June 2010

This last week was busy and wonderful. Lots of family time and fishing. Good food and beach walks. Berries and wildflowers. Some warm sunshine. Made pebble bracelets (inspired by Maya Made’s nature bracelets) with a roll of tape. Celebrated a great dad. We even got out on the water in our friend’s boat. And now I have lots more crab shucking ahead of me.

Happy solstice!

I started a new class at the university last week: Field Sketching and Nature Drawing. It’s amazing. I haven’t taken a drawing class in years and years, and have done very little to practice since then. I was apprehensive to get started, but I don’t think I could have found a better match for my reintroduction. I knew I’d like it from the first few minutes of class, when the professor talked about how it wasn’t even really about creating finished art pieces, as much as it was about truly experiencing nature. Drawing nature in through your eyes, processing it in your head, letting it go down through your heart and out through your hand. Not only is it nature drawing, but it’s drawing in nature. I love that! And aside from the wonderful experiences it’s giving me in absorbing the world around me, I am also learning a lot of great techniques to put to use.

We had a field excursion up to the tram on Mt. Roberts on Saturday. It was a true Southeast experience. Pounding rain, hard wind, really foggy at times. I hiked up past the cross and had an amazing view of the channel at times. I sat there for about an hour in the rain, completely absorbed in my little rocky world (crazy how much the alpine looks like a desert, even in this rainforest!). After about an hour, I realized I was so surrounded in fog that I couldn’t even see the trail down. Luckily, it didn’t take long to clear. I didn’t know field sketching could be so harrowing!

On the tram ride down, I put my camera in manual focus and took a bunch of shots of town so that I could observe the only the shapes, shadows and highlights. I tend to get lost in the details and become completely overwhelmed. I’m learning to strip it down and pick out the “trueness” of the object/scene. This photo exercise was a big help, almost like squinting with my eyes.

The kids and I are practicing at home. We are keeping nature journals this summer and they are having great fun identifying critters and plants, and humoring me by letting me “teach” them my newfound techniques. And I have to mention how inspiring it is to be in an academic environment again where everyone is excited about learning and has so much to openly give of themselves. Creativity is contagious!

A daybreak rainbow and a trip to summer’s first farmer’s market. Noticed the fireweed clock is just beginning to tick and picked my first bright orange salmonberry. Delicious!

A friend gave us a bunch of dungeness crab that she and her husband caught over the weekend. We’ve been breaking it out of the fridge here and there for dinner and snacks all week. Last night, I decided it was time to shuck the rest and put it in the freezer for later. I poured a glass of wine, turned on some music and sat down at the table to get started. It’s kind of a meditative process and I found my mind twisting over a lot of the thoughts I’ve been having on eating and food/life connections.

Several weekends ago, I volunteered in a community day booth for new group getting started in town called Slow Food Southeast Alaska (a local chapter of the international organization promoting good, clean, and fair food). I was able to meet a lot of local foodies and the overall community response was positive and encouraging. But it got me to thinking about eating in Alaska as opposed to eating in the Austin area.

In Austin, I felt like it was so easy. We had a meager backyard garden, chickens, a nearby farmer who provided us with raw milk, cheese and occasional beef. There were farmer’s markets galore and even our statewide grocery store, H.E.B., highly promoted local products and were very supportive of the communities they inhabited. You could count on Whole Foods (don’t get me started on WF though), Sprouts, and my favorite Sun Harvest, to provide you with nutritious goods when a trip to a natural food store was in order.

So eating in Southeast Alaska… is a little different. Food is a LOT more expensive in stores. Fruit can be grainy and mushy and the bananas are always either very green or grossly overripe. I often can’t find the spices or other accoutrements I have grown attached to having around. I knew it would be hard to practice our food ideals when we moved back up here. However, I think I’m finding my footing. As applied to everything in a big move, it just takes a new perspective.

Eating local food is a very personal process here. I know a lot of people with backyard gardens, even if it’s as simple as a strawberry patch. Almost everyone I know fishes, crabs, hunts–you name it. There are so many wild edibles to harvest, from blueberries to sorrel to spruce tips. I’m learning so much about plants up here! The process of living and eating are so intertwined that it gives new meaning to food being a way to sustain ourselves. The food here feeds my spirit and my body. I find myself getting giddy over the idea of being able to go into the forest and pick enough berries to keep us in jelly for the year.

So yeah, if you’re expecting to go to the grocery store and find delicious local, sustainable and affordable food, you’ll more than likely be disappointed. But if you’re willing to be open-minded and put forth a little effort, the bounty is there and it’s delicious. Sometimes though, eating local does mean that you have to stop for jojos and a fried burrito at DeHarts on your way out the road. Ya can’t be too hard on yourself.

To all you local people, I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas about eating in Southeast Alaska/BC. I have so much to learn. Here are some of the ways we have been feeding our family:

We get a family size CSA share every other week flown up from Full Circle Farm in Washington. I’ve been pretty happy with their greens but I don’t love the fruit–with the exception of the AWESOME cantaloupe this week (maybe it gets better as summer comes?). Getting the box every other week certainly doesn’t last for our family of five big eaters, but it gives me the freedom to supplement with food I can find at the store or Costco. Plus, I’m just not willing to pay over $200 a month for a box once a week. I am really excited about the Alaskan CSA in Palmer, Glacier Valley Farms, who will start delivering to Juneau very soon! I will definitely be giving them a try, especially for the summertime months when we can get great Alaskan produce. Please join their mailing list so you know when they’ll be delivering here.

We’ve been so blessed with friends who exhibit the great Alaskan spirit by giving or trading for seafood and other goods. I love the idea of bartering! I’m trying to talk Brian into starting to shoot professionally again and doing it all for trade! But he has much more business sense than I do. We’ve also caught a small amount of seafood ourselves, which is tough to do here without a boat. I look forward to when the salmon start heading up creek so we can stock the freezer on foot. Hopefully next year we’ll have a boat… we’ll see.

I am about to place my first order on Tree Things. It’s my understanding (but don’t quote me on this) that it is a couple who brings up fruit in a U-Haul from California and ships Alaskan seafood on the return. What a neat idea! I’m trying to decide between peaches and plums for the first go. If you’re interested, the contact is listed on the “pick up locations” page.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the first ever weekly Juneau Farmer’s Market! I will definitely be checking this out. It runs simultaneously with the Juneau Artist’s Market at the JACC and I understand there will be live music, too! It culminates at the end of summer with the Local Food Festival–awesome. Should be fun and I hope to see you there!

Has anyone seen Eating Alaska? I just heard about it and it sounds fantastic and right up my alley. I am going to try to stream it this weekend. Watching the trailer kind of made me want to learn how to hunt myself. Anyone game to learn with me? Haha.

I’m sure I could write a book on this and fill it mainly with all the questions I have on this topic, but I’ll stop there. I’d love to hear any of your thoughts on the matter. Ramble on. For now, I’m going to eat some leftover wontons from last night’s latest crab creation (which was based loosely on this recipe).

I do still miss raw milk.

Well, just 99 days to be exact. But it sure feels like it might last forever… Our first morning of summer vacation has consisted of cereal+milk all over the carpet, coffee splattered all over the living room, Mighty waking up at 5:30 (I had to drag him out of bed during the school year!), and a nice serenade from Mr. Sound Effects and his Hot Wheels. You know I love my babies… I just need to find a groove here. At least there’s a little sun peeking through out there so we can get outside and run.

What are your summer plans? Are you going on a big vacation or sticking to the home front? As for us? Soccer, hiking, camping, journaling, lots of creating. I just saw this project that I know the kids will LOVE. Lots of berry picking and jam. Pies and grilling. Sleepovers and playgrounds. Concerts in the Park. Beachcombing and splashing.

Oh summer, I might like you after all.

My good friend gave me rhubarb from her garden last week. Exciting!  If you’re reading this down south, think zucchini. There’s a lot of rhubarb up here which makes me really happy because finding rhubarb in Texas was a rare occurrence for me. The H.E.B. would carry it on occasion, but like every other edible treat, it is best picked straight from the ground. Since we don’t have any growing in our yard, unlike most people here, please let me know if you need me to take some off your hands.  I’d be happy to. Not only because they’re tasty, but they’re also beautiful. I’m tempted to put some in a vase in all their leafy glory. As Smitten Kitchen said a few posts back, “they’re shiny and pretty and pearly and pink… and I am incapable of resisting shiny pretty pearly pink things, nor do I wish to.” Well said.

I knew I wanted to make something special for my reacquaintance with this cool weather perennial. I consulted my hero, Heidi Swanson and found this awesome recipe. Rhubarb and port–yes! With black pepper? Nice. She never lets me down. As much as I wanted to follow the recipe to a “T”, I didn’t have some things here and there (one of those things being port–eek!) and so I improvised. And it was dreadfully good. And by dreadful, I mean so good that I had to practice honest-to-God self control to save some for the rest of the family. I’m sharing my steps here, thinking if you can get your hands on some rhubarb, you might just have everything else to whip some of this up right now this very minute. If you have port, use it in place of the merlot.

Rhubarb Berry Crumble
adapted from this recipe at 101 Cookbooks

3/4 cup flour
2/3 cup walnuts, chopped and lightly toasted
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup natural cane sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/3 cup butter, melted

1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 cup natural cane sugar

1 cup quartered strawberries
1/2 cup blueberries
2 cups sliced rhubarb (3/4-inch pieces)

1/4 cup merlot wine (optional)

Preheat the oven to 375F and butter a 10-inch round dish or a 9×9 square baking dish.

Combine the flour, walnuts, oats, sugar, salt, and pepper together in a bowl. Use a fork to stir in the butter. Form into a patty and place it on a plate in the freezer while you whip up the rest of the recipe.

For the filling, whisk together the cornstarch and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the strawberries, blueberries and rhubarb, and toss until evenly coated. Wait a few minutes, add the merlot and toss again. Pour the rhubarb mixture into the pan, remove the topping from the freezer, and crumble across the top of the filling – make sure you have big pieces and small.

Bake for 35 – 40 minutes, or until the top is golden and the juices are vigorously bubbling.

Original recipe says it serves 8 – 12, but our family of five (three of which are small) ate it all in one sitting, with enough for a small bit of breakfast for me.