Canadian Bacon

On Tuesday's "Talk of Alaska" radio programme on KUAC, there was a discussion of  eating wild game.  It is no surprise, in a state that has abundant salmon runs, caribou herds that number tens of thousands of individuals, moose walking down Main Street, halibut larger than a person that the consumption of wild game should be a topic of frequent conversation.  Or that in a state with so much frontier-style individualism, and a living Native heritage of subsistence, that it should be prevalent.

One caller gave a recipe for making ham out of black bear.  The following is my paraphrase of his commentary, recorded here as much for my own records as for anyone reading:  Unlike a cold cured ham such as proscuitto in the Italian tradition, where you have to have the skin left on – scalded and de-haired, he skins the bear and uses the pelt otherwise.  Then, taking each of the four legs from knee to shoulder or knee to ball-joint; brine the leg in a brine of one cup salt and one cup brown sugar per gallon of water for 10 days.  Then rinse the leg in clear water for 24 hours, changing the water for fresh every couple of hours.  This is to get all the excess salt out of the flesh.  You use the salt to cure the meat, but you don't want it staying in the finished product.  Then using a smoker, hot smoke the hams at 170 until the meat reaches a safe temperature.  Black bear carries trichamonis which is tranmissable to humans.  The bacterium dies at relatively low temperatures, but you want to be sure that the meat's internal temp raises to at least 150.  Then eat and enjoy!  He recommends thin slices bear ham on rye with mustard, or fried with eggs for breakfast. 

Take the belly fat and treat it just as you would bacon.  This is apparently where the term "Canadian bacon" comes from.  Originally, Canadian Bacon was made by frontiersfolk out of black bear, and it wasn't until civilized commercialism came along that it morphed into a different preparation of pork belly. 

Take the rest of the fat from the animal and render it down to lard, store in sealed jars to use in baking and pies.  The caller never eats pig products anymore really, only bear.  While I plan on raising pigs, at least for the next few years, and don't know if I will ever shoot a black bear; if I ever do, or if a hunter aquaintance doesn't want to eat his bear, I can guarantee that I'll be making ham!

In other news, I hear that lynx tastes like chicken.

Hunkering Down

There's a husky curled up on the couch.  A husky ball is one of the coziest things there is, a world of comfort unto itself.  Nose under tail wrapped around paws.  The past week and more has brought a cold spell to the Interior, with temperatures in town reaching into the thirties and forties below zero, ice fog reducing visibility to zero in places.  Out here at the Homestead, north of town in the hills, we've mostly stayed ten to twenty degrees above the valley where the town lies.  One day last week, I came home from a twenty three below zero day to find the (relative) warmth of one point eight degrees below zero.  Mostly we've been hovering in the ten to fifteen below range.  This past weekend saw us dip to thirty below, but we are back to ten below now.  The sky out here is crystal clear and you can almost reach out to pluck the stars from the sky.  Driving into town every morning, and driving back home every evening, I encounter that invisible line of atmospheric density made visible in winter where the particulate of exhausts hangs trapped in the cold cold air.  Ice fog has some water vapor to it, it can occur entirely of water vapour in pristine areas untouched by exhaust, but within Fairbanks it is certainly primarily made of exhaust.  In the hills directly above town, you can look down at times in winter to the top of a lake of ice fog, buildings and roads entirely obscured under the cloud.  It is as though a magical barrier exists, a containment wall made of atmospheric density and the difference in molecular kinetic energy.  Cold spell, indeed.

We have moved into the downstairs of the house.  Between the cold, carpooling through long days in town to accommodate theatre schedules and yoga classes, and heating primarily with wood in a woodstove that has developed a worrisome crack it makes so much more sense to consolidate our life around said woodstove.  We have hung a curtain between the floors, and another partway down the hallway to block off the two extra bedrooms (as yet uninhabited by young humans), the studio, the library, and our bedroom.  I mourn the loss of the studio to the cold, but have been promised guiltless use of space heaters on the rare days when I actually have the handful of hours to work on a project.  There is a song by the Decemberist that has always been resonant to my darling man and me: "Crane Wife."  It is sad, as many of their songs are, but it is a beautiful love story as well.

"I forced her to weaving, on a cold loom, in a closed room, we down wove."

Well, now my loom room is cold.  We are currently sleeping on the pull out couch directly in front of the woodstove, but plan to move into the guest bedroom for the winter.  This house is large for two people.  It is a house in which to raise a family.  So this season of dark and cold, we will live in the connected kitchen/living/dining area, one small bedroom, and the bathroom.  Conveniently focusing our life and our warmth where the pipes are housed.  This has the added benefit of clearing out our bedroom area so that we can pull up the old and wretched carpeting, lay flooring, repaint, sand and finish the windowsill, and build walls and a closet.  Then build a real bed for our mattress, and move back upstairs sometime next year.  Or, you know; the next.  But for right now, there's a woman writing, a man reading, two dogs sleeping and two cats lounging within ten feet of the woodstove.  And we are warm.

Seasons of Cold

This week has seen the temperature drop to more than twenty below zero.  While some –many – areas of the country are enjoying the promise and excitement of the first snow, entering into that hovering in-between month of November and others I am sure will not see their first hard frost for a month or more, we are well into winter.  I grew up in New England, where the seasons and the months followed the kindergarten pictures fairly closely.  Spring was ushered in with grey puffy rainclouds and mud boots in March, with tulips and pasque flowers in April, with flowers galore in May.  October was a riot of gold and red and orange.  November was chilly and wet and grey.  December saw snow and decorated trees, and January was always painted in light blues and whites with crystalline snowflakes.  I'm sure you know the pictures I mean.  Living now in the subarctic, I find that living a seasonal life shakes out just a little different.  It is the first week of November and already my seasonal/mindfulness display table with its candles between the dining room and the kitchen is covered in cloths of light blue and white, with blue and white patterned origami snow cranes.  That's the "January" of the kindergarten pictures. 

Our fall this year was long and lovely.  We had a week of "September" weather, with tall grasses going to seed, sunny days and cool evenings, and the merest hint of gold in the leaves.  Then we had a week or a little more of the bright bright gold of an Interior "October" followed by two weeks of "November" with cold rain and overcast skies.  By the middle of October, the temperature hovered between five below and twenty above, and there was a coat of snow on the ground. 

Now, sitting by the warm fire with a mug of spicy mulled wine, I realize that it is no wonder that I feel the pull of the winter celebrations so strongly – I am a month into true winter dark already.  We are losing more than eight minutes of daylight each day, as we draw slowly closer to the Solstice.   The holidays are 'supposed' to start a month or a little more into wintertime.  A fellow Fairbanksan blogging friend confessed that she has been listening to Christmas music ever since Halloween.  I too, have been cueing holiday stations on Pandora or Spotify when I am alone, and poring over pictures and thoughts of holiday crafts and baking and decorating and gifting.  I have always been slightly horrified by the store displays that pull out the Fourth of July the day after Easter and Christmas even before Thanksgiving has come.  I still am, a bit.  It is blatant over-commercialization.  But in this particular instance, in this particular clime, for this particular holiday, it makes sense.  I was waiting and hoping for the holiday displays to begin even before they did.  And I feel a little impatient for the weekend after Thanksgiving to arrive so that I can pull out the box of decorations and convince the Darlin' Man to help me pick out a tree. 

I think about the psycho-social origins of winter holidays in the Northern lands.  They were based around the Solstice of course, celebrating the return of the light even before Christianity had left its birthplace in the Middle East.  Whether you celebrate the days getting longer or the birth of your savior, the last days of our calendar's December are a time of hope and renewal, even in the depths of the winter hibernation.  Many of the traditions we think of are about this renewal or rebirth.  But many of them – the mulled wine or cider, the cookies, the warming spices of ginger and cinnamon and clove, the firelight, the family, welcome wreaths, even the gifting – are also about the drawing-in and the gathering-around of the winter season.  The weather out of doors is inhospitable at best, so we create our own warmth within.  We gather with loved ones to eat and to tell stories.  Most holiday decorations have meanings associated with the religious and spiritual significance of the holidays, from the colors to the evergreens to the stars, but also by decorating the space that we live in, where we retreat to away from the winter cold, where we gather with loved ones we make that space –our home- inviting and welcoming.  We allow it to be a space of retreat and respite, a place where spirits are lifted.

Which is all a fancy and very long-winded way of saying that this year I shan't be ashamed of my intense enjoyment, and early commencement of the winter season.  

The long-overdue Chitina IN PICTURES!

Chitina

Copper River at 5am

I caught a fish!  The Darlin' Man helps me pull it in (with the
ridiculously heavy steel pipe of a pole I was using)

There was a water fall across the way.
The river is full of glacial silt.

Fishin'

Then it got chillier, and I kept fishin'.
I may have fallen asleep in this position.

My Ma on the point just upriver.

Me and the Darlin' Man.

When the sun came out!

Sugaring Part 2: Syrup

Darlin'Man brings in sap.
Note the yoke.  It is amazing.

We have one quart and one pint of birch syrup sitting in the fridge.  It is so sweet and so so good.

We boiled it down in the crock pot, and on stove top pans.  Both work.  The crockpot requires less supervision but takes longer.  

Next spring, we hope to have a cinderblock woodstove built in the yard with a ginormous pot or two for the boiling.  

And if one of us ever learns to weld, we've got a great idea from the man who runs the brewing supply store.  Weld stainless steel into a giant 100s of gallon vat, paint it in heat absorbent black paint, and set it up basically like a still, so it'll evaporate out the water by the (direct) power of the sun.

Syruping

The Woodsman brings in sap.

more boiling.

Slightly singed syrup. 
Please note the alliteration!

Only in Alaska...

The Darlin'Man picked up some literature from the Cooperative Extension the other day - little booklets and couple page handouts talking about various aspects of sub-arctic agriculture and etc.  I'd read a few of them already, a few were new to me and quite good, but the one I wanted to share is this:

"The Cock-a-Doodle Dos & Don'ts about Raising and Wintering CHICKENS in Rural Alaska"

It goes through such sub sections as "The Coop Setup" "Basic Equipment" "Flying the Coop" and "Reccommended Breeds of Layers for Interior Alaska."  Some good info about insulation and heat lamps.

And then, Oh priceless then!

In the section "Roosters Need not Apply" that basically walks through the pros and cons of including a rooster in your flock, it says....

"Harmony: Chickens are very social birds with strict heirarchy - much like sled dogs.  A balanced flock has at least one rooster, once dominant hen, and several other hens."  All very true, I'm sure.  But really, only in Alaska would you ever explain chickens in terms of a sled dog team.