Smoked Black Cod

How did I get so old before discovering smoked black cod? It has an exquisite buttery texture and a rich smokey taste that is sublime. At parties, guests race to consume everything but the skin. Even up against smoked salmon (which is almost a state dish), the black cod will win out. Most people love it at first bite. My husband is one of the few holdouts. Because cod (or sablefish) lives in very deep water, it is an oily fish. That reminds me that people have taken cod liver oil for decades for health: I wonder if eating smoked black cod daily could be considered a daily vitamin supplement? It does make me feel good to eat it...  There must be some kind of biological mechanism related to craving oil in cold weather. I know I do eat more of it in winter.

A close friend who introduced it to me makes a simple dish by mixing it with wild and brown rice. Despite its simplicity, or maybe because of it, this dish is delicious and a perfect "10" when it comes to satisfying.

A few weeks ago, I talked to a gentleman who has worked in the meat and fish industry for a long time here in Juneau. He said that 20 years ago, his company produced 300-400 lbs. a year of smoked black cod. That was the market for it then. Now, he said, they produce that much every month! For a town of 32,000.

It didn't take long for this smoked black cod to disappear. It turning cold so it's time for me to support my local smoked black cod industry again.

We Have Plenty of Room in Alaska

Alaska is vast. But it is only at certain times that you realize it. With a total area of 591,004 square miles of land and water, and almost 700,000 residents, that works out to 1.1 person per square mile. Contrast that with the entire United States, where there are 79.6 people per square mile. That is something to ponder.  And ponder it I did last week when I flew on a small plane to Kake, a village about an hour south of Juneau. Here is what I saw during that hour.

What I didn't see was any sign of human habitation: no curls of woodsmoke rising upward, no roads, no boats bobbing on the whitecaps. That doesn't mean it is untouched wilderness. When we came closer to Kake at a lower elevation, I did see clearcuts and logging roads. It is true that the closer you get to the ground, the more you see where people have been. Erin McKittrick and her husband, Hig Higman, found that out when from June 2007 to June 2008, they traveled 4000 miles from Seattle to the Aleutian Islands solely by human power. See their story here.  http://www.groundtruthtrekking.org/ They found plenty of evidence that people had been there before them. Plastic lasts forever. 


But from the air, flying south from Juneau, you can see forever - until you get to Kake, a community of fewer than 500 residents on the northwest coast of Kupreanof Island. Most places in Alaska have no road access, and Kake is no exception. It is a tiny jewel. 

After more than 40 years in Alaska, I still am stunned by the beauty everywhere. I think most people are. But with all of this magnificent landscape, people here can still get complacent about taking care of it because there is just so darn much of it. We have to continue to remind ourselves that despite its size, it is precious and rare.

Ski Tracks

When the weather turns cold enough to freeze the lakes around Juneau, classic skiers and skate skiers alike head for Mendenhall Lake. Blue icebergs from the Mendenhall Glacier that calved earlier in the year are frozen in the ice and the Nordic Club lays a beautiful track that loops around the huge lake. As long as you stay in the tracks, skiing is smooth and fast. Every person who uses the tracks packs it down a little more and it gets faster and faster. Your rhythm gets regular and strong and sometimes you feel as if you are flying on the tracks. Once you leave the tracks, however, the snow is uneven and you have to pay more attention and the glide isn't as long. On the other hand, when you wander away from the pack, it gets very quiet and you have the thrill of setting your own track. But when you step out of the track where others have gone before, you have to be vigilant about where you ski. Even though in most places the ice is very thick, every year someone miscalculates and breaks through into the icy water. It happened just the other night. He was lucky enough to get out and rescuers took him to the hospital to be treated for hypothermia. No matter where we are, no matter what we are doing, no matter how old we are, we will always have choices presented to us. And lessons to learn. This is particularly true in Alaska where nature is always the teacher.

Christmas Jam

True confession: I love other people's homemade jam (OPJ). Mine is good, but there is a little extra something that comes with other people's. So, last week when Christmas was approaching, the Wild Blueberry Jam from Christmas 2009 was almost gone. The few last berries were clinging to the bottom of the jar. Sadly, there was just enough left for one last piece of buttered toast. And after that? We have frozen berries from last summer, but hadn't made them into jam yet. The alternative was store bought jam made with high fructose corn syrup. Christmas Eve couldn't come soon enough.

I don't know why OPJ is so much better. Although I bought Rosehip Rhubarb Jam from the Montessori students and Salmonberry Jam from the Audubon Society, what I was really craving was the jam that my longtime neighbors make. Not only are all of their preserves heavenly, but they are generous with the fruits of their labor too. Every Christmas I look forward to my Christmas jam.

And when Christmas Eve finally arrived and I held the precious jar in my hands, I was happy. This year, it's a luscious mixture of healthy blueberry, hard-to-pick nagoonberry, and delicate thimbleberry. I won't open it right away. There's a lot of love in each jar: hours of picking, sorting, cleaning, cooking, and canning. That must be the little extra "something." Thank you, dear neighbors!

Thanksgiving in Juneau

 We tried something new this year. Instead of talking about what we were thankful for, we drew pictures and hung them on a branch. Talk about fun! We set up an "art station" in the living room with markers and index cards and while we chatted, we drew and colored. Our drawings ranged from stick figures to three dimensional recognizable people. Before we sat down to dinner, we hung the pictures up. I've posted some of them here. What I loved about this is that it creates a place where gratitude can be visible and that gratitude is different for everyone. Some researchers maintain that  the feeling of gratitude and appreciation can light up areas of our brains in positive ways. Others say it is a way of increasing our positive feelings.  I suspect that the more we focus on gratitude, the more we will have to be grateful for.

Sea Ice in Kotzebue

Kotzebue in October: The Chukchi Sea is on the left

Here in Kotzebue, they tell me that the snow is late this year. It is so far west of Juneau that the light is different. We are in the same time zone so it is darker in the morning and stays lighter into the evening.

When I first saw the frozen Chukchi Sea from the wide road that faces the sea in Kotzebue, I couldn't quite take it in. How can a sea, the margin of the ocean, be frozen? But there it was, right in front of me. Ice that went on forever. People talk about feeling small in front of a mountain. I had never understood that feeling until I stood at the edge of the frozen sea, feeling small in the immensity of the sea ice. There is so much of it. And even though high school chemistry tells us that salt water can freeze, albeit at a lower temperature, it is still disturbing. Every fall, the ice covers the Chukchi Sea, sometimes up to 6 feet deep in places. Standing on the edge, I can see mountains far away to my right. To my left, the sea stretches into tomorrow. 

Ice defines Alaska. It is white and sometimes blue and sometimes black. It is always cold and hard and, to my mind, unforgiving. In this picture below, the ice meets the sky and it all seems to be one. Soon people will be traveling on it. Where do you get your bearings when there is so much of it?

Chukchi Sea Ice

 

I Voted Today!

I felt good when I voted early this morning before going to work. It was still dark before 8am and big drops of rain pelted the street. The church where my polling place is was lit and inside, the familiar red and white striped curtains were hanging to give every voter the privacy to vote for candidates and propositions and judges. What a system we have! I knew almost all of the election workers, and when I signed in, I recognized about half of the names on the page. I was PK - that means "Personally Known." That is one of the virtues of living in a small town. I took my paper ballot and pulled back the stiff curtain and there, on the metal stand, was a pen to fill in the ovals. Once I had finished voting, I put my precious ballot in the cardstock cover that again guarantees my privacy. I brought it to the machine that sucks ballots into its locked box. One of the election workers handed me an “I Voted Today!” sticker and I could go back into the rain, quietly satisfied that I was doing the same thing as millions of other Americans,  protected from those who might force or bribe me to vote a certain way. I don't take it for granted, knowing that women had to fight for the right to vote. I treasure every bit of it.