Domestic Goddess... Alaskan Style!

Yep, still hard at work being a hunter gatherer in the rough Alaskan wilderness of... Girdwood. That's a joke, really, because Girdwood is kindof an up-and-coming vacation destination merely 45 minutes from Anchorage - and accessible by highway, which is actually kindof a big deal in such a vast state, covered with huge glacial rivers, bogs, mountains, and other natural features that make road access nearly impossible. We live in a condo with a sauna, a fireplace, and have 3G internet service. I didn't even have cell service in California! But still, we are trying to embrace the bountiful opportunities to hunt, fish or otherwise supplement grocery-store dependence. Resident fishing and hunting licenses are so cheap, it really does make living in Alaska a tad bit more affordable.... and a lot more adventurous and engaging!

We went to the Russian River one more time, and I've never seen so many people disappointed (myself included) to catch so many huge fish! The river was literally streaked red with a highway of spawning sockeye. When salmon are in the ocean, they are bright silver on the outside, with firm red flesh inside. However, the effects of freshwater and the long-distance travel up rivers to spawn takes quite a toll. When they start to change from silver to scarlet red bodies with green hooked mouths, they are getting "spawned out" - they are burning the oil from their flesh, becoming mushier and not yummy.

So, these spawned out sockeye ruled the river when we were there. For every 5+ red fish I landed, I hooked 1 silver fish. Hooking a fish does not always lead to landing a fish, especially when they are feisty and acrobatic! We didn't fill our bag limits but did manage to get 4 more fish between the two of us.

With the sockeye season winding down, silver (coho) salmon season is supposed to be starting. Been a slow season, and the fishing technique is much different than the "fly fishing only" style for sockeye. Silver salmon are more opt to strike bait or lures, so cured salmon eggs, spinners and spoons are the way to go. But the silvers have had a slow start. We went to the "locals fishing hole" on a creek nearby, where you can actually see the fish hanging out in the slack water. It wasn't looking promising, but finally got one on some eggs! What a big beautiful fish! I got the only fish of the day, killed and filleted it myself! It's very satisfying to get natural, sustainable and healthy food myself... I don't enjoy taking the life of the fish, but I thank them every time.

We splurged on a Big Chief Smoker and a chest freezer to hold all this fish (and hopefully meat!), so Tim took a turn at smoking his first batch of fish...

Tim's first batch of smoked salmon, DRY BRINE:

• 2 parts brown sugar to 1 part pickling salt
• ?? amount of celery salt, not much
•  Let set in fridge for 12 hours. Dry brining (vs the wet brine I did) draws the moisture out of the fish, so though you start with granular sugar and salt, you end up with a syrupy fish-soup!
• Dried for 2 hours
• In the Big Chief Smoker, it is set to one temperature (165 degrees) so we arranged thick pieces on the bottom racks (closest to the heat coil) and smaller pieces on top.
• Hickory wood chips: for the small pieces, ended up with 2 pans of wood = about 2.5 hours of smoking; for large pieces, used 3 pans of wood and the longest pieces took 6 hours

They turned out amazing, of course. Less salty than mine, because he used less salt than I did. Plus, I didn't have the luxury of electric heat and precisely set temperature! So I'd still like to think mine could hold its own again Tim's. ;)  Next time, we plan on soaking the wood chips more from the get go, to slow the initial temperature increase and keep a little more humidity.

Despite all this fish, we still had yet to actually cook up a straight up, fresh fish fillet! It has all been frozen or smoked. So tonight, as a treat, I cooked up something special with my silver salmon:

• Sauteed some zucchinis, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil with a little hint of Tony's creole seasoning
• Took a big fat silver salmon fillet, threw it on a skillet with olive oil, med-high heat
• Peppercorn, sea salt, simple. Cooked it on each side until almost done; right before I was ready to take it off, threw in some balsamic vinaigrette and honey to glaze the top when I flipped it
• Also made a little more reduced balsamic/honey sauce for the side, in case Tim did/did not want more

Yeah, it was freaking DELICIOUS. So I'm writing down the recipe so my family and friends can try it if I am able to give them some fish!! :)

It's raining cats and dogs outside, so tonight I fed my sourdough starter so I can make some homemade bread tomorrow, and Tim and I decided to have a little competition. His smoked fish vs my smoked fish! Tonight we both came up with our own little concoctions - his a dry brine, mine a wet brine. I don't know if he will let me disclose his "secret recipe" tomorrow, but I'm ready to kick his butt!! May the best salmon win! ;)

To Smoke a Fish

I know, it's been months and months without an update - and I choose to write about smoking fish?! So much has happened over the summer, it almost seems trivial to try to sum it up...but documenting my efforts at smoking fish for the first time, now THAT I can do!

Catch fish. Fillet them. Vacuum seal. Freeze. Now what? We don't own a smoker!

My very first effort, and this is what I did. I'm hoping to modify as I go, so I  need to take good notes!

Smoked Sockeye, Take #1:
Used 2 tail-end fillets, a little larger than palm of my hand, about 1" thick at the thickest. Didn't want to experiment with our bigger beautiful chunks of fish!

Brine:

Found a simple "recipe" online at WWW.SMOKER-COOKING.COM. There are a million variations, but I wanted to keep it simple. I used:

• 1 quart water
• 3/8 cup brown sugar
• 3/8 cup canning (pickling) salt
• 2 chopped cloves of garlic

Put salmon in brine, and let soak for about 3 hours in a bowl in the fridge. Afterwards, I pulled them out and dried them overnight, about 10 hours. I don't have any good racks for drying, so I just put them in the over (kept the oven OFF, and closed, so the dogs wouldn't get to it!). Supposedly the brine allows the fish to dry at room temperature without spoiling. Rest assured, the fish did not smell or look bad in the morning! It did develop the "pellicle" I kept reading about - a slightly tacky coating left by the salt once it dries. Supposedly this helps the smoke adhere to the fish?? Sure!

Smoking:

This was the tricky part, since we don't own a smoker and only have a broken propane grill. Yes, the propane part is broken... but I figured I could still use the grill itself to set up a charcoal smoker. I bought some charcoal briquettes; however, I have read some stuff afterwards that lump coal is the preferred material, due to better flavor and less additives. Oh well! I set up charcoal on one side of the smoker, lit it and let it sit and burn for a bit. Next time, I think I will let it sit a little longer because I don't think I had them going quite evenly enough.

Once the coals were going, I threw some alder wood (soaked shortly in water) onto the burning embers. The idea is that you keep the coal and wood on one side of the grill, then put the fish on the opposite side to get the indirect heat. Once the wood was smoking (didn't take long), I put the fish on and closed the lid. And waited...and waited...

Just kidding. I did have to mess the with coals to get it a little hotter, and add more wet wood chips every 30 minutes or so. If I had gotten dialed in with the coals better, I probably could have minimized the time opening the lid, and having to move the grate aside to deal with coals. For the first 2 hours, the temperature was about 200 degrees. It was smoking the fish, and I had thought 2 hours would be long enough, but I was aiming for an internal temperature of about 140 degrees for the fish (as I had read online). The last hour, I added coals and blew on them for a bit to get them hotter, and the temperature reached 225 - and the fish reached 140. It sure LOOKS good... Now for the taste test!

Taste:

Yum! It tastes like smoked salmon! Now, here's the catch - I'm not like, a smoked salmon expert. I don't know if I prefer it less or more salty, or wetter or drier, or whatever. It's definitely edible and made me happy. It is a bit salty, but I enjoy salty foods. It's on the dry side of smoked, so next time I will try to make some more moist fish and compare. Time to put it on a cheddar jalapeno bagel with cream chease!

5 Minutes Closer, Day by Day

I realized two things today:

1. As of today, we official have longer days than the lower 48! Each day, we get ~5 minutes more sunlight...bringing us that much closer to that amazing "midnight" sun!
2. I am already behind in my quest to post at least once a month! Slacker!

Aurora Borealis with Full Moon!

It's always ironic that I don't post more often; when I was busy and traveling more often (usually with less convenient internet access), fighting fires in Montana or exploring Colorado, I managed to post quite often. Then, I actually had the habit of carrying a notepad and actually physically writing my travelogue while I was on the trail, or in fire camp, or before bed. Afterwards, I would come home and transcribe my journal from paper, to computer. Why have I lost this motivation and consistency? It's a rhetorical question. I still have the thoughts and story in my brain; I found myself composing an entry while watching the Northern Lights last week. But I waited too long; the story is no longer fresh, the exact words and feelings buried under the rest of my week. I will try harder. But, at least I have photos to post. And as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words"?? ;)

After some gnarly weather and sketchy commutes, I decided to discontinue volunteering at the SeaLife Center in Seward. Combined with the sometimes treacherous 2 hour-each-way commute, I was unexpectedly shifted to cleaning duck pens instead of mammal research; apparently they don't have enough work to need a volunteer right now, since the sea lion pups (and ducklings) won't be born until the spring and I will be back to work before then. Since I already do avian husbandry in Anchorage, it wasn't worth the risk or cost of gas money. I will miss the animals and folks that work there! I am still volunteering at Bird TLC, though it is quite slow in the winter. We have had a variety of patients rotate through; bald eagles, northern hawk owl, merlin, ravens, northern saw-whet owl, bohemian waxwings, redpoll, pine grosbeak, even a Pacific loon. I adore the owls, their gaze is so intense, and the feathers above their eyes almost show expression, like a human's eyebrows. It's hard not to personify animals, but owls...they look at you like the just KNOW things...!


I am very happy to say that I was officially made a probationary member of the Girdwood Fire Department in January! This means I have certain tasks - training, driving, etc - that I need to complete within 3 or 4 months before I become a full (Class A) member. I have to take a minimum of eight, 48 hour shifts a month and attend weekly trainings. I have still only been on a few medical calls at this point, which is a whole new realm to me. Getting your EMT certification gives you the skills, but until you have dealt with people who are actually in pain, it throws a new level of complexity into things. I haven't even seen anything exceptionally traumatic yet, we will see how I hold up when things get really bad. The Seward highway is known for it's horrible accidents, and it is only a matter of time before I have to deal with the "really bad" stuff.

I am going back to work in mid April. Yay! I think? Ha ha. :)  Now that my winter is essentially over, I am thinking of all these things that I had all winter to accomplish, but didn't. It will be nice to have a healthy income again, and I am really looking forward to the opportunity to work on my Squad Boss taskbook while on wildfires this season.

I am also still doing the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group prospective member thing, with trainings about 3x a month. This month was raising and lowering systems for high and low angle rescue. I've learned the stuff about ropes, pulleys etc before, but since I am usually in a support role, I never get to actually set the ropes up... I just carry the bags the ropes come in, and I'm really good at the carrying heavy stuff part ha ha. So it was good having more hands on experience.

Will refrain from making this into another novel chapter and stop...right.... NOW. ;)

Winter Solstice, come and gone - My first Alaskan winter

Typical "daylight" in Girdwood in December... makes for dramatic sunsets, but rarely get to actually see the sun!

The shortest day of the year - Winter Solstice - was only three weeks ago. On that day, we had about 5 hours, 28 minutes of daylight. Being nestled in this valley though, means that the duration in which the sun actually breaches the mountaintops and hits the ground is much much less. So while it may be daylight outside, glimpsing that bright orange globe in the sky has been a fleeting treat, mostly dependent on whether I leave the valley - usually on my drive to or from Anchorage once a week. Today, on a perfectly clear and bitterly cold day with 6 hours, 1 minute of daylight, the mountains surrounding Girdwood were glowing with light; days like this are few, especially given the barrage of snowstorms and blizzards we have been getting all winter! I followed the light, just for the sake of seeing the sun... and sat in the parking lot of the gas station for about 10 minutes, simply so I could feel it hit my face! Oh it felt so good!

Portage Lake...on a rare, cloudless winter day

It's not that I tried to be a lazy ass and just sit in the parking lot though. I did try to walk Logan. But, there are two problems. One, is that the poor boy is limping again. I have to take him to the vet, his front leg has been bothering him and it hasn't improved at all in a week. But his mood perks up when we go for walks, so I don't want to keep him cooped up in the apartment all day. However, it was so cold, his paws couldn't handle it! His cold threshold on his paws was about 14 degrees earlier this winter, but today was -4 degrees, and he's just not adapted to that temperature yet. It's interesting that this prolonged cold has made the hair on his paws grow thicker than it's ever been, and it's the first time in his life that he hasn't shed continuously all winter. For the most part, his hair is staying on his body! Which mean my apartment is marginally cleaner than normal. ;)

We add 3-5 minutes of daylight per day. At this rate, on March 17, I will have as much daylight as my family back in Detroit - 12 hours of daylight. From then, Alaska will continue to have longer days than Michigan until we get near 24 hrs of daylight in the summer! I can't wait to go into a manic state of sunlight overexposure ha ha. :)

Normally it isn't this cold... we have had a few cold snaps with temps in the negatives, but for the most part winter is fairly "normal" compared to our Michigan winters when I was kid. Granted, it seems like Michigan doesn't really stay in freezing temps anymore, but 20-30s is what we get here and what I remember as a kid. But the sheer amount of snow we have received is definitely far beyond anything I have ever experienced! We got snow on 29 of 31 days in December, and according to the Alyeska Resort website, 393" of snow since October 1, 2011! That's incredible!

We have another blizzard warning tonight, by the way.

Beautiful sunset on the drive down to Seward last week. Yes, I actually saw the sun!

I'm trying not to make every journal entry the length of a novel chapter! Not everybody likes to read as much as I do....but EVERYBODY loves pretty pictures ha ha!

Hibernation - Resist the Urge!



Sun? What sun?

 At last! An update, thanks to the purchase of a new laptop and ample amounts of caffeine here at the coffee shop. I tend to get easily distracted when I try to write from home, and my two other broken laptops were no longer considered mobile or reliable. I'm not sure if it's the ADD or what, but I always did my best college work and got more stuff done at the coffee shop; the habit still lingers even 9 years after graduating undergrad, go figure.

I have been in Alaska for about 14 weeks now. I've worked, I've played, I've seen the leaves change color and the snow fly. And I've been in my yearly winter "retirement" for about a month already! It has gone quickly and I'm amazed at how busy I have kept considering I don't have a job. I had hoped to get at least some intermittent work with the Forest for a few extra weeks, but with the federal budget the way it is, that thought went out the window. I fact, I may not be back to work until May (was hoping for at least April); I am a permanent seasonal and only working for 6 months is "normal", but I could always use a little extra cash of course. ;)

My fall was spent working and completing an EMT-Basic course with the local fire department. I am proud to say I passed! And that class alone has opened some new opportunities that I hadn't even considered. I was unable to get a job as a groomer or equipment operator at the resort, so I put in an application to join the Volunteer Fire Department...and that EMT class sure helped get to know folks. There might be a wait list, but I now attend weekly trainings in an effort to maybe get in sooner than later. If I do get in, eventually this means I'll get paid for those weekly trainings, and get paid if I go out on a call (but unpaid if I'm on call, and nothing happens). But the folks seem great and it will be good to be a part of something here in the community.

Eagles can't be that much different than caring for chickens

For better or worse, November also saw the final dissolution of my 5 1/2 year relationship. As much as I'd like to crawl into a cave and hibernate until the spring, I'm trying hard to get involved with anything fun, that gives me good experience and helps me make friends and keep my mind off the break up. I'm going to start volunteering at a bird rehabilitation clinic and hopefully get to save eagles and owls! I don't want to lose the skills I learned at the wildlife rehab clinic in Colorado, so I'm very excited for this. I also really miss my chickens, but I lost them in the move/break up so I guess the girls are no longer mine. :(  But, I'm sure Tim is treating them well and last I heard, they were all providing him with plenty of eggs so they must be happy. :)

I also applied to the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group, since I had such a great time doing SAR on the Yosemite helicopter. The National Park Service was great because most field employees were able to participate on Search and Rescue, but the Forest Service doesn't do that.... so I figure AMRG would be a way to still play hero in the great outdoors. I went to my first meeting last week, and was pleased to hear that the board voted on my application and I am officially a probationary member! I was pretty intimidated because well, this is Alaska, and everything here is more hardcore...I didn't know if I was bad-ass enough to join their ranks. But they were "impressed" with my experience with the Park Service and Forest Service. I will be a probationary member for at least a year before I am considered fully qualified; it involves 2 meetings and 1 training a month, on top of responding to calls when I can. This week is avalanche rescue training.

So we have the Volunteer Fire Dept (but I'm not in yet); the Rescue Group; and the bird rehab clinic. But I have diverse interests. I also don't have a ski pass, and it is rough watching all the happy people sliding down the ski mountain behind me. So, I'm trying to volunteer with the adaptive ski center. After so many hours, I get $10 ski passes (instead of $60). I haven't done anything with them yet, but maybe later this week. Am I busy enough yet?? No??

I'm also starting to consider some other ways to get involved with wildland fire down south during these long cold dark winters in Alaska...but nothing has panned out yet.

Crow Pass Cabin

Speaking of long cold dark winters... Fact and fiction check. It is NOT pitch black outside all day, every day. The sun comes up. Right now, we get like 6 hours of daylight. The shortest day (Dec 21), we will get about 5.5 hours of daylight, and then the days get longer again so it's all uphill from there, right? :) But with all this snow, it seems brighter out for a little longer than that. And snow, yes we have gotten plenty of it thus far! I've been told it's not normally this epic - that freezing rain and ice is more the norm this time of year. I got to experience a little bit of that the past 2 days, but we should get more snow again here soon. We had a cold snap of 0-10 degree days and clear cold nights, but that too is apparently NOT the norm. So when it hit 39 degrees the other day, it felt downright warm! But I'd say 20-30s is normalish.

I did get my normal winter insomnia/weird sleep schedule that always happens around November. I sleep better here than I did in Michigan, however, where those overcast grey drizzle/ice days really made me get cabin fever. Here, my body adjusts itself to fall asleep around 2 am...and wake up around 10 am. Yeah yeah, I'm a slacker. Whatever. It's barely getting light outside at 10 am and I have no reason to get up before then! It suits me just fine! And then I do some p90x or go for a run. See, no hibernating or packing on the winter weight! I'm doing good so far!

Now, only 5 more months of retirement, volunteering, playing in the snow, and eventually doing a little traveling! Maybe even get a couple more journal entries in too, while I'm at it. ;)


I went to Denali too, but slacked off and never wrote about that either. But here's a pretty picture to make up for it. ;)