Category Archives: Food

Smoked Fish

Decades ago, when we first came to Alaska, there was a place in town that made superb smoked fish. We loved it. They would also clean and vacuum seal our fish when we had too many to do ourselves, and when we had those bounties we’d have them smoke some of them, too. Superb.

But then the business changed. One year, they were unable to do any of our fish, and we burned up two FoodSaver home vacuum sealers doing them ourselves. They also stopped offering the exquisite variety of smoked fish that they used to make and sell. We’ve since taken over all of our own fish processing, and finally a couple of years ago I decided to figure out how to make decent smoked fish, too.

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Fish Soup

We’ve been making fish soup from the remains of our salmon for years and just love it. After cleaning the salmon that we dip net from the Copper River at Chitina, we cut off the tails and heads from the gutted and fileted carcass, saving the carcasses and the bellies and some of the heads (about 1 head to 3 carcasses).

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Tepache, a Refreshing Summer Drink

This recipe is very simple and uses what we used to throw away – pineapple rinds.

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Rather Deep in the Minus Shitties

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on being buttoned up for the winter, but we’re well past that happy phase and deep into the reason we were buttoning in the first place. Now we’re topping off the buttons with scarves, sweaters, and extra blankets and burning the densest firewood for maximum heat.

Another crisp day in Fairbanks

Normally, the cold doesn’t bother me much. It’s a good reminder of where we live and the importance of being aware of your surroundings. Here at home we have plenty of firewood, and all is generally well with the world—as long as I remember to plug in my truck.

But we’ve been getting used to global warming making our winters less cold. One account I saw recently indicated that we haven’t seen weather like this since 2012. So, like many here, I am ready for a break from -40s and -30s and even -20s. Collectively, given my current state of mind (having looked at the weather forecast), I’m now calling this weather the “Minus Shitties.”

Oh, the weather’s in the minus shitties…

There are good sides. Here on a Science Saturday as I go over page proofs for a forthcoming paper, I see chickadees and redpolls coming in to the feeder; a Christmas-like ambience to the quiet woods; and I’m enjoying the good, crackling blaze of birch logs in the woodstove. And who doesn’t like this time of year? The fridge is stocked with rare treats just begging to be sampled. For lunch I had an exquisite Stilton and smoked-salmon omelet that would have had the gods themselves agog with delight.

Today we’re experiencing the earliest sunset of the year (2:39 PM), and I look out the window at some of next winter’s wood, diced and stacked in the woods waiting for the seasonal re-opening of the Boombah Haulage Company. Oddly enough, the company’s sole employee was able to get all of the wood that was on the ground and diced up stacked during our protracted freeze-up earlier in the year. The slacker doesn’t know how lucky he is. (Or does he?) When it warms up a bit, we’ll send him out on a stack inspection.

Wood for next winter, diced, stacked, and waiting for haulage.

Magic Shrimp

We have a simple, delicious recipe for shell-on jumbo shrimp that we use for celebrations. We call it Magic Shrimp. It’s dirt easy:

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