Day of giving Thanks

Thanksgiving day. 

A day for counting blessings. 

For loving family, both near and far. 

A day to celebrate food. And life.

Every year a day of feasting. Quintessential tastes. 

I am thankful for gamay  grapes, for husky love, for time spent in the kitchen. For tastes of memories past and futures yet to come. For my grandmother's silver and great grandmother's tablecloth. For the warmth of wood fires and of love. For the earth and all her bounty. I am grateful to a bird, to rice and celery and carrots and brussel sprouts, potatoes, grapes and walnuts. I'm thankful for ginger and sage and clove and cinnamon, marjoram, thyme, salt and pepper. For pumpkin and apple. For cranberries, oranges, wine. For vintners and farmers, for cows. For artisans, weavers, craftsmen. For truckers and planes and long dead  lifeforms' carbon. I'm grateful for the harvest. For abundance. For summer past and winter present. I'm grateful for joy and opportunities, for sorrow and experience. I'm grateful for abundance. 

I'm grateful for the presence of love, touching the lives of some of those closest to me. I'm grateful for health. Thank you earth, thank you sky. Thank you cosmic void, womb of beginnings. Thank you North. Thank you East. Thank you South. Thank you West. 

Thank you hot tub!!

Brie goes well with everything! A wine and cheese birthday.

Brie goes well with everything! A wine and cheese birthday.

"A plethora of cheeses and wine has never yet been brought together in such a lovely home with such wonderful people.  Compliments to the hostess and a monopoly of thanks to her for bringing her daughter back into this world in such a lovely form 27 years ago," wrote my Darlin'Man.  It was my birthday the other week, and to celebrate the day, my mom put together an absolutely divine wine and cheese pairing feast.  In addition to the wine and cheese, we had bread, almonds, raspberries, strawberries, artichoke hearts and a gorgeous salad my sister made.  It is recommended that if you do not have access to a great sommelier and fromagier, that you keep a notebook with comments and thoughts on pairings so that you can gain skill in pairings.  In support of such an endeavor, I asked everyone to take notes, I will share some of their thoughts below.  One of my guests, the brother of my dearest friend, who also happens to be a playwright, had insightful prose poems for many of his comments.  His words will be in italics through out this post, you can read more of his thoughts and writing at www.alexgagnehawes.wordpress.com. Everyone else will be in quotations.

For the main course, we had some 8 cheeses with 6 wines. 

Gran Maestre Manchego: matured soft cheese, aged 12 months, product of Spain: brash, endearing

Havarti – slick, The action scenes of Indiana Jone's desert.

Grand Cru Original Gruyere, aged 4 months: an award-inning alpine-style classic.  Fresh Wisconsin milk creates light, floral notes with a mellow finish – stinky full.  It was indeed a beautifully stinky cheese, and might have been my favorite, but I'm not so certain about the light floral notes!

A Dutch Masterpeice Rembrandt Extra-aged Gouda- perfect crisp on edge of crunchy.  Intelligently sharp.  Divine.

Smoked Cheddar : not cheese but memory, condensed warm rich campfire love.

Montchevre Chevre: Hating chevre is like hating yourself.  Why bother?

Le Chatelain Brie: Brie fills in the silence when I pray.

Glenmorangie: like a late summer forest meadow: exhilarating, intoxicating, I must leave too soon.  Smoky caramel love

Red Garage Merlot: fruity nose, mild taste.  After that scotch everything is mild.  Not far from the grave.  A micro-vintage from the San Francisco area. 

Chateau St. MichelleGewurtztraminer: Sweet sour full, leaving the party with and kissing someone new

Macon Villages Chardonnay: White wine like crustless sandwiches.

Sauv-Blanc – White wines like young people intoxicate, are dull.  That said, I quite liked all three of the whites, which is surprising, as I am generally a red wine gal.

J. Lohr Cabernet: Cranberry verging on currant.  Sturdy, drily sweet.  I cannot separate becomig adult from learning the meaning of "dry"

The manchego might have been the overall favorite, with Maple and Me being fans of the Havarit Meunster, and my very fave being the Gouda.

NOTES:

Jasmine: Syrah and Gruyere complexifies the stinky cheese flavors.

Brie and Syrah deepens the brie (dad says "nice clean flavors" about this one)

Gouda and Syrah, omg.

Jesse: oh my god good gouda! With Cabernet-Sauvignon,  yes, but gouda outshined a little.

Justin: j lohr cab and havarti munsteur – perfect

Mark: sauv blanc and gruyere makes stinky cheese stinkier.

Anna: Chardonnay and Chevre!

"What are we doing here?"
"I don't know."
"Do you want some more cheese and wine?"
"Yes."
-Hipsters at a wine and cheese birthday

For dessert we had three "fabulously accurate combinations" of wine with cheese.

White Stilton with sweetened dried blueberries: Blueberry Fayre/Port; what cheesecake tastes like to poor people.  Cheese creamy, tart, satisfying, port splendid. " Triple combo of blue cheese, walnuts, and port is heavenly" said my father, and it is true.  There is a magical alchemy that happens in the mouth with this combination.  It was probably my absolute favorite of the entire night, and made me forget all about the concept of a birthday cake.  Who would ever want cake with this in front of them?

Gruyere/Madiera: frost on windowpanes.  Strong. Cruel. The morning ahead.  Beautiful, old.   I thought I was going to like this a lot, because I LOVED the Gruyere, and have been fantasizing about madiera ever since I first delved into Shakespeare in 8^th grade.  Turns out though, I do not like madiera.  Fortunately my father does, so I'll be keeping this rest of this bottle behind our other liqueurs until his next visit.

Geweurtztraminer/ Yancey's Fancy: New York's Artisan Cheese:  Bergenost, a buttery triple cream havarti/muenster style cheese – safe soft parmesean.  a cheese to give strangers you want to be friends.  a cheese that reminds you of undone chores. pair with sweet white and serve sparingly.

Eating Well

The Menu

~

Appetizers

Roasted bleu cheese and leek crostini with walnuts on sourdough

Proscuitto wrapped medjool dates stuffed with herbed goat cheese and fresh basil

~

 

~

The Meal

Herb brined Turkey stuffed with wild rice dressing

Blackened sweet potato spears with chile cream sauce and green onion garnish

Roasted Brussel sprouts with grapes and walnuts

Garlic herb biscuits

Cranberry sauce

Mashed potatoes

~

~

Dessert

Apple Pie

Mocha Pecan Pie

Pumpkin Pie

Cranberry Pie

Maple Syrup Pie

~

 

Thanksgiving is kind of a big deal hereabouts.  With three women in my family who live their lives out of the kitchen, we relish the excuse to go overboard.  And while we generally prepare enough food for two to three times the number around our table, that is not precisely what I meant.  We go overboard in the planning, the preparation, the menu-conceptualizing.  This year, I contributed the pies and the bird itself (courtesy of my boss who ordered fresh turkeys for each of his employees), my mother prepared the bird and our family tradition wild rice stuffing and paired the wines, while the meal itself was the brain and love child of my sister.  This is her last year in Fairbanks, as she's going to grad school next year, and so probably the last Thanksgiving we'll get to co-cater unless one or the other of us visits in future years. 

 

Two weeks ago now was Thanksgiving.  This weekend, I made gallons of stock with the turkey carcass, and we've been eating soup all last week and this. 

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!

Cherry Pie

Cherries are on sale at Fred Meyer's for $1.68 a pound.  I bought thirty dollar's worth.
Peaches and nectarines are also $1.68 a pound.  But I've promised myself to process all the cherries first.  This prospect is made a whole lot easier by the fact that I splurged on a pressure canner this morning.  It was relatively cheap, is something I've been wanting to buy for years now, and holds 7 quart jars.  Last night saw a huge mess as I tried (and succeeded) to hot water bath can quart jars in a pot that only allowed a bare 2 inches of room above the tops of the jars.  Keeping it boiling right at the tip top of the pot of water meant that the overspilling water put out the gas flame of the burner a few times. 

Last night I canned three quarts of cherries for pies this winter.  The evening before I stained my fingers crimson (maroon? claret?) pitting said cherries.  Tonight will see more of the same, but with a pressure canner!  Wheeee!  And then?  I'll probably buy more, and peaches.  And nectarines.  Nectarines make amazing pie.

Of that thirty dollars worth of cherries, I figure that I've eaten at least five dollars worth.  Between the 3 quarts, and two and a half quarts of cherry liquer (more on this later - I'm getting super into making fancy spirits!), I think I've used about half of what I bought.  Twenty five dollars divided by six quarts equals $4.16/quart.  And they taste better than anything I've ever found at the store

Through out the winter, I make pies regularly.  I haven't baked (bread or muffins or cookies or etc) regularly the last few years, but pies!  Pies are a constant in my winter kitchen.  There is little that is more lovely than taking a jar of home preserved pie filling off the shelf and pouring it into a rolled out crust.  Cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines.  This year I hope to add wild blueberries and raspberries to the list. 

I did some math in my head as I was walking out of the grocery store with thirty dollars' worth of cherries:
Piecrust is flour butter salt and water.  The organic Fairhaven mill flour I buy comes out to about a dollar for a pie crust, the Organic Valley butter I buy comes to about a dollar for a pie.  So, $2 plus a pinch of salt plus home preserved cherries at $4.16 plus maybe a splash of vanilla extract and some sugar equals $7 for a really really good pie.  Maybe not the cheapest thing in the world, but equal to the cost of one slice at Wolf Run or two slices at Hill Top, its a pretty good deal!  Besides which, winter apples sell for $2.49 a pound.  Which puts an apple pie at $8 dollars or more.

Oh, the math that goes through my head!

Homestead Eating: Woodland-made sauce

"Carrot Pancake" with lingonberry sauce,
 sour cream, and gruit ale.

I hope and intend that this is only the first of many versions of 'woodland-made' sauce that you will see and I will eat.  Lingonberries, though better known as a Scandinavian specialty, are as common in the woods on this this side of sub-artic circumpolar north as they are over there.  I hear tell you can find them in the northeast (Vermont and such places) though I've no personal knowledge of that.  Every autumn, I gather quarts and quarts of lingonberries.  I generally make a lingonberry sauce at Thanksgiving and look forward to when it entirely replaces ocean spray tm on the table. I am much more regular about, and invested in, this harvest than that of the blueberries that the typical Alaskan is known for.  (Living uphill now from great blueberry flats may see that personal trend change.)
Also growing in the woodlands I gather these ruby berries in are such plants as labrador tea and spruce and birch trees.  There are others of course, but these tend to be prolific and perhaps more importantly, to figure intimately into the profile of this 'woodland-made' sauce.  The last time I was heating up a lingonberry sauce (coincidentally for this same meal on a different day - its a fave), I was not as assiduous as usual in picking out the stray leaves of labrador tea and spruce needles that had wound up frozen with the berries.  The next day I was eating the left over berries (with a spoon, out of the pot; that's how much I adore these tart ruby baubles) - and I noticed little pockets of intense flavor where spruce or labrador tea had mingled with the berry flavor.  It was unexpected and took me aback, but on second thought I rather liked it.
So this time, in preparing the sauce, I intentionally left the leaves and needles in and let the sauce simmer for longer than usual in an attempt to infuse.  It sorta worked.  I'm looking forward to trying again and actually ADDING some of both flavorings, picked in the woods on purpose.  I mean, the flavor was a leeetle bit there, but certainly not enough to hold its own in the meal.  To further the whole woodland sauce concept, I sweetened the sauce with a splash of birch syrup instead of the spoonful of sugar I usually use.

As for the meal as a whole it is (mostly) out of "Sundays at Moosewood," Moosewood Restaurant's ethnic cookbook.  It is definately a favorite kitchen tool and inspiration of mine, as evidenced by the way it beginning to fall apart and the number of bookmarks and notes stuck into it.  It has sections on the ethnic/regional food of various areas : Morroco,  Northern Britain, India, Japan, Southeast US, Northeast US, Hebrew, Bulgarian or Yugoslav, etc etc.  One of my recent favorites is the section on Finland.  I don't know why the idea didn't strike me earlier in my life here in Alaska, but it makes so much sense to look to Scandinavian cultures for traditional food-ways that are compatible with life here in the far north: the climate, the growing season, some of the wild species, the need for winter storage, etc are all so very similar.  It only makes sense their food would resonate here too.  This is an adaptation of traditional carrot pancakes that I gather are usually prepared more like latkes.  Here they're baked in cast iron.  I don't follow the recipe anymore, I've made it so many times, and such things are relative... but I'll tell you how I do it.  For a precise recipe to follow, I cannot recommend "Sundays at Moosewood" enough!

Saute a diced onion in oil or fat (I like to use bacon grease when I have it) in a cast iron pan.
Shred about 5 carrots into a bowl.
Crumble a half cup or more of bread crumbs into the bowl.  If you don't have dried stale bread, dice a slice of whole wheat or sourdough bread.
In another bowl whisk together 5ish eggs and some milk.  Maybe almost a cup?
Whisk in thyme and nutmeg (1/2 -1 teaspoon ish?) and salt and pepper to taste.
Whisk in a half cup of flour.  I use whole wheat.  You could use rye or white or buckwheat.

Mix thoroughly the bread crumbs, carrots and onions in the first bowl.  Then add the egg mixture and toss or mix till thoroughly coated.  Scoop it all back into the cast iron pan (it should be all greasy from sauteing the onions), and bake at 350 ish for about half an hour.  When its done, it'll be a little puffy and golden on the top.  If you take it out too soon and its still goopy when you cut into it, just put it back in for a bit.  I sometimes overcook it, which just means there's a too-brown crust on the cast iron that is sometimes a pain to scrub out, but that the dog likes to eat.

Serve with lingonberry sauce and cultured sour cream (yoghurt would probably be good too).  The eggs and the sour cream are enough protein, but if you really want a winter-warmer style meal, it would be good with bacon, divine with sausage, and would hold up to left over roast or chicken. Wine, beer, and water are all good accompaniments.   Tea too, I'd imagine. Or apple juice.  I look forward to a lifetime of serving this meal to my family on a regular basis, I anticipate it being a weekly meal that my kids will know intimately.  Its healthy (and lingonberries are Vitamin C powerhouses!), easy, quick, AND best of all, can be made almost entirely from ingredients that I anticipate making or growing on this here homestead of ours.  Carrots and onions? Yessirree! They store well for winter too!  Bacon grease or butter? you bet!  Egss. Milk.  Bread.  Granted the wheat flour for both the pancake and the bread will likely be from off-homestead.   And there's always spices.  I will always import spices.

Homestead Eating : Salmon

Duck eggs make the smoothest, softest, silkiest quiche imaginable.  It is like holding melted velvet in your mouth. 

A year and a half ago, we traveled to Italy for a dear friend's wedding: in our travelling we ended up in Cinque Terre, in a restaurant above a cove.  It had tiny tables and kitschy wall art - but amazing local wine and fresh fresh fish.  Darlin'Man had a dish that was sliced potatoes under a filet of fish, drizzled in olive oil with tomatoes and capers and olives and herbs and things.  All wrapped in parchment paper and utterly delicious.  I've made a few versions of it since.  My latest plan was to take the mediteranean idea and run with it a bit, using salt preserved lemons.  I've run across a number of recipes using salt preserved lemons in greek and morrocan style fare recently as well; so I bought organic lemons (since you're eating the rind) and packed a quart jar with lemons and lemon juice and lots of salt.  They are supposed to ferment. When I opened the jar to use some - having waited many weeks - I was greeted with a thick colony of mold.  The fungal spores were happy.  My lactobicilli living in lemons?  Not so much.  It broke my heart a little, as it so closely mimicked the outcome of my post-harvest attempt at saurkraut, and an attempt at wine a few years ago.  So, I took out a head of red cabbage and made a new jewel-colored batch of saurkraut.  The brine looks good so far; hopefully this will be my fermented redemption...

Meanwhile,  I had a whole salmon (thawed) sitting on my counter and no brined lemons.  I filleted the salmon with my ulu - best knife ever - and did surprisingly credibly.  I usually have the Woodsman do my filleting.  I peeled the zest off of a(nother) lemon, and went with that instead.  Potatoes lining a baking dish, filets on it, zest and oregano and thyme and basil, all drizzeled over with garlic olive oil.  Baked.
Meanwhile, I simmered the freezer burnt bits of the salmon for the husky pup.  Keep in mind that this is salmon from the summer before last summer.  I'm really quite amazed at the overall lack of freezer burning.  And because I'm not that great of a filet-er (and I hate the thought of wasting wild salmon, however little), I cleaned the fish carcass, scraping bits of good meat off the ribs and spine with my fingers.  These I saved and set aside in a bowl... for quiche.

I mixed up a vinagrette.  I am out of balsamic vinegar - a staple on the shelf by my stove.  I had a moment of almost panicked disbelief.  When I say balsamic is a staple, I mean I use it damn near every day. But, as is the way of most crises, it led me to rely on my own resourcefulness.  I realized that I actually had a jar of nasturtium vinegar I made last summer, sitting nearly unused on the pantry shelf.  Let me tell you, olive oil and nasturtium vinegar vinegrette is delightful - a hint of spicy summer flavor from the flower infusion adds a quality entirely different from, and just as good as, a good balsamic.

Between the four of us, of course we ate all the salmon.  I had some kale and some carmelized onions in the fridge, so what else was I to do with the scraped off salmon bits the next night but make a quiche?  As the french might say "mais, naturallement!"  I had stopped by the local meat shop, Homegrown (which also sells a variety of other locally produced food and artisanal items), after yoga a few days before.  I was hoping to pick up some eggs, as I would rather support the local egg sellers - regardless of whether the feed they use is organic or not! - than pay the same price (food prices are ridiculous here in the interior) for 'organic free range' at the grocery store.  I felt like I'd hit the jack pot when I was able to snag the last carton of eggs.  It wasn't till I brought it up to the counter and noticed that the top of the commercial carton wasn't actually fitting over the eggs that I realized they were actually duck eggs.  Even better!  I've heard great things about duck eggs, especially for baking.  And I can now say that they live up to every expectation that every glowing blog post or book chapter ever created in my over-active gastronomic imagination.  They are really good.  Maybe not so good that I'll plan on introducing ducks to our land that lacks any open water...  but certainly so that I'll go out of my way to barter for or to buy them!

Calendula Butter

"Churn Butter Churn

Churn Butter Churn

Johnny's waiting at the gate, waiting for his butter cake

Churn Butter Churn

Churn Butter Churn"

I made Calendula Butter this weekend.  Last year a very good friend gave me "Jekka's Herb Cookbook" as a gift.  It is a LOVELY recipe book, combining information on cultivated herbs and their harvesting and uses with a wide array of recipes using them.  Interspersed amongst it all, are reminicences of Jekka's mother's and grandmother's cooking lives in England.  Thoroughly lovely reading, and great kitchen inspiration.

In the Calendula or Pot Marigold section, one of the recipes is for calendula butter.  If memory serves (I did not bring the book into town to quote from, and last looked through it a while ago, when contemplating this plan), Jekka suggests making this using softened butter and mixing in fresh calendula petals.  She waxes poetic about it preserving summer sunny gloriousness.  She also, and I disagree with this bit, says that is it the only way to preserve calendula.  I dry my calendula petals and use it in poultices, facial steams, wound washes, and (grand intentions of) salves all winter long.

So, because it is April, and therefore most of the ground is covered with snow and this year's calendula are baby seedlings in eggshells on my counter, and I had a jar of dried calendula on my herb shelf; I did it this-a way:

I bought a pint of Organic Valley's* heavy cream. 

My darling housemates used a third of it in their coffee.

I took the rest and poured it into a mason jar.

I put in a bunch of dried calendula petals and let it sit for an hour or two, stirring when I thought of it.

I strained the petals out, and the cream into a new mason jar.

I added some small riverstones from the box of them we have sitting on the window sill.

I screwed on the lid of the jar.

Then I shook the jar while I ( rather desultorily) straightened up the house with one hand for a while.

Eventually I had butter and buttermilk.

I poured the butter milk out (saving it for biscuits), put the butter on a plate, ran it under cold water and mooshed it with a spatula until the water ran clear.

Ta da!

Then I left the greasy-from-heavy-cream-and-butter plate, strainer, 3 mason jars, spatula, and river stones in the sink for the darlin' man to wash.  This is why we love him.

This is also why I long for a dairy animal.  And then a real churn to manage the quanities of cream.  When I was in middle school I went to a living history camp at King's Landing in New Brunswick Canada for two summers. We went and lived the life of young folks in an 1800's canadian colony.  It was amazing.  My second year I was assigned to the Ingraham family, a prosperous farming family with a big white farmhouse.  They had an artesian well in their panty/side/mud room.  Which functioned as indoor running water.  Basically they had a down sloping hand hewn trough; the upper end was fed by the artesian well (via some sort of time perios-appropriate gravity pump mechanism), and the water washed across/down the trough and through a drain.  It was in this household that the camp group learned to make butter.  We poured cream into a cooper-made wooden churn, and took turns at the dasher.  There is a definite rythm to churning butter, and a technique of wrist turning to maximize the agitation (caused by the cross on the bottom of the dasher turning back and forth in the cream).  We all made a circle around the churn in the middle, and took turns churning, the rest of the circle clapping, and all of us singing the old song

"Churn Butter Churn

Churn Butter Churn

Johnny's waiting at the gate, waiting for his butter cake

Churn Butter Churn

Churn Butter Churn"

We watched it go from frustratingly still cream, to pebble sized butter bits floating around, and then all at once into a big clod of butter stuck to the dasher.  We took it out and put it in the trough sink, where fresh well water continuously ran over it.  Such a better deal than pouring buckets and pitchers over it!  We all took a hand at using the wooden handcarved butter paddle, but after a few minutes there were really only two of us invested in finishing the process, everyone else started chatting or went out into the yard.  The two of us took turns mooshing this big clod of butter with the paddle, for a surprisingly long time, until finally finally! the water ran clear.  And then we salted it and pressed it into moulds.  The woman who was teaching us told us all about the difference between salted and unsalted butters, the storage times one coud expect with each, period techniques for over wintering butter, and how families would have signiture images on their butter moulds.  I only remember some of the information, but while it wasn't the first time I made butter (think Brownie Girl Scouts in a jar with marbles), it created a memory and image that will forever stay with me when I make butter. 

Just a year or two ago, my alma mater theatre department produced Carol Churchill's "Vinegar Tom" - an amazing play by an amazing feminist playwright (highly reccomended) that takes place in a puritan village that gets over run by the craze and suspicions and insanity of witch hanging and burning -

The production was great, and moving and powerful; but there is a scene near the beginning when the very envious housewife who kicks off the witch hunt is trying (and failing) to get her butter to come.  She is alone on stage, and miming churning, pissed at her philandering husband, and chants

"Come Butter Come

Come Butter Com

Johnny's waiting at the gate, waiting for his butter cake

Come Butter Come"

I still feel the actress would have brought something more authentic to the role if she knew the school-girl chore-passing history of that song, had experienced the aching wrists and arms that is (even successful) churning; that the scene would have played as both more authentic and as more sexually and socially transgressive - as it is meant to - if the experience and the history and the ache and the disillusionment were brought into that chant.

As for my butter this weekend, I'll tell you how it tastes when I make biscuits or bread tonight!

I was a little disappointed by the fact that the orangey-golden brilliant goodness of the calendula only slightly infused the cream.  The color DID end up more golden, but not to the extent that I wanted.  I was secretly hoping for something as amazing as I always imagine Ma's carrot infused butter from "Little House in the Big Woods" to be.  No such luck this time. 

There's a calendula custard recipe in Jekka's book that I also want to try with dried calendula.  I think I'll try simmering the petals in the milk first, and then straining.

This summer, I'll make them both fresh too, and tell you what I think.

***** This post was inspired by Grow It Cook It Can It's March Butter Challenge********

Check out all the other awesome butter making!!!

*Thanks ApronStryngz for the reference for dairy scorecard reference! 

And thanks Cornucopia Institute for good investigative research!

Springtime welcomes the light

This table cloth is linen with a gorgeous cross stitched border.

  I found it at Value Village! Can you believe that?

  I think I splurged on it - paying about $5.

There is one hole about the size of a dime in it,

but otherwise its in great condition!

Spring is here.  I know this because the Equinox has passed.  It was expected of course, but somehow not anticipated.  It managed to sneak up on me in total surprise.  No bonfire marked it, mostly due to scheduling.  But also in this weird weird spring where my father in Connecticut has 80 degree days while we have twenty below zero days...  The mid way seasonal balancing shift somehow doesn't feel to be happening.  I notice the sun though.  It is light at home of an evening now.  I hadn't noticed it really and truly until this week - maybe because the last few weeks I havent been getting home till 11 at the earliest, what with the darlin' man's play. 

Anyway, I did quietly celebrate the coming of spring, for myself.  I did a facial steam last night.  It was amazing.  Last summer I gatherered and dried all sorts of herbs, some for medicinal purposes primarily, and some specifically for facials.  I had grand plans of frequent steams, knowing how good they are in the depths of winter.  And you know what?  last night was my second one this year.  But I'm convinced.  This needs to be a regular thing! 

Last summer's wildcrafted herbs on a shelf in my kitchen.

Besides which, facial steams are really one of the easiest things in the world. All you need is a bowl (or pot or pan), herbs (they don't have to be your own wildcrafted either! Herbs out of a tea bag or from the grocery store or healthfood store will do great too!), boiling water, and a towel or cloth to make a tent over your head and the bowl.

The mix of herbs I used was Yarrow, coltsfoot, and pineapple weed (a wild cousin to chamomile, I generally call it chamomile as I don't really like the name pineapple weed).  After mixing it together, on first smell I realized that this is basically the exact same mix I make up for the Darlin' Man for tea when he's getting sick, or for myself if I've gotten sick.  Preventative herbal medicine is something I'm on top of for him, but I rarely do it for myself until I'm down and out cant get out of bed sick.  Hmmm.  Maybe that's another thing I should work on!

Medicinally, I use Yarrow for colds and fevers.  Coltsfoot is good for coughs and lung congestion and asthma - its frequently smoked for lung ailments, though I'm not sure I would ever suggest that.  And Chamomile is just wonderful and soothing and a tonic.  Breathing in the steam, I felt the cough that's been starting to tickle my lungs easing up, and my sinuses felt like they were taking the most luxurious bath in the world! 

So why did I use these particular herbs for a facial steam, if they're such great internal medicine?

Well, yarrow is reccomended as a steam for oily and/or blemished skin.

Mine is definately oily.

Chamomile is just lovely and wonderful.

As for coltsfoot, Culpeper* says the "powder of the roots taketh away all spots and blemishes of the skin.  It were well if gentlewomen would keep this root preserved to help their poor neighbors." (qtd in Schofeild, Janice. "Discovering Wild Plants: Alaska, Western Canada, The Northwest." 195-196)



I also baked a pie last night:

Love People.  Cook them tasty food.  (bumpersticker from Penzey's Spices).

A few days ago, I made myself a cherry gallette.  Out of a jar of cherries that I had canned last summer when they were a good price at the store.  I find that I adore pie from home-canned cherries.

But the real triumph was my crust.  My pie crusts have somehow been rather blase of late.  Perfectly functional, but not the amazing flaky goodness they ought to be.  Now, I've been making pie crusts since I was a fairly young girl.  As a teenager, my mother and I would have pie baking contests in apple season ~both using the same recipe for filling and crust~ and my crusts eventually won out.  But the last year or so, they just havent' been there.  I think I was over mixing the butter.  At any rate, the galette crust was divine.  I felt vindicated in my sense of being a superior pie maker.  And this one for the birthday apple pie was good too.

The Darlin' Man has a pick up rehearsal tonight, and it is also the director's birthday, so I made a pie.  I'm quite pleased with the way the overlapping stars on the top crust turned out.  I used a star cookie cutter, and just cut them out of the rolled-out top pie crust, and then overlapped them over the fruit. 

 

Star Pie.

*Culpeper was a 17th century English botanist, herbalist, physician, and astrologer.  His "Herbal" is much quoted and has some good information.  But Gerard, his near- contemporary, is much more reliable, thorough, and holistically applicable.  Culpeper didn't like women much. 

A gatuitous foodie post

Some pretty pictures of food from, oh, a month ago?  That I meant to post.  And haven't yet.  I'm working on two for-real posts, and you'll see them when I finally finish them.  :)

kitchen window

Flaky biscuits from the Tassajara Bread Book. 
These are the biscuits I grew up on, and (almost) the only ones I ever make.

Salad: mixed greens, mandarins, and halibut with vinagrette.
The Halibut is from Darlin'Man's fishing last summer, I
made it, marinated in citrus and paprika, with rice and asparagus
one night.  Leftovers for salad the next.

Confession of an Alaskan in March

I bought $13 worth of green beans last night.

They're shipped from Mexico - thousands of miles away.  They are not organic.  And they were $2.69/lb.
They must represent dozens of gallons of petroleum prducts.
And right now, I'm ok with that.

They look good!  Even in the summer I can rarely find green beans that are not shriveled, or brown-splotched, or tough looking.  And for the majority of the year I avoid buying outlandishly priced non-local vegetables.  But there's something about March, when the negative two degree weather feels that much colder because its started to be light until 8pm, when the piles of snow and hardpack on roads and driveways is depressing because you're beginning to dream of hoes and seeds.  There's something about March that makes me buy 5 pounds of glorious green beans, and plan a meal around them.  Darlin' Man loves green beans.  I'll buy pork chops from Homegrown, and make herbed potatoes.  So two out of three main ingredients in tomorrow's dinner will be local. 

I aspire, and am working towards, a table that bears primarily food I've grown or bought and bartered from other Alaskans.  I admire William Street Farmhouse for taking on the challenge of eating only Alaskan.  Eating local is important to me, it is fun, and tasty and rewarding.  But there are times in March when I'm glad for the big bag of fresh green beans sitting in my refrigerator. 

Homestead eating: Moose

Dinner was moose steaks pan fried with a honey mustard garlic basil thyme sauce/marinade.

Garnished with carmelized onions.

With french style-inspired baked "frites" - sliced potatoes tossed in olive oild, salt and pepper and baked.

and steamed spinach over leftover pasta in truffle butter.

SO. Good.

The moose had been sitting in the freezer for a couple of winters waiting for a "special time," but now that we have more moose, (and the potential for a regular supply of it! - future thanks to the mountain men); I decided to just make it.  And I was very pleased with how it had held up flavor wise to being frozen so long.  It was originally recieved as a barter gift for use of a sauna and some of our wood at the Haven cabin my breda was renting, and then was our studio for a while.

luscious food

a walk in the woods

I came home with about two quarts of lingonberries, a bunch of yarrow, and a decent amount of coltsfoot.

Labor day, I took the day off.  I decided to not expect anything of myself.  So instead of unpacking or cleaning or helping darling man stack the cords of wood he was splitting, I slept in, drank coffee and read a yoga magazine, then drank more coffee and made a big ol' pot of borscht (beets and carrots and potatoes and turnips and cabbage and dill and parsley in chicken stock - all but the potatoes were local!).  Then I left the soup to simmer while I wandered in the woods.  I took Misha, my camera, and my big gathering basket.  When I got back, 3 hours later, I ate late raspberries off the brambles in the yard and made biscuits to have with said -amazing- soup.

(raspberries)

Its amazing, once a husky pup realizes that we're going on a walk, or a hike, or some variant thereof where her person accompanies her on foot in a direction; she becomes this amazingly warm and responsive companion as opposed to the crazed, run off at the drop of a hat, won't come back to calls for hours husky that she frequently is. 
Guess we need more time in the woods :-)

We set off along the overgrown 4 wheeler trail, but then headed off across a rise in the birch forest that surrounds us.  We discovered 5 neighbors I didn't know we had, one of whom had scary handpainted "no tresspassing without a warrant, all violators assume responsibility for injury and death.  Bad dog on premisis" signs on the path and what looked like a thousand gallon propane tank.  I guess all kinds get called to the woods 30 miles outside of town :-)
The other neighbors looked much nicer, but were not at home.

This is crampbark.  Also known as high bush cranberry.  Turns this lovely crimson in the fall and lights up the under-canopy of the forest.  I didn't see much in the areas I was hiking around in, maybe higher up the hill :-)

Good mixed with willow bark for cramps (the bark), and the berries are good eating, and for jellies, and sauces.

husky puppy in the woodlands

Bunchberries

-high in pectin, fruit of the dogwood -

Meese!

I walked on paths and off of them, waded through neck high dried grass, and sunk my feet into deep soft muskeg.  I discovered that on our hill, coltsfoot grows not in the deep soft muskeg like it did at the cabin, but in the crunchy lichen-full muskeg.  I think I saw bear skat. I saw patches of tufty cottongrass that mirrored the sky. I saw two moose cross the road, and the cars stop for them.  We came towards home along the road picking the yarrow growing on the sunny well drained shoulders, and then cut back through the woods to home, where a man had finished splitting and stacking all of the birch and welcomed us with open arms.  Misha saw him as we came into our clearing and wriggle bounded up to him with joyful greetings.

home again, home again!