bunch of slimy stuff on the outside leaves. But I did find one head that only had a slime spot about the size of a golf ball—so I snatched it up.
Taco pointed to the spot and said, “Uh…Mom?”
Keri said, “That’s OK. We can toss the outside leaves.”
I looked at him like he had suddenly grown two heads. “Are you nuts? We can just cut that spot off. The rest of the leaf will be fine!”
Yup, this place sure changes what you're willing to put up with.

And next to the lettuce were the last two zucchinis. I just ignored the price as we dropped them in our basket. During zucchini season down south, you can hardly give them away. But those two prolific squash cost almost $6 each!

Last summer, my mom had a newspaper article hanging on her fridge for quite some time, and it entertained whoever happened to wander into the kitchen. It was about a woman in Montana who chased a bear away by beating it over the head with a zucchini. That must have been some squash! Babe Ruth could have used a bat like that. Well, our two $6 wonders are definitely not in the club category. Any self-respecting bear would laugh out loud if we tried to chase it away with those things. In fact, forget hitting the bear over the head--those slivers of squash are so small, I am sure they would fit up the bear’s nose. But when I cook them up tomorrow, they are going to taste wonderful!

By the time we were finished at that little store, we had three-and-a-half plastic grocery bags of mostly produce. And the cost? A mere $95.70. But at least we get to eat green for a while!

picture of our little village store

Moose Hair

Moose hairs are long, thick, and stiff. But when you fry them, they turn to shrunken, curly, wiry things. How do I know this? Experience. You see, there is no Public Health Department that roams the tundra checking food preparation sites. They don’t evaluate the snow, the dirt, the bathtub, the kitchen floor, or any other surface that an animal might get butchered on. (See “Alaska’s Bounties” in the blog.)

That makes things interesting in the food-making department. We get all sorts of little goodies here that we missed out on in the lower 48. Things like hairs, pebbles, and some suspicious looking goop. Makes life interesting—or disgusting.

Even with a three-washing system, we can’t seem to catch all the foreign matter. (My three-wash system? The hunk of meat gets hosed off good after it’s cut up, again before it gets frozen, and I all but scrub it before I cook it.)

We have a friend who shot a moose near the river. Well, the animal promptly walked to the middle of the river, and fell over. Since the thing has the body mass of a small elephant, they had to butcher it right there—underwater. You’d think that would solve the problem of foreign matter in the meat—but it didn’t. They were still picking out “stuff.”

Apparently, when you cut up an animal outside and on kitchen floors, there’s just no way around it—you are going to get extra little tidbits in the meat.

So I have become a very “picky” eater—I pick foreign objects out of my food. But try as I might, I can’t seem to get them all. I still find myself chewing on the occasional moose-hair. If I stay here much longer, I’ll be to be coughing up hair balls.

Alaska's Bounties

Alaska sure has its bounties. Of course, those come at a price.

For example—we decided that if we are going to survive this experience, we had better start eating better. So we placed a produce order with Full Circle Farms. They are a lovely business of green houses and artificial light that grows produce year round. And they ship out orders via the bush planes. Well, the other day, we had our first order delivered to our door. There is a village agent here—a guy who picks up the mail and any packages from the planes and takes them to the post office or the school. And he’s a nice guy. If he thinks a package might be really expensive or important, or might be damaged if it got frozen, he’ll drop it off right at your door. There are some people in life you will do almost anything to stay on their good side. He is at the top of that list.

So, we got our box of produce. In it was a head of lettuce, some Swiss chard, a small stalk of celery, a bunch of green onions, a very small head of broccoli, a nice sized orange pepper, three tiny purple onions, two smallish grapefruit, three apples, four tiny tangerines, a lime-green mango, about eight of the tiniest red potatoes I’d ever seen (with a combined weight of a single russet), and a small (lip gloss sized) jar of fennel & salt. And we were THRILLED! It’s not very often that a house breaks into dance over produce. The cost of that little treasure chest? A mere $67.50. Yup. In the lower 48 we would have had a very difficult time finding the same stuff, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it sold that small. But if you just went by weight, we could have gotten the same thing for under five bucks. Three if you shopped the sales. But at least we get to eat fresh green stuff for a day or two.

But to make things even more exciting in a “declare it a public holiday” sort of way, Keri and Taco went moose hunting that afternoon—and GOT A MOOSE!!!!! Not only did they get a moose, but on the way back, they almost ran into another one with the snow machine. Moose were out in abundance that night!

A friend of Keri’s, a local by the name of George (though everyone calls him Boise for some unfathomable reason) took them hunting. Showed Keri where he goes to get his moose every year. Yup. This guy has the monopoly on meese—mooses—miisen—those really big things that look like a giant ugly donkey—and he was willing to share. That is one nice friend.

Judging by our past serious lack of success in the hunting department, I really didn’t expect much from the trip. (We are great at trapping rabbits, but had struck out with moose.) So I armed them with toe and hand warmers (those things you put in your boots and gloves so you can carry your own personal heater into the great outdoors while you pretend to rough it). And I humiliated Taco by screaming, “Hey—where’s your hat?!” at the top of my pneumonia-strained lungs. (I had a hard time being heard over the snow machine engine.) Apparently, they were just driving in a circle to make sure the sled was secure. He still had to come inside to finish getting decked out for the trip.

Anyway, when I heard the snow machine pull up front several hours later, I figured their toe and hand warmers had run out of steam or something. I was shocked to see a moose being drug behind in the sled! At first, I thought maybe they had just run into an ugly donkey—like road kill or something. But nope, it was an honest-to-goodness moose. And Keri and Taco were proud as punch!

Personally, I had a hard time looking. I remember being traumatized as a child the time my dad went deer hunting. For weeks, our bedtime story had been several pages out of the novel Bambi. We were convinced shooting animals was a sin.

When it comes to getting meat, I think I prefer picking up nameless and faceless packages of beef in the grocer's freezer. But it's a different world out here.

Keri and Taco brought in the guns and grabbed the knives so they could cut up the moose. (It’s kind of hard to fit the whole thing in a freezer.) About 15 minutes into the job, I heard a banging at the door. There, looking as pathetic as could be, stood my two fearless hunters, each carrying a hind quarter and pleading frostbite.

Before I knew it, I had lost my kitchen floor to the cause.

I threatened them with a night in the great outdoors if there was one drop of blood left anywhere in the house.

They’ve butchered rabbits in my bathtub. They have now butchered a moose on my kitchen floor. I shudder to think what will happen if they ever shoot a bear.

We've Survived--So Far

First of all, let me get this out of the way: I AM SICK!!! I feel like I have the world’s worst cold and sound like I have the world’s worst cough. I ache from head to toe; have no voice; am freezing cold; and basically miserable. There. Now that’s out of the way, I’ll get down to business.

Taco and I are now up in the bush with Keri. Tanner stayed in Idaho to finish the school year because…actually, I will explain that in the next blog. (If I go into it now, this thing could go on forever.)

Our trip here was crazy! We flew on three flights and were in five airports by the time we got to Anchorage. I will never understand why a trip that has you going south when you want to go north, and takes three planes when it could have taken one, is so much cheaper than a direct flight! Doesn’t make much sense to me. Maybe that’s why there is failing airlines.

Anyway, we started in Salt Lake City, then on to Denver, into Phoenix, and then stopped in Seattle. The Seattle stop was unscheduled; we had to refuel because of strong headwinds. We couldn’t make it all the way to Anchorage—and generally speaking, a frigid ocean isn’t the best landing spot for a jetliner. We finally made Anchorage at about 2:30 AM—4:30 Utah (and our bodies’) time. We were exhausted!

Since I am too cheap to pay a hundred bucks for a hotel just for three hours worth of sleep, we camped out at the terminal. The Anchorage terminals are different than most—the benches don’t have arms; they are made to sleep on. And that is what we did; or at least, that is what Taco did. I just sat there.

When the ticket desk finally opened for the bush planes, I discovered a problem with our tickets—we didn’t have any. Turns out that although I had bought one, we weren’t on their list. For the past three days, they had been unable to fly into the village because of weather, so there was a backlog of people wanting to take the flight.

We tried standby, but it became obvious that the plane was going to be full, so we got a hotel—which, by the way, was DISGUSTING! But the real annoyance about the hotel part is that it came highly recommended by none other than my husband. The smell in the first room about made me sick, so I asked for a different room. That one wasn’t a heck of a lot better. It was so gross, that I was hesitant to take a shower without wearing some kind of protective footwear. When I asked Keri what on earth he could have possibly liked about the place, it turns out he liked it because they fed him breakfast. Sure doesn’t take much to impress the man.

As tired as I was, I couldn’t sleep yet because we had too much to do. The girl at the bush desk was awful. And she was going to charge us $300 for excess baggage. The bush planes don’t allow as many pieces of luggage as regular airlines do—although, with eight trips in and out, this was the first time someone was going to actually enforce it. Great. So Taco and I took a taxi to WalMart to buy some great big totes. Then we walked across the street to buy groceries, and took a cab back to the yucky hotel. We packed the totes with one bag each (those small suitcases with rollers), plus a lot of other clothes. We got rid of two bags and a bunch of other stuff, totaling 70 pounds each, so that we had more room in our suitcases for the groceries. Then we took the totes to a 24 hour post office (yes—there is a post office open 24/7 near the Anchorage airport—that’s the nature of the bush). It cost us $20 to ship each of the really big packages weighing 70 pounds.

Since we hadn’t eaten all day, we hit a buffet, and then went back to the yucky hotel, and SLEPT.

The real problem began the next morning when we realize that we’d miscalculated. Could it be the effect of running for three days on hardly any sleep? We had WAY more stuff than we could fit into the suitcases—both size and weight. So we took the bags of powdered milk (I’d bought two big cans of powdered milk, and then put them in freezer bags to transport them) and a bag of icing sugar, and duct taped them to my torso. We had Taco tuck in his undershirt, and we dropped about ten oranges down his shirt and two big bags of dehydrated sliced potatoes. He was not impressed. The oranges made him itch and the potatoes were scratchy—which if you think about it, is the perfect combination. The potatoes scratch the itches caused by the oranges. Anyway, I felt like a health food terrorist. Good thing there is no security check to get on the bush planes, or we never would have made it through.

Anyway, we finally got to the village. Yay! But by that time, I had thrown my back out, what with all the hauling luggage and stuff. So I spent the next three days alternating between pain meds and muscle relaxant—both of which knock me out. When the pain finally subsided, I awoke to discover that I was horribly sick. I have been absolutely miserable for over a week now. And worthless. So far, I am wondering when this trip is going to start being fun. And I’m sure Keri is wondering why the heck he wanted me out here in the first place.

Rabbit Update

I wanted to give everyone a short update on the rabbit situation:

Rabbits like peanut butter! I thought they might.

We didn’t actually catch any with the peanut butter, but they sure ate it up. They just outsmarted the traps. But our hunting crowd (Keri and Larry) figured out a way to outsmart the rabbits. We have now caught a grand total of four. This is a very good thing, because we were quickly running out of meat. And as I think I’ve mentioned, produce is even scarcer. So the rabbit is very much appreciated. (And it’s fun eating with Leigh and Larry. They are a hoot. I cook it up, and they come on over. I’ve tried a new recipe each time. So far, we all have the same favorite.)

Tips for future rabbit connoisseurs:
1. Let the meat simmer for a couple of hours, or it will be tough as leather.
2. Watch out for the bones. They are very small and it’s almost impossible to get them all—and they are sharp.

Spring Fever & Rabbit Stew

Excitement abounds here among the hunting crowd (the hunting crowd being Keri and his hunting buddy Larry). They caught a rabbit!

A couple of days ago, Larry showed up at the house with a grin and a bunch of nylon cord. He’d rescued a set of blinds bound for the dump and put them to use one last time by unstringing the cords—and made them into rabbit snares. So Keri and Larry took off for the trees and spent several hours setting traps. The next day, when no unsuspecting bunny had inadvertently run through the snare, Larry baited them with wilted spinach. And today, success! There stood Larry at the door holding a big snow white rabbit by its back feet. He’d gone out to check the traps—and they’d gotten one!

So Keri butchered the thing and I helped him stretch the skin (now there’s something I never saw myself doing). We are all going to eat rabbit stew tomorrow after church. Leigh and Larry Myers are the other couple in the village who are members of the church. So we get together every Sunday to listen to church on speaker phone, and then have dinner. They are good friends. I like them a lot.

This evening, Keri and I went out to check the traps again. But I think Spring Fever has hit a little before it should, and that makes us do weird things. It was 25 degrees above zero outside, so beautiful and spring-like that I dressed down—jeans only, no snow pants; no hat or face mask; and ankle socks instead of my long socks; my spring boots instead of Tanner’s warm ones. Well, about 100 yards out I missed my hat when the wind started whistling in my ears, but I didn’t turn back for it because the sun was starting to go down and we still had a hike ahead of us. And I noticed the lack of snow pants when I started wading through knee-deep snow in jeans and also when I fell flat on my face. And apparently, my sock and my left boot didn’t like each other, because they would not cooperate. My sock kept catching on my boot and being pulled down, so I didn’t have a sock on for insulation and I was walking on a ball of crunched up fabric.

Turns out we didn’t catch another rabbit, but Keri built up the walls around the snares. They put a border of sticks on one side of the snare with the idea that the rabbit can only get to the spinach from the other side, thereby having to reach through the snare. Tomorrow, I’m going to leave some crackers with peanut butter and see if that doesn’t get their attention. Peanut butter is smelly. Sure they normally eat vegetables. But who says they wouldn’t like a change of pace? Just because they aren’t offered desert doesn’t mean they won’t like it. So I will try to remember to report on the success of a change in diet in the rabbit world.

I was about frozen by the time we headed back. My kneecaps were ready to fall off, and I couldn’t feel my ears. As we trudged along, we heard yelling and screaming coming from the direction of the school. When we rounded the corner, there were about a dozen kids playing their version of kickball in the snow, and another bunch on the playground—wearing no hats, and coats flapping open. Seems I’m not the only one around here affected by a sudden case of Spring Fever.

I Can't Believe it's Butter!

Keri went to Anchorage for about a week, and arrived back home looking like a smuggler. He walked through the door, and I barely got a hug in before he was emptying the pockets of his snow jacket, snow vest and snow pants. That man must have been carrying 20 pounds of butter on his person!

He spent his last two evenings in Anchorage doing nothing but shopping. My hero! (Actually, he was shopping until about 3:00 AM both nights.) We are almost out of food at home, and buying stuff in the village is outrageous. A gallon of milk costs $12. Stuff is just downright pricey. But since that is a problem through the whole of the Bush, Anchorage is set up to accommodate it. They have some big stores (like WalMart and Fred Meyers) that have 24/7 bush order departments. You simply stock up your shopping cart, and they box it up and ship it off for you COD (cash on delivery). I hear there is also a post office open 24/7 for those who want their stuff shipped faster. It’s cheaper to shop that way than to buy it in the Bush.

The last night, he got all the produce and frozen stuff. He’d taken two empty totes out with him on the plane. He filled one tote with long-lasting produce (like potatoes and carrots and stuff) and mailed it back. The other tote, he filled with frozen stuff and short-lasting produce (like lettuce and kiwis) and was going to take it on the plane. Word to the wise—don’t try shipping bananas. No matter how you pack them, they just don’t survive. You get to the other end with brown mush. Anyway, the airplane tote was about 20 pounds too heavy—so he took out the butter and filled every pocket and crack and crevice in his clothes with the stuff. Then the tote weighed in perfectly. The plane was just as heavy, but at least the tote passed inspection.

You’d think carrying butter on the body might be a problem. You know—melting? But it actually works just fine on these flights, because the planes aren’t heated. You combine an Alaskan winter with high altitude flying, and it gets pretty nippy. So we wear long johns, sweats, jeans, snow pants…. We layer up for survival—not comfort. It’s definitely not the way to lounge back and relax. But it’s a great way to smuggle 20 pounds of butter.