Traditional Foods Cookbook backup.indd
Transcription
Traditional Foods Cookbook backup.indd
Nay’dini’aa Na’ Tra d i t i o n al & C o n t e m p o ra r y Re g i o n a l Fo o d s Ya Ne Dah Ah School Fish Camp 2004 Table Of Contents Title Page ...................... 1 Austin Ahmasuk Introduction .......................................................................................................................7 Boiled Meat................... 8 Dried Meat ................... 9 Seal & Walrus Hunting ...............................................................................................................................10 Dried Seal Meat .......... 13 Seal Oil ....................... 14 Aged Flipper................ 15 Dry Fish ...................... 15 Frozen Foods ............... 16 Egging ......................... 17 Agutaq (Eskimo Ice Cream) ........................................................................................................................18 Dog Food .................... 19 Emily Mendell ........... 21 Supermarket Forest Introduction .................................................................................................................23 Do What You Can ...... 30 Sourdough .................. 31 Garlic-Lover’s Halibut Pizza ........................................................................................................................34 Fiddleheads ................. 36 Sugar Swollen Ants ...... 38 Witch Picker ............... 40 Austin Ahmasuk Austin Ahmasuk I was born to Harold and Janet Ahmasuk on July 7, 1972 in Nome, Alaska. Nome is a community of around 3000 and experiences fairly long periods of winter (October to May) and relatively short periods of summer (June to September). Consumer goods are rather expensive, and living off of the land or at least amassing some foods from the land and sea is good for daily nutrition and graciously supplements expensive grocery items. When I was growing up, both of my parents worked until my early teenage years. My father worked as a Heavy Equipment Operator with the State of Alaska for thirty years, and my mother worked as a Medical Technologist with Norton Sound Health Corporation for 25 years. Understanding and utilizing the resources of the land and sea was taught to me from a very early age. If not for living a healthy subsistence life, it taught me many character values that portray the traditional Native lifestyle. Nearly the whole gamut of subsistence activities were taught to me as a young boy. For many of my early years as a young person I primarily listened and watched “how” to do things. Later on as it became apparent that I was probably learning the technical skills, I was given the opportunity to try a few things so that I may really know “how”. As I tried a few things, some other things were taught to me, maybe an old story or some other experience to “add” to my learning and technical skills. Most of what I learned about hunting and fishing are modern adaptations to old ways of doing things. Some methods of subsistence living are virtually unchanged. Many things now do not look like how they might have several hundred years ago. Aside from the superficial differences there is something there that makes it Native. When we get an animal it is usually a communal effort, if not the effort of at least several people. In hunting the big animals like walrus, seal, moose, I hunt with other people. All of us, whether it’s a couple or several, all equally get the animal. Sure, someone owns the boat, or other vehicle, but it is done with the efforts of more than one that enables a hunt to be successful. Overall, I believe Native foods are the most healthy and with my cultural heritage, I enjoy a connection to the environment that runs deep in my character and is a meaningful historic lifeway that continues in me. I eat of the land or sea quite often, the main daily traditional food items are seal and fish. Most of our traditional food items are rather simple to prepare. In explaining our traditional foods I will start with simple food recipes and then end with some of the more complicated ones. The Ahmasuk family is originally from Wales, Alaska at the western tip of the Seward Peninsula, and so the food preparation methods I will share are mostly representative of the modern Wales diet. People from Wales are called “kifikmiut” and several families from Wales moved to Nome during the mid-1940’s to seek wage-earning employment. It is very likely, and certainly can be related to some of our stories, that the “kifikmiut” people knew and commingled with people of the greater Nome area well before written history, and so this area was not foreign to us, and in fact family relations existed that are well known. Page 7 Boiled Meat Seal, moose, caribou, bear, whale, walrus, beaver, porcupine, birds, fish, shellfish, etc. The first traditional food preparation method I should share is the most simple cooking method and that would be boiled meat. Many an “ieupiaq” meal has been the old reliable simple pot of boiled meat. Not just meat but other animal organs, that with minor extra food items such as greens, and/or seaweed, makes a fine stew. By other animal organs I mean the heart, liver, kidneys, intestines, tongue, skin, blubber, etc. Quite often these boiled meat parts are simply taken out of the pot and eaten with other food items, fresh greens, greens stored in seal oil, or other aged foods. The leftover broth is also another food item and, historically, was a breakfast food. The broth from last night’s meal would serve as the next day’s breakfast for a hunter. Of all the traditional food preparation methods boiling meat is likely the one that persists everywhere most of the time, and a simple offshoot is the stew. The red meat, heart, and tongue of moose or caribou is generally made into a stew for which the modern, most basic stew, would have onions, noodles, rice and some spices. Historically, it likely would have had some greens, wild chives, and some sea salt as a spice. Seal meat and organs are generally not made into a stew, and usually comprise a pot of water and the internal organs of the animal such as red meat, heart, liver, kidneys, blubber, and intestines that is cooked to boiled, generally to rare. The meaty stuff is taken out and eaten as is, after which the broth, which looks a lot like miso soup with curdled blood, is eaten. Fish is cooked in this way as well: the meat taken out, perhaps eaten with greens stored in seal oil or other aged foods, and after which the broth again resembling miso soup with curdled blood, is eaten. Shellfish such as crab and clams are also boiled but for only some moments. Crab and other shellfish are placed into boiling water for approximately 5 minutes and then taken out so as not to be overcooked. In the case of crab the whole animal is placed in the boiling water, and most of the animal is eaten, including the innards which when left within the carapace makes a natural kind of bowl, and sipped like soup. Fish and shellfish should not be overcooked, it is better to cook them on the rare side if at all possible, or they may become dried out and not taste as good. Historically, throughout most of the winter months, boiling meat was the primary food preparation method. A coarse read might indicate that with a diet high in mostly meat that some dietary problems may arise. What we should keep in mind is that usually the entire animal is eaten and little of the animal is wasted. The other organs would have provided the necessary nutrients to maintain health. So without a doubt a diet high in red meat is successful, and, of course, has proven itself over time but involved consumption of other bodily organs. Aside from the unique animals of the sub-arctic this method is well-known worldwide and is the most basic food preparation method. Page 8 Dried Meat Dried Moose, Caribou, Reindeer Meat, Seal, and Fat Moose, caribou and reindeer meat and fat can all be dried in the same manner. It is basically the same as drying seal meat although the consistency of the meat is different, but the process is the same. The animals are taken apart. Here is an important aspect, well, I think important. When we take apart animals after killing them we only use a knife. We have an extensive knowledge of their anatomy, and all the joints and places where they can be taken apart we take them apart. Where other hunters use saws, or hatchets we do not need them. After they are dressed the quarters are processed for drying, as with seal meat, all sinews, membranes and such are removed so the dried meat is not hard to chew after being dried. Well, that is about it, pretty simple. The rump meat is most devoid of sinews and other membranes and generally makes good dried meat. The fat is dried for use as several food items. The fat in the rump and surrounding the paunch, intestines, etc. is usually taken for that matter. The fat is simply removed from those areas and hung somewhere to dry. It does not take long for it to dry. The dried fat can be eaten as is, and is generally taken with hunters as a snack item. Sometimes that is all I will take when hunting, moose fat, just cut off a piece like a hunk a cheese and keep going. The other thing dried fat is used for is a specialty, and my most favorite food item of all. The highest culmination of effort brings about the next food item: Eskimo Ice cream as it is called by various types are called different things, “agutaq”, “agutuq”, “qamaamaq”, and others. Eskimo Ice Cream is the ultimate winter-time food for out on the trail. It can be eaten frozen, put in a container thrown in the sled, taken out when needed, all hunters can dip from it for sustenance and is very filling, very healthy and the ultimate survival food. I am really partial to Eskimo Ice Cream, and will explain it as best I can, like I say it is the ultimate food item, part dessert, part hardy meal, part survival food, all Eskimo, and is made from food items that a person has to collect throughout the year. Essentially it takes all year to make, but can be made in an hour or two. This food preparation method is quite simple, although we are starting to get a little more specialized in preparation methods now. I say simple only after it is assumed you have the seal in hand ready to be prepared. Generally men hunt for marine mammals due to the very physical nature of it, lifting and working with heavy items not mention animals, cold, seafaring ability, mechanical ability in case motor goes haywire, and all that stuff. “Black meat” it is popularly called because it actually turns black after being dried. There is quite a bit of skill to making black meat, although it is simply air dried on drying racks outdoors in the spring air of May. May is when my people generally focus on marine mammal hunting, during which time we will amass large quantities of meat. Page 9 After you get a seal, it could be any seal, but generally the species is ringed seal and bearded seal. Actually I have never made black meat from any other species except ring or bearded seal. The reason for that is simple, bearded and ring seal are the most common in this neck of the woods. A bearded seal weighs in at about 700-1000 pounds; females can be quite large towards the 1000 pound mark. The blubber weight makes the difference. They tend to pack it on towards spring (March, during pupping). A ring seal weighs in at around 300 pounds max, they are usually a little smaller averaging about 150-250. Ring seal during about May to June go through a molt and we call them “tiqag”. The anglicized translation is “gassy seal” as during this time their meat smells exactly like gasoline, it is safe to eat and is NOT gasoline or any petrol chemical, but in fact their musk. It is very strong and their meat at this time is avoided for human consumption. We are able to identify those animals by their face coloration. It takes many years observing seals and teachings from elders to diagnose a gassy seal so that you can avoid killing them for human consumption, although for dog feed that is not a concern. Bearded seal go through molts as well but the musk is not as bad. Black meat is a very common food item that many people make. The complications of making this food are not in the drying but the cutting and preparation before drying. The quarters and hams are dried generally in slabs one-half to one inch thick, or in strips of the same thickness. The bones of the quarters are removed except when we intend to make half dried meat (angimaaq) from the quarters; a later story. Care is taken to remove all sinews and membranes from all meat so as not to have a hard time chewing after being dried. The ham, at least what I call the ham (back strap, seal equivalent to rump), is generally absent of large sinew groups and so the meat there is easily cut up for drying. The front quarters after being removed from the adjacent rib cage leaves a sizable portion of meat on the rib cages. This meat from the ribs is cut from the rib in one large slab and then cut up for drying. The ribs too are dried in much the same manner, the meat between ribs is sliced lengthwise with the rib and hung to dry entire with rib bones attached. From one bearded seal it is expected that a person is able to dry from 150 to 200 pounds of meat (wet weight). Some people like to dry the black meat hard and others dry it soft. The meat after being dried is stored in a mixture of seal oil and blubber and frozen for later use. Even if the meat is dried hard it can be made soft by storing in seal oil. Generally it takes some months to soften up black meat that has been overly dried, but rest assured it will soften up a little. Dried meat in many forms exist, although my people, being coastal Eskimos, made it a point to make this food item as we are mostly dependent on marine mammals for most of our food items. Seal & Walrus Hunting Perhaps under this category I should explain a little about seal hunting. I grew up seal hunting, and don’t remember the first time I went. It was likely before I became aware of the world around me. Seal hunting is a year-round activity, the summer time is when we try to avoid gassy seals (molting ring seals). During the winter we hunt seals from the ice. In the spring we hunt seals from the open ocean in skiffs. There are many things to know about ice-edge seal hunting. For one thing it can be quite dangerous and sometimes downright nerve-racking, walking and traveling on thin moving ice. I have to say that I have learned from many traditional experts the things a person should know to stay alive on the ocean ice, and that is whole other story. Women do go seal hunting once in a while but it usually takes just one trip to convince them otherwise. During the Page 10 winter, seal hunting is largely a solitary activity without too much group involvement. There is a whole lot to say about seal hunting that I can not say in just the few minutes. I will take to explain some of it, it is just too exhaustive a subject. Ice seals (bearded, ring, ribbon, and spotted) keep holes in the ocean ice open all winter. They do this to forage for food under the ice, and to keep warm, as the air temperature during this time of year generally is colder than sea temperature. But on a warm day it may be seals are likely on top of the ice, basking. Seals are generally hard to approach while on top of the ice, but with patience it can be done. Sleeping seals as they are called, are stalked to within shooting distance and then killed. Very exact shot placement is sought or you risk losing the animal. What they do while on top of the ice is position their head to their hole or the ice edge, and at the slightest twitch they can enter the water and escape their predator. So we always seek a head shot; no other shot is taken as any other shot means they will live long enough to escape into the water. Another seal hunting method during winter is ice edge seal hunting. We travel to the edge of shore-fast ice and wait for seals to swim near us. They too are shot in the head as that is the only shot that is offered they swim with their head out of the water. We usually use small caliber rifles like .22 rimfire, .222, or .223. When they are killed we can retrieve them via several methods. A lot of hunters will bring a small scow along with them and use that Page 11 for retrieving seals shot from the ice edge, while other folks will use what we call iijqaq “seal retrieval hook”. An iijqaq is a floating hook that can be hurled just beyond the seal, snag it and then haul it in. Generally though, a person can only retrieve seals in that manner that are within 100 yards. Seal hunting during the winter around Nome is usually focused on one species the ring seal as other species usually vacate shore-fast regions. In the spring hunting crews generally concentrate on another seal, the ugruk or bearded seal, the largest of all ice seals about 700-1000 pounds. Those seals during the spring generally endure migrations north with the retreating ice and they become available in larger numbers than any other time of year. These larger seals are hunted in a little different manner, and is a usually group activity. Captains summon crews of about 3 to 4 to go spring-time boating and utilize 18 foot boats and around 30 to 50 HP motors. Generally the crew is an extended family who may have hunted together for 60 to 70 years with younger members constantly recruited in as older men retire and welcome in the younger generation. Our family works together during spring by summoning 3 or 4 of our family or extended family with my father serving as captain. It is said that one can not learn what Eskimos need to know by asking or talking, only watching and doing and that is how I learned; never ask questions, just watch and do. Now I know what I need to and the questions I used to have were answered in time without ever asking. But now that more captains are speaking English, my father no longer will speak in his native tongue with anybody who would understand him. Bearded seals are generally preferred during spring for their large size and amount of blubber. They are hunted from boats as I said, but what is different is they are rather wary animals and generally don’t float. So harpoons are used in conjunction with rifles. A person can hunt bearded seals without rifles, but most will use them for the final kill. Bearded seals can be stalked while on top of the ice from the water and that is the preferred method as you don’t have to use harpoons then or drag them back on top of the ice to be butchered. It takes many years to distinguish the different seals from the water or on top of the ice, let alone spot them from distant ice flows. There is also an element of marksmanship involved; remember we go for head shots whether on top of ice or in the water. The third seal, the walrus is the other member of the seal family we hunt. Those are much larger than bearded seal they weigh from 2000 - 4000 pounds depending upon age and sex, there is some sexual dimorphism. They are huge dangerous animals with strong maternal and herd instincts. These animals are sought generally after a crew has harvested enough ugruk. After enough ugruk are harvested crews may focus attention on locating walrus by observing where distant ice flows are. An reliable method of knowing where ice is located when it can not be seen from shore is to observe the haze upon the horizon, or being observant in the morning hours when the effects of mirage will show the presence of ice. Clouds adequately reflect ground colors at certain times and so another method that has allowed people from shore to determine the location of ice when it can not be seen from shore, simply clouds will reflect light and dark colors, and so the underside if it is bright white out on the ocean, will reflect the ice below it. Again it depends upon the type of cloud. Climbing above sea level also naturally allows a person to see where ice may be located. From shore it is said a person should be able to see 20 or so miles before sea level objects disappear beyond the horizon. Now days folks may look to the National Weather Service for ice coverage but that method means you must be near a computer and I Page 12 do not prefer it. It simply is not necessary, the old methods work just fine and are highly effective. Walrus are tough animals and usually shot with centerfire rifles. Although many hunters will use the .222 or .223 as I do for its low cost ammunition and universal shell availability. When using the smaller caliber rounds a person must make good shot placement so as to kill the walrus as quickly as possible, the strong maternal and herd instincts of walrus may mean animals become struck and lost. They too must be harpooned if taken in the water as they generally do not float. Walrus can be heard for many miles, and prefer certain ice types to haul out on, and there are other natural occurrences that tip off captains that walrus are present, such as the presence of the northern fulmar, or what is locally called the walrus bird. One walrus provides lots of meat and blubber, so one walrus is quite a bit to haul back to shore. Walrus also generally are far from Nome’s shore during spring so longer boat trips are required. Dried Seal Meat This food preparation method is quite simple although is a little more specialized in preparation, I say simple only after it is assumed you have the seal in hand ready to be prepared. Generally men folk hunt for marine mammals due to the very physical nature of it, lifting and working with heavy items, cold, sea faring ability, mechanical ability in case motor goes haywire, etc., etc. “black meat” as it is popularly called actually turns black after being dried. Seal meat itself is quite dark, not sure exactly why it is so dark, but it is naturally high in iron, maybe that is why it is so dark. There is a fair bit of skill to making black meat although it is simply air dried on drying racks outdoors generally in the spring air of May. May is when my people generally focus on marine mammal hunting, during which time we will amass large quantities of meat. After you get a seal it could be any seal, but generally the species is ringed seal and bearded seal. Actually I have never made black meat from any other species except ring or bearded seal. The reason for that is simple, bearded and ring seal are the most common in this neck of the woods. A bearded seal may weigh 700-1000 pounds, females can be quite large towards the 1000 pound mark the blubber weight seems to makes the difference as they will tend to pack it on towards spring (March, during pupping). A ring seal weighs in at around 300 pounds max generally though they are a little smaller averaging about 150-250. During May to June ring seals go through a molt and we call those type tigaq, the anglicised translation is “gassy seal” as during this time their meat smells exactly like gasoline, it is safe to eat and is NOT gasoline or any petro chemical but in fact their musk and is very strong and their meat at this time is avoided for human consumption. We are able to identify those animals by their face coloration and it takes some years observing seals and teachings from old timers to diagnose a gassy seal so that you can avoid killing them for human consumption although for dog feed that is not a concern. Bearded seal go through molts as well but the musk is not bad. Black meat is a very common food item that many people make. The complications of making this food is not in the drying but the cutting and preparation before drying. The quarters and hams are dried generally in slabs one-half to one inch thick or in strips of the same thickness the bones of the quarters are removed except when we intend to make half dried meat (afimaaq). Care is taken to remove all sinews and membranes from all meat so as not to have a hard time chewing after being dried. The ham at least what I call the ham or backstrap (seal equivalent to rump) is generally absent of large sinew groups and so the meat there is easily cut up for drying. The front quarters after being removed from the adjacent rib cage leaves a sizable portion of meat on the rib cages, this meat from the ribs is cut from the rib in one large slab and then cut up for drying. The ribs too are dried in much the same manner, the meat between ribs is sliced lengthwise with the rib and hung to dry entire with rib bones attached. From one bearded seal it is expected that a person is able to dry from 150 to 200 pounds of meat (dry weight). After it is dried there is some variation Page 13 between persons and their likes. Some people like to dry hard and others dry the black meat soft. Generally though the meat after dried is stored in a mixture of seal oil and blubber and frozen for later use. Even if the meat is dried hard it can be made soft again by storing it in seal oil which generally takes some months to soften up; black meat that has been overly dried rest assured it will soften up a little. Dried meat in many forms exist although my people being coastal eskimos made it a point to make this food item as we are generally most dependent on marine mammals for most of our food items. Seal Oil or seal oil is made from the blubber of seals any seal with blubber can make or render mizibaaq. Mizibaaq renders at room temperature even below room temperature. As an unsaturated oil it may be high in omega 3 fatty acids. Mizibaaq will coagulate at about freezing and a little above freezing will go liquid again. It has the color of corn oil. OK, how do you make it? The blubber is cut from the seal’s skin, generally a seal is insulated with several inches of blubber, the blubber is fleshed from the skin after the hide has been removed, being fleshed off generally with an ulu. When I do not intend to save the hide I can quickly use a butcher-type knife with great efficiency by cutting the hide into strips a foot to half a foot wide and then run my knife in one fell swoop along the hide and remove the blubber, that method is a quick and dirty one but is not favored. The blubber is then cut into small strips and placed in a container of some sort. Now this is where is gets tricky and where one CAN NOT deviate from traditional preparation methods or you risk becoming very sick or even dying. After the blubber strips are placed in a container one must ensure that the blubber can “breathe”. traditionally the hide of the seal was saved and used as the container. The leather allowed the “breathing” to occur. Now days we use plastic containers or other similar type containers and that is fine as long as you allow for air reaching the blubber mixture. As blubber renders if not allowed to “breathe” aneorobic bacteria such as botulism can set in and grow. Botulism deaths in Alaska are probably higher than normal (don’t know for sure) but many botulism deaths are attributable to other foods as well, not just Native foods. The container of blubber should be placed in a cool place, not hot place, to render which generally takes several weeks, large amounts can be made during that time, and in the old days was used rather heavily for eating and also home heating, seal oil lamps provided light and heat in old-time houses (sod houses) Mizibaaq Food items can be stored in seal oil, and that is another and primary use of seal oil, for storage of food. We did not have any of the canning methods we have now days and our people had to devise some sort of method to store the summer’s bounty, like greens, dried fish and meat, etc. By placing food items in seal oil, which is an effective natural preservative, foods could be gathered during summer, like the ones I mentioned, and saved for a later consumption. Seal oil was so important to our lives that without it, it is likely that our struggle for survival would mean starvation without it. It is relatively easy to make once the animal which provides mizibaaq is in hand. Over the many generations our people have become specialized in seal behavior, killing methods and seafaring traditions as the sea and sea mammals are a key component of our culture. Long ago many people died in the pursuit of sea mammals like seal, whale, walrus, polar bear and others. From that hard life now exists many long-standing cultural traditions that have not changed much, the use of harpoon, traditional hunting methods and stories that serve as educational tools, are sustenance for the continuance of sea mammal hunting. Page 14 Aged Flipper The flipper of bearded seal, or walrus, is utilized for aging purposes. I imagine that just about any flipper could be aged, whether its a whale flipper, spotted seal flipper, but in my area we generally age the flippers of walrus and bearded seal. We call aged flipper “ushaq”. The method is quite simple, you simply cut the flippers off at the wrist or ankle, whichever end the flipper came from, and then place the flipper under a layer of blubber to age. The flippers are placed in some sort of container and then the blubber layer is placed on top of the flippers. Here is a very important point, the container must be covered loosely, so that what’s inside can breathe, or you risk becoming very sick or dying from botulism poisoning. As long as you ensure that there is air reaching the blubber, there should not be a problem. Generally the flippers are placed in a cool, not cold, place in order to age such as underground, but shallow underground place, not deep underground place or it will take longer to age. This aging process lasts a month generally, or few weeks depending on the temperature. The flippers will lose their hair when they are ready for eating, i.e. the hair will slip. The flippers may be cooked or eaten raw. I prefer either method cooked or raw. Either way the smell lasts on your body (hands) for several days. Dry Fish The ever present, ever common dry fish, probably made by every Native group in Alaska. I am sure a person will find and discover other methods of drying fish, they are most likely very similar. It seems the main differences are in the subspecies, different salmon or other fish have different tastes and differing amounts of oil present in the flesh. For instance, fish from the Yukon and Kuskowkim rivers have rather oily flesh whereas salmon in the Nome sub-district are rather dry, with less oil. I do not think our method is a lot different than other Native groups. A person can dry any type of fish, but some species have specific methods. I will explain a couple that are most common for me. First salmon. A salmon is prepared for drying by filleting the fish in two halves separating the vertebrae from the flesh. A cut is made just in front of the pectoral fins near the head so as to remove the head. Then a cut is made down the belly on either side of the anal fin removing the anal fin from the fish. The innards are removed, if a female the eggs are saved for later consumption. If a male the innards are usually tossed into the stream. The innards may be saved for dog feed, the kidney or blood pocket does not have to be cut out since the vertebrae is separated from the flesh. The vertebrae can be dried and was usually used for dog feed. Dried salmon were very important for feeding a dog team, with the comfort of fishing for salmon, great numbers could be caught to feed a dog team. Some old-time dog mushers Page 15 called dogs or dog teams “fish burners”, an apt term since many dog teams were primarily fed dried salmon. After cutting down the belly and removing the innards, the flesh is cut from the vertebrae by filleting one side and then the other. After some experience a person should be able to fillet a salmon removing flesh and leaving little meat on the vertebrae. After a few fish the cutting table will become quite slimy, and to avoid the slippery situation and make cutting easier, people have evolved several methods to keep the fish from slipping around but are all basically the same. A person can simply lay beachgrass on the cutting table and the slipping and sliding is eliminated. Additionally a person can use an old gunny sack with the same effect. The vertebrae is then cut from the fillets, leaving the two fillets connected at the tail. After which slits are made in the flesh to aid in drying and later eating. Small fish like trout are filleted but no slits are made in the flesh since their flesh will over-dry very quickly. The fillets are then usually rinsed and then hung to dry. At first the fish are hung with flesh side in, and after a crust is present, the fish are turned flesh side out. In about a week and a half the fish are dry enough to put away. Several methods exist to store them: they will keep for quite a while as is, and generally are bundled in bundles of twenty or so and put in a meat shed or similar place for the winter. They can also be stored in seal oil as well. In our area another fish that is dried is the tomcod, it is much more simple to dry this little fish. During the fall folks will generally amass large quantities of tomcod either by net or hooking through the ice. Tomcod generally spawn in the fall in very large quantities in many estuaries or near shore. Very quickly many tomcod can be caught by either method. Tomcod are simply gutted, and then hung on string as bundles. Generally tomcod are harvested in the fall, and are dried in the Fall air. They can be stored as a bundle or may be stored in seal oil as well. Frozen Foods Seal, moose, caribou, fish, shellfish Perhaps you have heard the derivation of the word Eskimo; an Algonquin word meaning “eaters of raw meat”. Under this category we aptly fit that definition; under another category of raw and aged, I will get into more raw foods that are eaten raw, but not frozen. The above species are eaten frozen although only the red meat and liver is eaten frozen; the other bodily organs are generally not, as some issues of internal parasites should be avoided. Seal red meat and seal liver is eaten frozen, usually with other food items such as seal oil or greens. Moose and caribou red meat is eaten frozen, again usually with seal oil; moose and caribou meat is generally very lean when compared to beef. Fish and shellfish are also eaten frozen, again generally with seal oil. Page 16 To freeze foods, all one needs to do is first catch the fish or animal and then simply freeze it or the portions you want to eat. Frozen fish has been a LONG time favorite that is quite easily prepared. Usually just the meat, eggs, or liver is eaten when frozen, as parasites generally inhabit the other body organs and is saved for dog food. Shellfish, such as crab is eaten frozen, again with the ever-present seal oil. Frozen crab (king crab) is a little salty when eaten in this manner, but is quite good. Fish and shellfish are frozen in the whole, and later slightly thawed so that they can be cut up readily for eating. The four species ice seal, ringed, bearded, spotted, and ribbon are common in the Norton Sound and Bering Strait year-round and have always been the bread and butter of survival for millennia, large numbers could be taken via net or ice edge seal hunting. Uncooked meat probably provides more nourishment than cooked meat, it has long been said the oldtimers were in good health because of the amount of raw foods they ate. Quite likely the major portion of raw foods were eaten frozen. As was noted regarding the simplicity of cooking methods, eating foods frozen requires very little preparation and skill, other than cutting the animal up in the portions you desire, and where and how to catch them and then simply freezing the food item. Before freezers, our people utilized various methods to freeze foods for later eating. Underground storage, like root cellars, were used in some places where the ground remained frozen; and foods taken in summer to late summer could be put in those cellars where they would freeze, although it is likely that those cellars were mainly used to store foods or age foods so that they would not spoil, although there are places in our area where cellars could be dug that did freeze foods thoroughly, regardless of the time of year. The most likely method was to harvest specific seasonal resources and let them freeze in the freezing temperatures of fall and winter immediately after harvesting them. Frozen meat, or “quaq” as it is called, is eaten raw and frozen NOT cooked. Crab is never traditionally shelled, when crab is boiled or eaten frozen it is eaten entire YES even the guts, blood, lungs, etc. When crab is boiled it is boiled, for a very short time and then eaten. The juices inside the shell is called soup and is consumed with gusto, very good stuff. The key with all seafood is not to overcook or it dries out. Another reason crab is not shelled is that it will dry out when cooked. [Generally seal oil in my area is made from two species the bearded seal and ring seal other areas of Alaska make seal oil or mizigaaq as it is called from other species. They are not that different in taste. Might as well get into making of seal oil.] Egging Birds, yes lots of birds. I go egging every year. We get around 30 to 40 gallons of wild eggs per year, mostly murre eggs, cliff-nesting birds, and cliff climb for them on Sledge Island, that island to the west of Nome that you may remember. In spring we get birds, all kinds: in winter get a few ptarmigan here and there. Fall time I don’t get many birds although I prefer a large shorebird called the whimbrel in fall. Those suckers are fat and lazy. Plink ‘em with .22, good little bird. I make cushions from bird skins too. My kids sit on them when we go boating so they don’t get cold, you just hard-tan them as well, no tanning. Make other stuff too, mostly just utlitarian things knife sheath, etc. Page 17 “Agutaq” Eskimo Ice Cream Things needed: Seal Oil, Moose, reindeer or caribou fat (it does not matter which one), berries, any kind the more the better, usually, blueberries, blackberries, and salmon berries, fish, any kind will do, usually white fish. Sugar, (optional), YES sugar the traditional white powder of the North, I prefer agutaq without sugar, although the widespread use of sugar in agutaq is now so common that people will scoff at agutaq without sugar, but I prefer it the traditional way. The seal oil and fat is mixed together and whipped to a creamy consistency. The fat is cut into tiny small pieces; a cheese-grater makes quick work of chopping up the fat. Remember to remove any membranes from the fat. Whipping up the fat and seal oil mixture takes some time by hand, about 1/2 hour, just a few minutes with an egg-beater though, eventually the seal oil and fat will get to the consistency of thick frosting. The seal oil to fat ratio is about one part seal oil, and two parts fat. The fish of your choice is boiled. The meat of the fish is used, if its tomcod or fish with very small eggs, the eggs can be added with good effect and more nutrition. After being fully cooked, the fish is allowed to cool. After cooling, the fish is deboned and squeezed dry, either with your hand, or it is even easier and quicker to put the fish meat inside some cheesecloth and squeezing while in the cloth. After being squeezed dry, it is spread out somewhere to make sure all bones are removed, and allowed to air dry for a few minutes, generally one to two fish are used. Dep ending on the size you generally want, about half a gallon of fish or something like that. The fish meat is now ready to put in the seal oil and fat mixture. The fish is put in the mixture and again whipped up. It takes about another half hour to whip it up again if by hand, if using an egg beater it does not take long at all, probably just as long as it would take something like eggs to be whipped up. After the fish and fat mixture are whipped up, the berries are put in. The berries can be put in fresh, although many prefer to have the berries frozen, and then put in the fish and fat mixture. The berries are mixed in by hand, your hands get cold doing that. Generally a gallon of berries is used as the fat and fish mixture expands to about a gallon, so when you are done doing that, you get about two gallons of agutaq. This food item represents three seasons, moose fat from fall, fish from summer, winter or fall, and berries from summer, seal oil from spring. So as you can see agutaq is the culmination of three seasons of fishing and hunting. Like I mentioned it is the ultimate survival food. It is hardy, reliable and can be put in a container while hunting in the winter and used for sustenance. All of the ingredients are prepared at the same time so while the fish is boiling you can whip up the fat and oil mixture, the kids or somebody can squeeze the fish, etc. Page 18 There are many different types of agutaq; this is just one type. If a person wants to use sugar, you just add sugar while whipping up the seal oil and fat mixture before you add the fish. In some areas of Alaska people will use replacement ingredients such as Crisco and Wesson oil to replace moose fat and seal oil, there is a slightly different taste, and some folks can make really good agutaq that way, but in my opinion, it is not real agutaq and should never be confused for the real thing. Dogs Dog Food Here at home cooking dog feed for the morning listening to some AC/DC. Dog feed too could be another topic for a book although now days for the most part it is pretty simple go to the store buy yer feed then water and go. I am cooking up some walrus that washed ashore this summer, I cut it up and dried it and am now cooking it, although my supply is getting low of that, and this winter was weird, did not get ANY tomcod for dog feed, me dogs mostly get nature food, they do better on it, coats blow at the right time, pads stay good and healthy. I see some mushers running last night. They had booties on for a dinky little 12 mile run, poor dogs feet must be hurtin if they are runnin with booties this early in the season. Long ago washed up walrus, or any animal for that matter, was a source of food. If you can imagine, no guns long ago, or even 100 years ago cheap guns. Dead animals that washed up were utilized for human consumption. This past summer a walrus washed ashore (well several actually) that was in fairly good shape but slightly rotten. I used the good aged parts, the hind flippers for eating after I determined that it died of human causes first. I certainly didn’t want to be eating anything that died from pollution or poisoning and it was good, a little aged. YAH scavengers we are!! Long ago mushers did not use booties very much. They (old timers) say the key to dog pad health was walrus meat and blubber: if you feed dogs a healthy dose of walrus you won’t have any foot problems they say. I believe that. It has long been recognized by many old-time mushers that nature food is better for workin’ dogs. In speaking with some old timers it is clear to me that long ago mushers duplicated many of the distance and speed that modern day mushers do today. Some truly amazing dog mushing stories I have heard. The old timers had some good dogs, or at least I’d like to think anyway. Page 19 Emily Mendell Page 21 Page 22 In The Supermarket Forest In a country where food isn’t food In a country full of people who eat cheese that’s died orange and pre-cut to fit on crackers In a country where farmers are being robbed of their profit margin and their dignity In a country where breakfast comes from a box, lunch from a bag and dinner from the freezer In a country that kills fourteen people every day with food-borne illnesses In a country where we’ve forgotten how to know and care for the earth that nourishes us In a country where underpaid, poorly protected workers process meat in factories with loosely enforced regulations In a country whose children drink more soda than milk In a country where farmer is no longer a socially acceptable occupation In a country where fast food chains are more common than independent restaurants In a country where it costs more to know how your food is produced In a country whose government actively supports unhealthy, unsustainable forms of agriculture In a country full of kids who don’t know how to make mashed potatoes In a country that replaces natural fertilizers with expensive synthetic ones and wonders what to do with animal waste In a country where biotech companies patent gene strains and sue small farmers when their plants cross-pollinate with one another In a country where almost half the population suffers from diabetes, cancer, food allergies, digestive disorders and other diet-related illnesses In a country that’s slowly killing the rural farming community In a country where most people wouldn’t survive if grocery stores disappeared In a country whose food distributors aren’t required to label food with chemical additives or produce sprayed with chemical pesticides In a country where sugar is an addiction In a country where flavor is a commodity In a country where good food is a special occasion Page 23 In this country, I have found hope. Between negligence and despondency, I found people who make constructive, conscientious decisions. And here I will encourage change with positive stories. I will write poems, essays and letters. I will follow the example of history. I will create a home for inspiration and creativity in my kitchen. I will change the way I understand my food. Here I will plant a garden. Here I will harvest its bounty. And here I will feed the world’s children. It’s easy to feel that just by knowing you’re accepting the burden. The majority of people in this country, myself included, just allot a portion of their paycheck to the inevitable obligation they have to feed themselves, buy and cook the food it takes to complete the interaction and forget about it. If they’re lucky they have an appreciation for good food and the high quality ingredients it takes to create satisfying meals. But not everybody is that lucky. Most of us know a good meal when we swallow it, but very few of us can identify with people (often hunters, gardeners and selfproclaimed foragers) who claim they are emotionally fulfilled by the food on their table. Our food comes frozen, canned and shrink-wrapped from all over the world, on routes we can’t even imagine. Although food processors have managed to (albeit poorly) replicate flavors, aromas and textures of the fresh food people ate before the age of processed food, they haven’t duplicated the fulfillment of crunching a carrot you grew yourself or serving the venison you chased that fall. When I first began this project I thought I was personally responsible for restoring the connection between the table and the field, forest or farm. Convinced I had to justify the discrepancies between production and purchase, I felt as if I had to either devote myself entirely to organic, free range and natural foods, or rationalize my inability to do so. I needed, I thought, to solve this problem before I could write about it. Needless to say, it was a rather overwhelming task. I spent weeks reading every book I could find about industrial agriculture and the many other things wrong with the system that brings our food from the fields and the feedlots to our tables. Kuhn, a famous scientific philosopher, author of Scientific Revolutions, said the most difficult part of solving a problem, is figuring out exactly what’s wrong. After that, the solution practically presents itself, he claims. Well, I’m not so sure about that, but I had this idea that if I could identify precisely what was wrong with the food system in the United States, I could write a book that took a step toward solving its problems. So I read and read and read. I read Wendell Berry’s The Unsettling of America. I read Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser, a moving story of the “McDonaldization of America.” The book included stories of children who had died from E. coliridden meat and poorly paid employees of various food processing plants who had Page 24 lost fingers, limbs and in some cases their lives in largely preventable accidents. I got emotionally invested in the dilemma of small-scale farmers all over the country. I read and I wrestled, in the aisle of the grocery store, with the decision between canola and corn oil –both of which I knew were most likely extracted from genetically modified plants. I spent nights lying in bed, cursing capitalism, industry, supply and demand, big business, fast food chains, cost effective and efficient packaging, ignorance, advertising and everything else I could think of that might be even partially responsible for the current state of the food system in our country (and increasingly, the world). Weeks went by and I still hadn’t written anything. When I was in first grade my classmates and I were asked to write and illustrate a story about “what I did last summer” or “my cousin Sally.” I refused to begin writing. When my teacher called my parents and scheduled a teacher conference, they were puzzled. “I don’t understand,” my mother said. “Emily likes to write and she’s a good storyteller. She tells a lot of stories.” When I joined the conference, although I don’t remember the occasion, I apparently told my parents and teacher that I didn’t want to write because I was afraid I would write a bad story. Although my elementary school days are long behind me, I faced the same essential challenges as I began my first professional writing endeavor. I put off the writing process for a month. I spent my time fighting instead. There were emotional and moral battles raging inside my head as I attempted to synthesize the general information I had collected as a consumer and the specific things I had learned in my reading. Well, don’t hold your breath, I didn’t come up with an answer. My physical, mental and emotional distress culminated in a serious back injury, which gave me plenty of time to think things over as I lay on my couch with bags of ice beneath me. I determined then that I didn’t have the solution, but thankfully,(!) nobody expected me to come up with one. I am only expected, as the rest of you are, to make a very small contribution. A professor of mine once told me, when I shared the frustration I felt about political issues relating to her class, that I wasn’t required to change the world. “Clean up your own back yard,” she said. So armed with the rake of communication and a wheelbarrow full of information, I’ve begun the process. I’m going to look and see if I can find anybody around here who might have come up with a slightly better way to do things – their own small piece of the solution – and tender a few suggestions. I promise you what I write won’t give you a complete answer. I also promise, though, not to feed you environmentalist propaganda or shove my opinion down your throat. If, somehow, this project leads to the slight solidification of your opinion (or mine, for that matter), I’ve done my job. It probably won’t be perfect, but more than fifteen years after my first grade graduation, I think I’ve finally come to terms with that possibility, and I’m willing to give this a try. I made homemade ravioli. Little pockets of hand-kneaded pasta dough Page 25 tucked around a braised fennel and sweet sausage filling in a thin garlic alfredo sauce. I spent the afternoon feeding egg dough through my mother’s pasta machine, preparing the filling and folding the ravioli. I also made bread. Crusty baguettes, a recipe taken from my spice cabinet, where my collection of paper scraps and magazine clippings is always floating out when I open the cupboard. I could organize them, write them all on lined index cards and file them in a box. But preparing my mother’s Dijon seafood marinade from yellow construction paper and baking ginger crinkles from the back of a torn bookmark seems more authentic. Authenticity may be what’s missing from our food system. It’s what differentiates the food grown in your garden from the food purchased at a supermarket. Each time the food we eat is loaded into a truck, driven across the country or flown to another continent, it loses a portion of its authenticity. As ingredients are premixed, re-flavored and sealed for shipment, each step removes them further from their place of origin. Each step takes away some of their dignity (not to mention flavor and texture). Who says my pasta has dignity, huh? Maybe it’s not dignity. Maybe it’s soul, or “life force.” The New York Observer called it gusto, in its review of Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation. Whatever it is, homecooked meals have it, and pre-packaged ones don’t. When my friends arrived for my ravioli dinner they said they could smell garlic from the driveway. Despite its inadequate size and inconvenient design, my kitchen has a good reputation. When they’re invited to a meal at my house, my guests know I’ve baked the bread myself, the spaghetti sauce is homemade, and the cake isn’t from a box. Everything that comes from a box is not necessarily bad. As a resident of Alaska I have a particular appreciation for canning, dehydrating and any other process that allows me to eat more than just what is locally available during the winter. Prepackaged food may not be the all-encompassing evil in the American food system; but when people don’t prepare their own food, they are less likely to consider where it comes from, the energy it took to produce it, or the effects the current system has on the environment. One of those negative effects on the environment is the unprecedented utilization of non-renewable energy. As farming continues to mechanize, and food is shipped across continents to reach distant markets, increased energy consumption is a growing concern. Exotic foods grown in distant markets can be tempting but when they’re eaten at the cost of laborers who produce them and the cost of fossil fuels consumed in shipping, they aren’t as sweet. In article entitled Food for Thought, Jules Pretty, of the University of Essex, UK, argues that eating locally is the most environmentally considerate way to nourish the earth. Energy consumption is coupled with soil erosion and depletion, contamination of groundwater sources and chemical dependency to contribute towards the current agricultural crisis. A crisis? Certainly. Growing and shipping food are both destructive activities, but the processing may be worse. There’s no other way to describe a time in which eating is detrimental to the earth, our bodies, and perhaps even our spiritual selves. Our food is continuously sprayed with dangerous chemicals designed to disrupt the ecosystem in which a plant is growing. Page 26 If those chemicals kill bugs and weeds almost instantly, what are they doing to our bodies? It’s contaminated during growth and stripped of any remaining authenticity during processing. Our food system isn’t just killing the earth; it’s killing us! Sometimes it seems we have no choice, especially if we’re on a tight budget, but to eat food that has been sprayed, shipped, dyed and dehydrated, food that has no soul left. I’ve found, though, that cooking my own meals allows me to reinsert a little bit of the food’s soul. I feel slightly more connected to the food I eat. But can we ever truly feel connected to our environment when the food we eat is shipped to us from all over the continent and the world? Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, when self-sufficiency at home gave way to mass production, virtually everything we use (cars, clothes, food, electronic equipment, houseplants, cigarettes) comes from a distant factory. Although the elaborate processing and transportations systems that enable restaurants in Minneapolis to serve lobster and people in Alaska to eat oranges certainly has some benefits, they may be outweighed by the disadvantages. Author Ted Steinberg, in his book Down to Earth, wrote about the shift from local to removed farms as early as the turn of the Twentieth Century. “…the farms that once dominated the outskirts of New York City, until the turn of the century the nation’s most important growing center, lost ground to competitors in California and the South…As early as 1927 two-thirds of all canned fruit purchased in the United States originated in the Golden State. By 1980, two-fifths of all the nation’s fresh produce was grown there. The rise of the moveable feast, however, exacted a high social and ecological cost.”1 What are those costs? The list is a thousand miles long but it includes things like the drying and contamination of groundwater aquifers, soil degradation and erosion, dependency on chemical fertilizers, the development of herbicide-resistant weeds known as “super weeds” and resistant insects called “super bugs,” and poisoned groundwater due to improper disposal of animal wastes. These are just the ecological costs. Traditionally, we think of the environment as secular from ourselves. We fundraise to save the whales, or protest against clear-cut logging, and although those things may create a better world for our children, it may not actually affect our day-to-day lives if the trees go down or the whales don’t survive. But concern for the manner in which our food is produced is a different kind of environmentalism. It’s connected, directly, to our health. In his book The Unsettling of America, Wendell Berry argues that our health is not only connected to the health of the environment; the two things are essentially the same. Health does not mean only the absence of disease. It refers to physical and emotional wholeness.2 You can’t be your healthiest if the earth on which you stand, the food you eat, and the water you drink are all contaminated. Traditionally, if you’re sick with a cold, for example, you’re Page 27 unhealthy because one of the systems (the respiratory system, usually) in your is unable to complete its regular tasks. If we recognize the connection between the earth and ourselves, we will see the obstacle standing between us and “wholeness” is the earth’s sickness. It has been compromised as monocultures disturb local ecosystems, for example. One of the earth’s systems is then unable to function and must rely on dangerous chemical fertilizers to produce what could be produced naturally. We come from the earth, rely on her to feed us while we live, and return to her. Our treatment of the earth is, essentially, the treatment of our own bodies. As her waterways are filled with poison, so is our blood. As her soil is sickened with chemicals, so is our flesh. How can we possibly be healthy and whole when we rely on a tainted food supply? When we live in an environment where there’s arsenic in the soil and lead in the water? We can’t. And we’re not. Everything from soil erosion to rising obesity rates, from pesticide dependency to increasing stress levels is showing us otherwise. The earth is suffering. Her people, us, are sick. In 1971 Ita Jones wrote a book called The Grub Bag. In a book filled with budget and body-healthy recipes, she wrote, “…our natural bodies know best how to deal with and use natural food.”2 There is really no wonder, considering the things we put into them, that our bodies are telling us we aren’t healthy. I don’t have to list mind-boggling statistics about the increased cancer rate, or the overwhelming percentage of people who suffer from food-related conditions like high blood pressure and Irritable Bowel Disorder, to show that there are problems with the way our food is grown, processed and presented. No statistics required, the food speaks for itself. There are unnecessary amounts of sugar in the salsa and salt on the chips. There are pesticides on the vegetables and antibiotics in the chicken. It was all prepared in oil from genetically modified corn, then frozen and thawed. It was reheated, sprinkled with anxiety, sauced in worry and washed down with an artificially-flavored, carbonated fruit beverage. Sound familiar? We eat this food every day. We know there’s a problem, and we know it’s big. When I was in college I took an Environmental History course from a professor who grew up in Iowa. He told us a story of a time when he and his classmates took a soil sample from a section of ground that had not been plowed. Untouched prairie isn’t common in the heart of the Corn Belt, but they found a piece and did a core sample. They found almost two feet of nutrient-rich humus beneath the grass. When they took a sample from across the street (an active corn field) they found only a few inches of fertilizer-enhanced topsoil above exhausted, sand-like soil. The current state of the field he described is unknown, but farming practices haven’t changed much. This story took place when my professor was a high school student. He just completed his PhD. The depletion and erosion of soil all over the world is just another thing on the list of reasons why we should be ashamed of the way our food system works right now. It can feel hopeless, because the problem is huge, and most of us only know how to cope with it on a personal level. So we must rely on that personality, the individual choices made by people all over the country, will stop the leaks in this sinking ship. Cooking my own dinner, instead of emptying it from a can, may not save that cornfield in Iowa. And it probably won’t get rid of the gigantic “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico, where every day the Mississippi River spills millions of gallons of water tainted with fertilizer nutrients. I hope, however, that it will serve as a medium through which I can connect to the food I eat. If steaming my own vegetables gives me reason to ponder their place of origin, and the resources they taxed to arrive at my table, then I believe cooking my own meal directly affects the amount of authenticity in the American food-production system. Page 28 My mother was a master of authenticity in the kitchen. Cooking was a part of my childhood, so the food I cook is a part of me. Every time I bake a cake, I mix a piece of myself in with the eggs. When I cook, and particularly when I stroll the aisles of the grocery store, each meal is a product of the cooking I’ve done, the books I’ve read, and the stories I’ve been told. Although they may not have understood my reasoning, and they may not have known that I agonized over the choice between the more pocketbook-friendly conventional olive oil and the organic olive oil for ten minutes, my friends knew the ravioli they ate that evening at my kitchen table was real. One of them left a tip. (Endnotes) 1 Ted Steinberg, Down to Earth pg 175 2 Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America 97-104 2 The Grub Bag. Ita Jones pg 172 Page 29 Do What You Can Between the pages of this dooms-day literature, I have found sources of hope. I’ve read a lot about the way our current food-production system poisons rivers, eliminates soil fertility, traps farmers in dept cycles and feeds consumers chemical-laden foods. While I struggle with my own opinions and my obligation to participate in the solutions to those large-scale problems, I meet individuals who are doing the right thing, even if it’s on a small scale. Those are the people who inspire me to make positive changes in my lifestyle. I couldn’t explain the circumstances that brought this ex-cowboy to my kitchen window, but there he was. He told me a story about the time he spent on a ranch in Wyoming that made me understand his connection to that land. He told me about his daily routine, but he didn’t mention what he ate. Canned beans and dirty coffee? Hamburger Helper and Capri Sun? He simply forgot to say. Our discussion led us to our childhoods, his in suburban Michigan, mine in rural Vermont. Our paths crossed in Alaska, in my kitchen with the smell of steamed rice and fresh stir-fry. I found the answers to my questions about his consideration of food. A financially-strapped bachelor, the cowboy in a baseball cap at my kitchen table said the majority of his meals come from a box. He understood that he wasn’t eating the most nutritious diet imaginable. He was, after all, a fellow writer and conscious soul. A coinsure of body and earth understanding, he knew eating her fruits would introduce him to the land of his new home. So he endeavored to learn to cook. I told him bread-making stories and shared with him the satisfaction I get from chopping vegetables. We certainly can’t solve the problem. It’s questionable, in fact, whether or not we can make noticeable contributions. Neither of us is planning any time in the near future, to move out to the bush and lead a subsistence lifestyle in which we would be completely connected to and inevitably dependent on the land. It may be years before we’re even in the position to plant a garden. Perhaps organic produce is the next best thing. That way, even if we weren’t producing it ourselves, we would know what is in our food. Right now though, as a budding journalist and student, the cowboy and I can’t afford organic foods. If we made different choices, we might have a larger pocketbook at the market checkout. Frankly though, we agreed we’re not quite ready to give up the other things we spend money on. We like live music, weekend ski excursions, and car insurance too much to sacrifice them in the name of higher-quality groceries. So where do we go from here? We go to the kitchen. We start cooking. The best we can do, at this point, is learn to cook and eat well. We’ll set aside the fact that the bell peppers we’re eating in our stir-fry were genetically engineered with larger, water succulent cells to increase their weight (and consequently the price we paid for them). We’ll focus instead on recognizing the wrongs within the agricultural system and contribute by making conscious decisions and buying ethically-produced products when we can. In the mean time, though, we’ll enjoy the food we eat. We’ll be thankful and understanding of the (sometimes distant) connection we have to the things we put in our mouths. Page 30 Sourdough The story: I felt this pressure, writing an Alaskan cookbook, to include at least a couple sourdough recipes. History is interesting, but it turns fascinating when you stand on the sight of a burial ground, or beside a monument that marks a battlefield. I’ve been blessed with a healthy imagination, but it wasn’t until I learned to combine the things I had learned in history class with the things I could imagine that I began to truly enjoy history. My junior high school’s trip to a Canadian Iroquois Reservation solidified my fascination with history I could see. It taught me, also, as I ate Caribou Lasagna that traditions can be respected and valued without being followed exactly. Obviously lasagna is not part of the Iroquois people’s traditional diet, but they’ve adapted their ancestors’ practices. They’ve devised innovative ways to preserve portions of their history, but still live reasonable, fairly convenient lives. So, it’s in the tradition of preservation of custom and respect for the people who have passed though this place before me, that I’m including sourdough recipes. Any old sourdough recipe won’t do, though. The integrity of the bread must be preserved. It’s got to be full of air bubbles, chewy and of course, sour. At this point, my search for the perfect recipe is incomplete. I’ve tried a few, so far. The first, adapted from a Southern Living Cookbook, is fantastic bread. It’s holds it moisture. It cuts well for sandwiches. It browns well, especially with an egg wash. It tastes great as toast. But it’s not chewy. It’s not bubbly. And it’s not sour. But if you need to use the starter, as you must every 14 days to keep it fresh, but aren’t in the mood for sourdough, it makes light and fluffy white bread without a hint of that sourdough tang. The recipe: Not Sour sourdough: 2 packages active dry yeast 1 cup warm water (105*-115*) 1 cup sourdough starter (at room temp) ¼ cup vegetable oil ¼ cup sugar 3 teaspoons salt 2 large eggs, beaten 5 to 6 cups unbleached all-purpose flour 2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted. Combine yeast and warm water, let stand 5 minutes. Combine yeast mixture, sourdough starter, oil, sugar, salt, eggs and 3 cups flour in a nonmetal bowl. Stir or knead in enough remaining flour to make soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic, approximately 10 minutes. Cover and let rise until doubled. Punch down and let rise again, if desired (this will make it slightly more sour). Otherwise, divide in half, shape into loaves and let rise before baking in a 375º oven. Bake for about 35 minutes, remove from oven and brush with butter. Page 31 My second attempt was the worst bread I’ve ever made, so I won’t include that recipe. I enjoy baking, but I’m not an expert. My learning curve has produced some pretty questionable loaves. My tofu bread is an example of baking gone bad. Now that I think of it, the all-rye bread didn’t turn out so well. Neither did the Naan. Though dry or tough or spongy, all of those breads were edible dipped in soup or toasted with plenty of butter. My second sourdough attempt was so bad the birds wouldn’t eat it! Three days after baking, I was out in my yard wearing dish gloves, collecting the soggy, moldy chunks I had scattered. But there’s something about being in Alaska –an imaginary trip I’ve made with gold-digging supplies on my back, a sourdough starter tucked in my breast pocket– that kept me searching for a recipe that yields bread with an authentic sourdough flavor. The central theme of this project has been connection to place, but it’s not just connection to the land that’s important. Respect for elders and honor for ancestors are two important concepts in Native Alaskan culture. Although Alaska is neither my birthplace nor the birthplace of my ancestors, it is in the tradition of respect that I will honor the people who have been here before me by preserving some of their traditions. Sourdough bread is one of them. So I tried a recipe that wasn’t so specific. I’ve found, as my baking skills have increased, that I prefer recipes that “suggest” things and leave lots of room for interpretation. I began with a recipe that included baking soda, but I’ve found through the previous recipe, and a failed attempt at sourdough biscuits, that my particular starter reacts badly with soda. Page 32 Another recipe: Basically, I just made it up. I gave my starter a “mini feed,” a couple tablespoons of both flour and water. I covered it loosely with plastic and let it bubble. The next day (a minimum of 8 hours) I added two teaspoons of salt, a bunch of vegetable oil (more than ¼ cup), some sugar (tablespoons… the more sugar you add, the more “food” you’re giving your yeast.) and about ½ cup warm water. I stirred in flour until I couldn’t stir (three, unsifted, mounded cups) and kneaded in as much as the bread would take. Depending on the thickness of your starter and the amounts of liquid you’ve added, it may be 1 to 3 additional cups of flour. For me it was less than two. I kneaded it for a while. Experience has taught me when bread is done being kneaded. It’s usually about the amount of time it takes my arms to get really tired. This dough was smooth and fairly soft. The feeling of the dough is one of my favorite things about sourdough bread; I think it likes to be kneaded. I let it rise until doubled (overnight, but can be less) and kneaded it for another ten minutes or so. I split the dough, put one of the loaves in a pan and the other in a ball on a baking sheet. I found if you don’t put it in a bread loaf pan, this dough will spread and flatten too much. I let them rise overnight again. The bread came out slightly chewy and full of bubbles. It was very sour. A sourdough made without additional yeast relies on the original starter colony to rise and as it grows the yeast content increases, producing extremely sour bread. If you prefer bread that is less sour, decrease the middle rising time. Wash with an egg and bake at 375º until the bread taps hollow. The ingredients: Before humans understood how to harvest and produce yeast, wild yeast spores were the only leavening agent available. A “traditional” sourdough is made without packaged yeast. There is yeast everywhere, especially in warm climates. In a warm, open kitchen a combination of flour and water will collect and reproduce enough yeast to leaven bread in about three days. In Alaska though, established yeast colonies are more reliable. For that reason, it’s best to begin a starter from store-bought yeast or get some from a friend. Every recipe has a different suggestion about how to treat your starter, whether or not you should add additional yeast to your bread, how long to let it rise, the baking temperature and everything else. I know what works for my starter, in my kitchen, but it varies widely depending on the circumstances. An understanding of the science of sourdough is essential to consistently delicious sourdough bread. Classic Sourdoughs: A Home Baker’s Handbook, by Ed Wood, is an excellent guide. Aside from his skills as an expert baker, Wood is also a biologist and yeast specialist. His book is just a little bit technical. Local author Ruth Allman wrote Alaska Sourdough, which I recommend highly. Rita Davenport’s The Sourdough Cookbook, covers all the bases (from starters to breads to pancakes) and has special consideration for the modern baker. Recommending the “best” cookbook is like providing the “best” recipe. Both are impossible. I hope I’ve given you some ideas. I’ve found, though that experimenting and finding a recipe you like is the best part. It takes time; but a bubbling starter, a bowl of dough or a fresh loaf in the corner of your kitchen is half the fun. Page 33 Garlic-Lover’s Halibut Pizza The story: A friend and I created this recipe one leisurely afternoon, when there was leftover fish in the freezer. We chose a whole-wheat crust on purpose, the rest of the ingredients (including a strong Swiss cheese instead of mozzarella) were guesses from the aisles of the local specialty grocery store. Marinating the scallions in vinegar was an instinct drawn from the logic that paired white fish with tar tar sauce. It turned out fabulously. The recipe: Whole-wheat crust: 3 cups whole-wheat flour 3 cups unbleached white flour 3 Tablespoons salt ½ cup light olive oil 1 package (2 ¼ teaspoons) active dry yeast 1 cup warm water Mix flour, salt and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Stir in water and oil. When it gets too tough to stir, turn onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and fairly elastic. Wheat dough is tougher than white, don’t over knead. Let it rise in a warm place for two hours, or until doubled in bulk. When the dough retains the imprint of your fingertip, it’s ready to shape. Preheat oven to 475º. Shape into two pizza crusts and let them rise for another ten minutes before topping. Garlic Alfredo Sauce: 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter 4 Tablespoons unbleached white flour 2 cups milk 1 cup grated cheese (we used a strong Swiss, but feel free to experiment) 8 cloves fresh garlic, peeled and minced Ground pepper and salt While the dough is rising, melt the butter in a heavy saucepan and whisk in the flour. Cook on medium heat for a minute or two, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low. Add the milk slowly, whisking the whole time. Sauce should thicken. Add grated cheese, garlic, salt and pepper. Cook on very low heat until garlic smell isn’t quite so strong. Meanwhile, prepare the toppings. Toppings: 1 lb. halibut pieces 1 lb. fresh spinach 1 bunch scallions ¼ lb. mushrooms ½ lb. Swiss cheese 1 clove garlic Dash of vinegar and oil. Flour, salt and pepper. Page 34 Rinse the fish if it’s been frozen. Sprinkle 1 pound halibut pieces lightly with flour, salt, pepper and a bit of hot paprika. Heat a sauté pan with a little oil on high. Flake the fish apart with a fork while it’s cooking and set aside when done. Wash and stem 1 lb. of fresh spinach, or thaw 8 oz. of frozen. If fresh, place in a pot without water over medium heat. The water on the leaves will steam the greens. When they’re wilted, remove from heat and cool. Chop and set aside. Chop 1 bunch green onions. While the dough is rising, soak in equal splashes of wine vinegar and olive oil. Mince a clove of garlic, add and stir. Chop and set aside. Slice mushrooms and set aside. Grate the cheese (this is a fairly rich meal, the amount of cheese on top of the pizza may vary with your taste). Spread half the alfredo sauce on each crust, topping with spinach, marinated scallions, halibut, mushrooms and grated cheese. Grind fresh pepper or sprinkle red pepper flakes, if desired. Bake at 475º for ten minutes, or until crust is done and cheese is bubbling. The ingredients: If you grow your own vegetables this pizza is best with fresh spinach and homegrown garlic. Depending on the time of year, you may substitute wild onions for scallions. Also depending on the season, just about any edible wild mushroom would be preferable to the store-bought variety. Information about edible mushrooms can be found in “The Savory Wild Mushroom”, by Margaret McKenny, revised and enlarged by Daniel E. Stuntz. Universityof Washington Press, Library of Congress Catalog Card # 78-160288, ISBN # 0-295-95156-7 (paper). Halibut can be found throughout most of the marine waters of Alaska. It’s the largest of the flatfishes and it’s distributed along the continental shelf of the North Pacific from southern California to Nome, Alaska. Most halibut are caught at depths of 90 to 900 ft, but according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, they’ve been recorded at depths of up to 3,600 ft. They generally inhabit deeper waters in the winter. They spawn from November to March at depths of 600 to 15,00 ft. After spawning they migrate to shallower coastal waters for summer feeding. It’s at this time they’re easiest to catch and tastiest to eat. Also according to the ADFG, halibut will eat anything they can catch. Adult fish (most caught by sport fisherman vary from 5-15 years old, although they can live to be 40) will eat pollock, sablefish, cod rockfish, octopus, herring, crabs, clams and smaller halibut. For sport fisherman the Department of Fish and Game recommends jigging near the bottom with artificial lures or hooks baited with octopus, salmon or whole or cut herring just before or after slack tide. Although most fish caught in sport fishery weigh between 15 and 60 pounds, halibut can weigh several hundred pounds. Chose your equipment accordingly. The most productive time of year to fish for halibut is late May through mid-September, but the open season is Feb. 1 through December 31. Anglers are allowed 2 halibut per day and 4 in possession. Page 35 Fiddleheads The story: Between winter and summer Vermont, where I was raised, is a lot like Alaska. Winter is a little shorter. Summer a little warmer, and fall more colorful. But there, like here, there is a season missing. There is no spring, but fiddlehead season lasts a week. I didn’t know it when I was nine, digging through decaying, soggy underbrush, but fiddleheads are the State Vegetable of Vermont. They used to grow on the hillsides and in the flood plains of the river in my hometown. My family’s efforts to pick them on time were a dance with nature. Often we over-estimated the warmth of the nights, we’d trek along the sides of the streams only to find the ferns hadn’t emerged. So we’d come back in a few days and harvest the fiddleheads before they began to uncurl. Sometimes, though, we’d miss the short window between the last hard frost and the long sunny days, and my mother would lament over the loss of another fiddlehead season. But when spring lasted just long enough, we’d come home with little sacks of green swirls. My sister and I flaked away little pieces of their brown paper-like jackets. A lot of vegetables brighten only after they’ve been cooked, but fiddleheads are different. When they are freshly washed, they look like they are glowing through the holes of our blue enamel colander, as it dripps on the counter. Steamed, sometimes we’d chill the leftovers in homemade vinaigrette. But a lot of times we’d just eat them all hot with butter and salt. I haven’t eaten fiddleheads in years. In my memory their unique, earthy flavor is second to picking them with my family. We always went in the afternoon, when the sun was going down on the mountains across the river. We drove down a dirt road where a young second-growth forest covered the bed of the old railroad. A flood had washed out the tracks decades ago, but the remains of bridges and stations dotted the valley where we lived. The cleared, shade-spotted railroad bed was perfect for fiddleheads. They grew all along the route which could still be traced to the neighboring town. Fiddleheads are very popular in New England. In fact, they support a small, seasonal canning industry in parts of Maine. The recipe below comes from that state, where both fiddleheads and shrimp are easy to come by. Recipes are just suggestions, though. The following recipe, for example, will stand up to endless variations (including sherry vinegar instead of lemon juice, scallops, lobster or crab meat for the shrimp or just about any fresh herb in place of the thyme) Page 36 The recipe: I prefer fiddleheads the way my mother used to serve them, steamed with butter and salt. However, if fiddleheads are frozen for use later in the year (which should be done immediately after cleaning for up to 6 months) they are best included in another dish. They pair well with seafood, or they can be pickled. Shrimp and Fiddlehead Medley 1 lb. Fiddleheads 6 oz. linguine pasta, uncooked 1 lb shrimp, fresh or frozen 1 onion, chopped 2 cloves minced garlic ½ lb. Fresh mushrooms, sliced 1 t. thyme 1/8 t. celery seed 2 T. lemon juice salt and pepper. Cut off ends of fiddleheads. Remove scales and wash thoroughly. Cook shrimp, set aside. Cook fiddleheads in boiling water for ten minutes and drain. Oil a large skillet, add onion and garlic and sauté until onion begins to soften. Stir in fiddleheads. Add sliced mushrooms, thyme, mustard seed and salt and pepper to taste. Cook, uncovered over medium heat until mushrooms are tender. Stir in shrimp and lemon juice. Cook until heated and serve over cooked pasta. Important note: The Center for Disease Control associated a number of food-borne illness cases with fiddleheads in the early nineties. Although a toxin has not been identified in the fiddleheads, the findings of that case suggest fiddleheads should be cooked thoroughly (boiled for ten minutes or steamed for twenty) before eating. The ingredients: Fiddleheads are the young, coiled leaves of the ostrich fern. They grow in moist soil in deciduous and mixed forests, on riverbanks and in swamps from Alaska to Newfoundland and south to the Virginia and Northern California. The fiddlehead season is short, 2-3 weeks and may begin as early as April, depending on location. As mature plants, fertile fronds (?) and small white hairs on the stem identify Ostrich ferns. However, nearly all ferns have fiddleheads, and they are not so tasty as the ostrich. Consult “Wild Edible & Poisonous Plants of Alaksa”, Coop. Extension Service, University of Alaska Fairbanks & USDA Cooperating and / or “Alaska’s Wild Plants A Guide to Alaska’s Edible Harvest”, Janice J. Schofield for small-plant identification information. Page 37 Sugar Swollen Ants The story: My sister and I, my best friend, her older brother and the two boys from up the hill piled into our minivan a few times every July. My mother drove us to the U-pick farm in the next valley over and we spent the day stuffing ourselves with juicy berries. Even when I could feel the stomachache coming, the berries were so perfect I couldn’t stop eating them. I turned my back on the cashier at the scale; afraid she might insist I scoop out the contents of my stomach and pay for those, too. They weren’t washed, but it didn’t matter because they weren’t sprayed with anything. They had sun spots and water stains and bug bites, but they were still good. Berries are always best when they’re warm. In July they absorb the heat from the sun and they feel warm in your mouth, but then when you bite one, the juice is almost cool. Impossibly, it’s warm and cool at the same time. It was hot in the field and if I picked half a flat I’d done a good job. Then in the air-conditioned car on the way home, the boys had longer arms than I did. They could reach over the back seat without much movement. My mom caught them anyway, but she wasn’t mad. She sped through the dips in the short-cut road that made our queasy stomachs flip again, and we laughed because we were afraid if we didn’t we might be sick. The process of making strawberry jam is somewhat skewed in my mind. I remember washing the berries, and trimming them on the wooden chop block beside our stove. My mother used a thin paring knife and drew it towards her thumb. Her fingers were stained with juice, and so was the place on the chopping block where I rested each berry to cut it. My hands weren’t big enough to hold the berry and the knife at the same time. Once I sat on my mother’s lap and listened to her chewing a strawberry. I told her the seeds were crunching and she defended herself by asking me to chew a berry without crunching the seeds. I did, sort of. I squished it around with my tongue, and it melted like only a fresh strawberry will do. Then I swallowed and opened my mouth for my mother’s inspection. She laughed and told me that wasn’t chewing. Everybody loves homemade strawberry jam. My dad puts it on toast. My mom puts it in an antique jelly jar with a silver spoon that we never polished. It always gets sticky and in the summer if we didn’t put it in the fridge we’d find sugar-swollen ants between the seeds. I love the way you feel when you eat things that are homemade. There’s love, soul and life between bites. Every time I eat homemade jam I remember the way the juice made my mother’s hands look, the smell in the house, and the bugs under my hat as I knelt in the fields. I remember cups of wet berries lined up on the counter, the sweet-tasting stomachache, and the way it swirled on the bread when my mom splurged and fixed her toast with butter and jam. Page 38 The recipe: Strawberry jam is simple; it’s the canning process that takes time. It’s worth it, though. Jars of jam make great gifts and mid-winter treats. I know two recipes for strawberry jam. The first contains gelatin because wild berries often have less natural pectin than domestic ones. That version is recommended for wild berries. The second gets its texture from a slower cooking process and is fine for domestic berries. Both are very good. With gelatin: Wash and hull 2 quarts of strawberries. Cook berries and gelatin on high until rolling boil. Add 7 cups of sugar and return to hard boil for one minute. Remove from heat, scrape foam from top, and let sit 5 minutes. Remove any additional foam and pour into prepared jars and continue canning process. Without gelatin: Wash and hull berries. Crush and add ¾ lb. of sugar for every pound of berries (this may vary depending on your preferences and the natural sweetness of your berries). Cook on low heat for half an hour, and then add sugar. Boil lightly for 15 minutes or until desired thickness. Pour into prepared jars and can. The ingredients: Strawberries, which are actually members of the rose family, grow in different varieties all over the world. They ripen in July and August, depending on location. In Alaska we find the Fragaria Virginiana, also known as the Virginia Strawberry. It grows from the Yukon River Valley to Southern Yukon Territory and east to the eastern seaboard. Also known as the wild or wood strawberry, it’s extremely hearty and spreads quickly. The berries are small, but juicy and sweet. The other variety of strawberry native to Alaska is the Chilean strawberry. Places like Strawberry Point, near Gustavus, Alaska are famous for this variety. It grows on beaches and looks like a small, cultivated strawberry but its sugar content is slightly lower. Both humans and bears are fond of beach berries, as they are sometimes known, so be careful picking. For more information and identification techniques see the “Alaska Wild Berry Guide and Cookbook”, published by Northwest books. Page 39 Witch-picker The story: My advisor is a witch; I just know it. I’ve tried, on many visits to her office to catch her performing a séance or something, but I’ve been unsuccessful. Then one fall evening, on my way home, the car in front of me swerved suddenly to the side of the road with it’s hazard lights flashing. A middle-aged woman threw open the door and went running into the bushes with a Ziploc bag. Concerned, I pulled over beside the car and followed her. I recognized the suspected professor, fumbling hastily through the underbrush of the long-shadowed forest, filling her bag. Her tangled blond hair and her home-sewn hat made her look more like a witch than she did in class. She was intent. She was searching for the jewels in the bushes. Her mascara was smudged, her lipstick smeared. She looked possessed. Her flowing, textured dress, eclectic even for a college professor, was even stranger for a forager. By the end of the excursion it was tattered and soiled. She wasn’t dressed for the occasion because she never knows when the berry spirits will speak to her, she told me later from her kitchen stove. In her mountain-side home where stuffed animals hang on the walls and plants drape over the windowsills, she confessed her obsession. A college professor by winter, spring and summer, she claims Alaska’s short fall season transforms her into a cackling crusader on a quest to quench her craving for cranberries. She retrieved a huge pot from her pantry, saying that after this afternoon’s outing she finally had enough berries for another batch. A batch of what, I wondered with a glance around her kitchen, which was strung with dried herbs and animal parts. Sensing my suspicion, her dog (witches usually have cats, but this woman seemed as though she was the exception to many rules) exploded into a frenzy of yapping. The fuss dislodged the ribbon in the dog’s hair, and she abandoned her task to replace it. She says she doesn’t mind the berries are tedious to pick. Berry picking transports her, she claimed…something about a Zen-like state. “Witch!” my mind screamed “Or at least some kinda Hippie,” it rationalized. She poured bag after Ziploc bag of wild berries into her kettle. She sprinkled herbs and ground roots. She cooked over a gas stove, not an open fire, but my imagination is vivid; I was absolutely convinced I had a witch on my hands. But the appearance of her lumberjack type husband soothed my worries. Witches don’t have husbands. Sandals affirmed that she didn’t, after all, have square toes. She did, however, have some kind of berry-picking mania. She just couldn’t pick enough of them. Now, there are only so many things you can do with cranberries. It’s not like they make great pies, or jam. She solves her problem by hosting an inordinate number of turkey dinners. She must, after all, use a cupboard-full of homemade cranberry sauce if she wants an excuse to pick more next year. Page 40 Page 41