alaska vegies

Last week I went to the one of the many local farmers' markets. Now I know many people don't associate Alaska with fresh produce. But we have beautiful and delicious vegetables, and more types than southerners would imagine. Big, expensive vegetables.

Last week I bought some carrots, cucumbers, and parsley. And I looked for cabbage. The usual table cabbages ( not the giants grown for competition every year) were way too big.

I love cabbage - raw or cooked. I can eat the usual supermarket cabbage all by myself in a week or two. And Alaska cabbages are remarkably sweet and tender. But huge.

So I thought about buying a nice Alaska cabbage. I would have to find three other people to share it with me. It was all too much to cope with.

Today I visited another farmers' market. I bought local cheese, mikunya greens, daikon, turnips. And a couple normal size cabbages, one green and one red. I asked the Korean farmers about them. "Pick early," they said. "Too big, no one buy".

Tomorrow, cole slaw with shredded daikon and carrots!

fried spinach - Birmingham, Alabama

I love southern food. I love having people following me around with silver pitchers murmuring "Sweet tea?". The answer is always yes. I believe southern fried foods are some of the most delicious things on the planet. (But then, I love muktuk too). I am neutral on okra, unless it is fried. Fried okra is good.

This fried spinach was rather yuukky. The texture of a potato chip, but with a taste of all that is dubious in spinach.

"You people will fry anything!" I said rudely.

Craig, a fellow diner, laughed. "You cain't hardly think of nothin' around here that ain't fallen in hot grease!" he said.

Actually Craig, like most Southerners I've met, is an educated man who speaks standard English elegantly.

Birmingham is a lovely city and I only wish I'd had more time to spend there. The "magic city", and the great figure of Vulcan looming over the pretty park. Dogwood and azalea.

Meanwhile, back in Alaska, we have had two feet of snow in a week and more predicted. But the days are sunny and endless, and it is hard to complain about something as lovely as new snow under that intense blue sky.

halibut is here

The vernal equinox is also the time the first fresh halibut of the year hits the market.

What a wonderful fish! Mild, sweet. It can be cooked any of hundreds of ways and they are all good. Halibut is one of the best parts of living in Alaska.

no one cares what you had for lunch

But this is no ordinary lunch.
It was a working trip to Nome, and we were presented with an Innupiat Eskimo style banquet. Dried whitefish, salmon strips,
caribou sausages, muktuk, muktuk salad, seal oil, and walrus. I'm not sure the raw string bean is traditional, but doesn't it look nice? The paper plates and the saltines are sort-of-traditional. Pilot bread is more traditional than saltines. Both are used to soak up more oil. There was cooked salmon pineapple teriaki for a second course and blueberry buckle (not agootuk?) for dessert.
Now I fell in love with halibut, salmon, and crab the moment I entered Alaska. I have been thrilled with all preparations of moose and caribou. Seal meat is delicious, although my uneducated palate cannot distinguish it from walrus. I have often been told, "You eat good for a gussuck". ("Gussuck" means not an Alaska Native and more specifically, not Eskimo. It is said to be a corruption of "cossak". It is not a fighting word, there doesn't seem to be any malice in it, and we often refer to ourselves this way.)
I have been ambivalent about muktuk (slices of raw whale blubber and skin) and seal oil. Not disgusting, but the mouth feel was unpleasant and there seemed to be too much chewing involved,
Today, I slid happily over that barrier of strangeness. The seal oil was so lovely I poured it over my fingers as well as my whitefish. I licked if off my fingers and soaked it up with crackers thinking it was better than fine olive oil. The aftertaste in my mouth and the smell on my fingers were wonderful.
And muktuk! The contrast in color and texture between the skin and the blubber were thrilling, The texture was perfect, firm but yielding. I loved the smell, I licked my fingers, I treasured the soft feel of the fat in my mouth.
I am starting to think about leaving Alaska for a variety of reasons. I think of myself a few years from now, in a double wide in an active adult community in Florida, or a studio apartment in the Bronx. Craving muktuk.