Week Eight Meals

Did everyone have a merry Christmas? Did you have some yummy treats this week? Here's what we ate:

Sunday, December 22:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers
Supper - steak stir-fry

Monday, December 23:
Breakfast - bacon and eggs
Supper - steak and beet greens
Dessert - cookies and ice cream

Tuesday, December 24:
Supper - pork roast and sauerkraut, cheesy baked potatoes
Dessert - ice cream

Wednesday, December 25, Christmas:
Supper - smoked ham, cauliflower, edible pod peas
Dessert - ice cream, chocolate and cookies

Thursday, December 26:
Supper - sirloin tip roast, cheesy baked potatoes

Friday, December 27:
Supper - sirloin tip roast leftovers, edible pod peas

Saturday, December 28:
Supper - zucchini "lasagna"

Where it came from:
Beef - Homer
Beet greens - Soldotna
Butter - homemade
Carrots - Palmer
Cauliflower - Soldotna
Cheese - home made
Dairy - home grown and Kasilof
Edible pod peas - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown
Pork - Funny River
Strawberries - home grown
Tomatoes - Anchorage
Zucchini - Soldotna

Christmas was this week! I love Christmas. James got to spend the night on Christmas Eve and spend the whole of Christmas day with us. Our holiday meal was entirely Alaskan, but not dessert. The cookies were homemade but with white flour and white sugar.

On Christmas day, I made fresh butter with some cow cream I had saved in the freezer from Peninsula Dairy, the place we used to get raw milk between the time when we ran out of frozen goat milk and the time when our goats freshen in the spring. While making the butter and seeing the buttermilk in the jar, I thought about how, if we weren't on this special eating plan, I would make some buttermilk biscuits while the buttermilk was fresh. Suddenly it made perfect sense to me how yesteryear's farm families were able to get so much food made. There's a logic to it that isn't very common knowledge in these modern times when we buy most of our foods at a store. When we are using our cream separator to get cream for butter, for instance, there is skim milk left that can be used to make monterrey jack cheese. The whey from the cheese can be used to lacto-ferment vegetables, or to make bread. Going back to the cream, it can be used for cheese or used to make butter, which gives you buttermilk, which is good for baking. The processes for milk, cream, cheese, whey, butter, veggie preservation and baked goods don't have to be independent activities, they can go smoothly hand-in-hand to give you greater variety of food in a streamlined method of food preparation that I plan to implement more often next year.

As we near the end of our Alaska Food Experiment, we are starting to run low on vegetables. We knew that the veggies would be the limiting factor in how long the Experiment lasted, and it looks like we'll be able to go for the projected two months but not much longer, if any.

As I write this, it is Saturday night. Sunday is James' birthday, and we are taking the day off of the Experiment to take him to dinner and a movie. Happy birthday, James!

Week Seven Meals

Week Seven! We're almost done with our goal of two months. One more week to go! Here's what we ate this past week:

Sunday, December 15:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers
Supper - hamburger/sausage patties, fried potatoes, beet greens

Monday, December 16:
Supper - roast chicken, red cabbage and mixed veggies

Tuesday, December 17:
Supper - roast pork chops over spicy sauerkraut, carrots

Wednesday, December 18:
Supper - chicken and potatoes

Thursday, December 19:
Supper - beef stew

Friday, December 20:
Supper - pork chops, sauerkraut, carrots, edible pod peas

Saturday, December 21:
Supper - steak, edible pod peas, bacon jack baked potatoes
Dessert - homemade ice cream sandwiches

Where it came from:
Barley flour - Delta Junction
Beef - Homer
Beet greens - Soldotna
Butter - homemade
Cabbage - Soldotna and Nikiski
Carrots - Palmer
Cauliflower - Soldotna
Celery - Soldotna
Cheese - homemade
Chicken - Funny River
Edible pod peas - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown and locally grown from the feed store
Honey - Kasilof
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton

This week, I took some days off work to prepare my own holiday gifts and baked goods. And I confess - I ate some treats. After having little to no sugar for so long, eating some sugary snacks made my heart pound. And not in a good way - it was borderline uncomfortable for about an hour. That night I had the first problem with my restless leg syndrome in several weeks. Remind me of that if I'm tempted to go back to my old way of eating, okay?

I am pleased to report I'm down a jean size now!

There's only a little more than a week in our Alaska Food Experiment. It's hard to believe it's gone by so fast. Two holidays occur during those last few days, too - Christmas, and James' birthday. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Week Six Meals

We're three quarters of the way through with our Alaska Food Experiment! Wow, that went fast! Here's what we ate:

Sunday, December 8:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers
Supper - bunless sloppy joes and baked potatoes

Monday, December 9:
Supper - leftovers

Tuesday, December 10:
Supper - Mexican turkey soup with monterrey jack fricos

Wednesday, December 11:
Lunch - pork chops and fermented mixed veggies
Supper - pork ribs, beet greens, fried potatoes

Thursday December 12:
Supper - "zoodles", sausage spaghetti sauce

Friday December 13:
Supper - canned moose, beet greens, potato chips

Saturday December 14:
Breakfast - bacon and eggs
Supper - roast chicken, roast potato, cabbage and carrot stir-fry, spiced trail apples

Snacks - monterrey jack cheese, pickles

Here's where it came from:
Apples - Soldotna
Barley flour - Delta Junction
Beef - Homer
Beet greens - Soldotna
Butter- homemade
Cabbage - Soldotna
Carrots - Palmer
Cauliflower - Soldotna
Cheese - homemade
Chicken - Funny River
Cucumbers - grocery store's Alaska Grown section
Eggs - homegrown and supplemented with eggs from the feed store
Lard - home rendered
Moose - outside Fairbanks
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton
Tomatoes - Soldotna
Turkey - Funny River
Zucchini - Soldotna

This week I opened a slightly less than two month old monterrey jack cheese that I made from some skim milk left after spinning out cream. It was my best cheese yet! AND I found a good use for the skim milk that Jim won't dream of actually drinking. It melts so well, I grated it and made fricos, and they were good, no matter that frico is best made from a harder cheese.

I've lost just over 10 pounds, and my jeans are starting to get loose. Yay! I'm not quite ready for a smaller size jeans yet, but it won't be long, I think.

And now... confession time. Chocolate was eaten this week. Yes, I did. It was a very stressful week for both Jim and me at work, and I am a long-time stress eater. I got into some chocolate I bought for Christmas gifts and shared a candy bar with Jim. I did take the time to sit down and do nothing but concentrate on the pleasure of having the treat, and I enjoyed it a lot, but the whole point of the exercise was to feel better from the stress - - and it didn't help that. Note to self:  stress eating doesn't eliminate the stress. Next time, eat the treat because you want to have a treat, not because you want it to make all the world's problems go away.

Spiced trail apples

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving dinner was a big success, even if I do say so myself. Pictures of the food didn't turn out as well as I might have liked, but we were hungry and anxious to eat the yummy food, so photography wasn't the first thing on our minds!

Our main course was (naturally) turkey. We bought a 17-pounder from Sarah at Kenai Feed and Supply. This was our first non-grocery-store turkey, and I can't imagine willingly going back to store-bought birds after eating this guy. I splurged on a little cranberry butter made by my friend Patty from local berries. The stuffing was made from barley bread (recipe here) that was allowed to go stale, then mixed with local sausage, apples, celery, and onions. Kabocha squash drizzled with Alaska's Natural honey and cinnamon was a delicious stand-in for sweet potatoes. Our greens were steamed broccoli crowns. Barley and white flour rolls finished off the savory plate, along with plenty of gravy and homemade butter.

The only (slight) disappointment I had was the barley rolls, and that was my fault. I misjudged the cooking time for the rolls and had to bake them before they had fully risen, so they were heavy. A generous slather of the best butter I made this year helped make up for the denseness.

Total deviation from the all-Alaska plan:  less than two cups of white flour and a smidge of sugar in the jelly (we didn't eat much).

A blurry photo of our Thanksgiving goodness

Dessert - - dessert was a triumph of will. I have never worked so hard for a plate of desserts in my life, and I loved it! Starting from jars of cream gathered myself back in the summer instead of using "boughten" cream cheese certainly gave me a new appreciation for the feast cooks of yesteryear! We had honey ice cream (recipe here) with squash pie in a pat-in-the-pan crust (crust recipe here) and honey cheesecake (filling recipe here) baked in a cookie crumb crust. The cheesecake was my favorite part. I made the cream cheese from part goat's milk cream and part cow's milk cream from Peninsula Dairy. Someday soon I hope to post my adaptation for the Finnish spice cookies I made the crust from. 

Total dessert deviation from the all-Alaska plan:  1/4 cup of lemon juice and a splash of vanilla.

Mmm, sweets!

My heartfelt thanks go out to my husband Jim and son James for being good sports and letting me experiment with a holiday meal. Shout-outs to Kenai Feed and Livestock Supply (Kenai), Alaska's Natural Nature's Treat (Kasilof), Alaska Flour Company (Delta Junction), Jackson Gardens (Soldotna), Ridgeway Farms (Soldotna), Peninsula Dairy (Kasilof), and Alaska Organic and Crafts (Nikiski).

Week Five Meals

Week Five is behind us! Here's what we ate:

Sunday December 1:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers
Supper - Beef stew

Monday December 2:
Supper - Thanksgiving leftovers

Tuesday December 3:
Supper - chicken-fried moose steak, edible pod peas, potato chips

Wednesday December 4:
Supper - chicken-fried moose steak again, broccoli

Thursday December 5:
Supper - "BBQ" pork ribs, fried potatoes, zucchini

Friday December 6:
Supper - bacon cheddar baked potatoes, edible pod peas

Saturday December 7:
Supper - chuck roast, baked potatoes, zucchini
Dessert - cream cheese honey filled Finnish spice cookies

Snacks - dehydrated zucchini slices, potato chips, pickles, sauerkraut

Here's where it came from:
Barley flour - Delta Junction
Beef - Homer
Broccoli - Soldotna
Butter - homemade
Cabbage - Soldotna
Carrots - Palmer
Cream Cheese - homemade
Cucumbers - grocery store's Alaska Grown section
Edible pod peas - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown and locally purchased
Honey - Kasilof
Lard for frying - home rendered from local pig
Moose - outside Fairbanks
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton
Tomatoes - Soldotna
Turkey - Funny River
Zucchini - Soldotna

I apologize in advance that this post is going to be short... Work is keeping me extremely busy and I have a batch of highbush cranberry and trail apple jelly on the stove. If I try to multitask too much, I might ruin that jelly, and it would be a shame to spoil all that nice juice! I'm hoping to have a small assortment of jellies to put in Christmas boxes, so I'm up early (well, early for me) to make up some jars. Anybody else canning goodies for Christmas presents?

Week Four Meals

Week Four! We're at the halfway point in our Alaska Food Experiment! Here's what we ate:

Sunday November 24:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers from supper
Supper - bacon-wrapped filet mignon, broccoli and cauliflower

Monday November 25:
Supper - bacon burger patties, potato chips, onion, pickles

Tuesday November 26:
Supper - ham and broccoli soup

Wednesday November 27:
Supper - ham, hash browns, and pickled veggies

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, November 28:
Supper - turkey, honeyed squash, broccoli, barley sausage apple dressing, barley rolls, cheesecake, squash pie, ice cream

Friday, November 29:
Supper - Mexican dinner out before a movie

Saturday, November 30:
Supper - Thanksgiving dinner leftovers

Snacks
Finnish spice cookies, pickles


Where it came from:
Apples - Soldotna
Barley flour - Delta Junction
Beef - Homer
Broccoli - Soldotna
Butter - home made
Carrots - Palmer
Cauliflower - Soldotna
Cream Cheese - homemade
Cucumbers - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown and feed store
Green Beans - Soldotna
Honey - Kasilof
Milk - home grown
Onion - farmer's market
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton
Squash - grocery store's Alaska-grown section
Turkey - Funny River

This was Thanksgiving week, and also marked the halfway point in our Alaska Food Experiment. I'll make a separate post for our actual Thanksgiving meal, but let me say right now, I am a little bit proud of myself for pulling off a traditional meal so well without much of a deviation from the plan.  Everything was local except for some white flour mixed into the barley rolls, and a little lemon juice in the cheesecake.

Friday and Saturday I worked the big craft fair at the high school, and Jim, James and I wanted to go see Catching Fire after the fair closed on Friday. There wasn't time to go home and fix a meal, even if it was leftovers, before the movie started, so we decided to go out to eat. We ate at our favorite Mexican restaurant and then had popcorn at the theater. We enjoyed it very much, but once the evening was over, it was time to get back on the plan. 

After the big feast on Thanksgiving day and the Mexican dinner out, my total monthly weight loss is eight pounds. I briefly got down to ten pounds lost, but that was before Thanksgiving, heehee. My pants are getting looser and I've noticed more positive changes in my body. Lest anybody worry that I'm losing too much weight or not eating enough, I assure you, that's not the case. I could stand to lose a good bit of weight and I have plenty of food to eat! I read in a few places that if you change your diet to whole, real foods, you won't be so hungry because your body isn't craving the nutrients missing from processed foods. That seems to be true! I'm satisfied with much less food and don't feel the need to snack all the time.

Stay tuned for a special post about our Thanksgiving meal!

Week 3 Meals

Three weeks have passed in our Alaska Food Experiment! Here's what we ate this week:

Sunday November 17:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers from the previous night's supper
Supper - London broil, onions, beet greens

Monday November 18:
Supper - London broil, broccoli, potatoes, carrots

Tuesday November 19:
Breakfast - bacon and eggs
Supper - bacon cheeseburger patties, icebox pickles, onion slices, home fries

Wednesday November 20:
Breakfast - bacon and eggs
Supper - steak, carrot and napa cabbage saute'

Thursday November 21:
Supper - steak-and-moose stew with barley dumplings

Friday November 22:
Supper - pork chops with zucchini and pickled vegetables, barley soda bread

Saturday November 23:
Supper - smoked ham, swiss chard, fried potatoes

This Week's Snacks:
Apple fruit leather, dried zucchini chips, cheese, pickles

Where it came from:
Apples - Soldotna
Beef - Homer
Beet greens - Soldotna
Butter - homemade
Carrots - Palmer
Cauliflower - Soldotna
Cheese - home made
Cucumbers - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown supplemented with purchased local eggs
Green beans - Soldotna
Napa cabbage - Soldotna
Onions - farmer's market
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton
Swiss Chard - Soldotna
Zucchini - Soldotna

This week passed very quickly! Even though I didn't take a lot of time to cook, there were still new foods to try - bacon and ham! Now, I know what you're thinking, that bacon and ham aren't new foods, but they seem new when you brine and smoke them yourself. Jim smoked about 15 pounds of applewood bacon this week as well as a whole ham. We had some of the ham for dinner on Saturday night. It is delicious!

Jim slices the slab of bacon on an electric slicer.

My weight loss has slowed down but still continues. I've lost eight pounds since November 1.

Next week is Thanksgiving. I think I have all the menu items just about figured out, and can make everything we want to eat with only a small "cheat" to the all-Alaskan plan. Although holiday meals are exceptions to the plan, Jim and I have decided to see just how close we can get to traditional feast foods without using Outside ingredients. Stay tuned next week to see how we do!

Week 2 Meals

The second week of the Alaska Food Experiment is behind us!  Woohooo!!!  Here's what we ate:

Saturday November 9:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers from the day before
Supper - pork loin roast with stir-fried cabbage

Sunday November 10:
Snack - homemade potato chips
Supper - chicken-fried pork loin slices, broccoli and cauliflower

Monday November 11:
Snack - apple fruit leather
Supper - potato broccoli cheddar soup

Tuesday November 12:
Snack - apple fruit leather
Supper - meatloaf and hash browns with homemade ketchup, broccoli and cauliflower

Wednesday November 13:
Breakfast - eggs and hash browns with homemade ketchup
Supper - meatloaf and stir-fry cabbage

Thursday November 14:
Supper - pork roast with sauerkraut, zucchini
Snack - apple fruit leather and Finnish barley cookies

Friday November 15:
Supper - hamburger patties with cheddar, ice box pickles, and baked potatoes with butter

Saturday November 16:
Supper - beef pot roast, home fries, baby brussels sprouts, pork rinds

Apples - Soldotna
Barley flour - Delta Junction
Beef - Homer
Broccoli - Soldotna
Brussels sprouts- Soldotna
Cabbage - grocery store's "Alaska grown" section
Cauliflower - Soldotna
Cheddar - home made
Cucumbers - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown
Honey - Kasilof
Lard for frying - home rendered
Milk - home grown
Onions - farmer's market
Potatoes - Sutton
Pork - Funny River
Tomatoes - Soldotna

We finally got some snow on Sunday late in the day, and it is still on the ground. If I'd stayed with my original plan of waiting to start our food experiment until the first sticking snow, we wouldn't have started it until this past Monday. I'm glad I didn't wait so long. I've lost six and a half pounds so far this month! If I'd known the weight would be coming off so easily, I might have started the experiment in October, haha!

As far as trying new recipes goes, the Finnish barley cookies are a hit, and I'll make those again, but add more spices next time. The pork rinds? They were okay, but not as good as the kind you buy at the grocery store. I have more to cook up so I'll experiment a bit with that and see if I can get the hang of making them puffier than this first time.

Honeybee is not sure that snow is a good thing.

Week 1 Meals and Observations

If you're not sure what this is all about, start here.

Even though Jim desperately wanted me to name this project "The Hunger Games," I'm happy to report that nobody starved to death or even went very hungry. Here's what we ate this week:

Friday November 1:

Breakfast is fried eggs each morning unless otherwise noted

Lunch - steak stir fry with cabbage and carrots (confession: half a leftover ribeye steak was one thing I  didn't want to give to the chickens when I cleaned out the fridge, so even though it's not local, we ate it. But that's it.)

Supper - pork chops with honey apple butter and steamed zucchini with goat butter

Saturday November 2:

Lunch - leftover pork chops and edible pod peas

Supper - sausage and moose chili, cheddar cheese, and barley flatbread with butter

Sunday November 3:
Lunch -  lunch was leftovers from the previous supper for the rest of the week unless otherwise noted
Supper - crock pot moose roast, oven-roasted carrots and potatoes
Dessert - honey ice cream

Monday November 4:
Snack - refrigerator pickles
Supper - moose stew with barley biscuits

Tuesday November 5:
Supper - two types of crustless quiche - Italian sausage and turnip greens, and broccoli cheddar
Dessert - honey ice cream

Wednesday November 6:
Snacks - refrigerator pickles and moose jerky
Supper - pork roast roasted on a bed of sauerkraut, mashed kabocha squash seasoned with ginger cinnamon honey, steamed broccoli
Dessert - honey ice cream

Thursday November 7:
Snack - moose jerky
Supper - chicken soup

Friday November 8:
Breakfast - fried eggs and sausage
Snack - Jim confessed to having a little bit of popcorn at the hardware store (Bad Jim!)
Supper - beef roast and gravy, sauteed zucchini and carrots

And here's where all of that came from:

Apples - Soldotna
Barley flour - Delta Junction
Beef - Homer
Broccoli - Soldotna
Butter - home made from goat milk
Cabbage - grocery store's "Alaska Grown" section
Carrots - MatSu Valley
Cheddar - homemade from goat milk
Chicken - home grown
Cucumbers - Soldotna
Edible pod peas - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown
Garlic - Nikiski
Honey - Kasilof
Kabocha squash - grocery store's "Alaska Grown" section
Lard for frying - home rendered from local pig
Milk - home grown
Moose - outside Fairbanks
Onions - farmer's market
Pork - Funny River
Turnip greens - Nikiski
Zucchini - Soldotna

So... Besides not starving to death, how did it go? Remarkably well, I must say. A few years ago, I had to go on a very restrictive diet for health reasons, and this is not nearly as bad, as far as taboo foods go. While I do miss the ready availability of handy prepackaged snacks, I was able to say goodbye to them fairly easily. I expect I'll eventually figure out some recipes for snacky things but for now, I'm okay with the occasional piece of cheese or jerky. The transition from Diet Coke to kombucha was not difficult at all, which surprised me. What was hard, though, was changing the errand-day habit of going through the drive-through at McD's for a soda and grabbing a sweet at the grocery store checkout. Today was errand day and I can honestly say I didn't really want the drink and sweets... but the habit was there and that was the hard thing.

I've lost four and a half pounds this week, cutting out the junk. Yay, me! I don't know if it will stay off or if I'll lose more, but I hope so!

Time management is an issue for me and scheduling work so that I have dinner planned AND thawed by 4:30 has presented a problem on more than one day, I confess. I'm getting the hang of it, though. I've also discovered that, while I do know barley flour and wheat flour are not at all the same and are generally not interchangeable, I couldn't resist trying some recipes by substituting barley flour. Limited success. Needs more work. And nothing beats butter for frying an egg. Lard is good; lard-fried eggs are mediocre. Next year - stockpile more butter!!!

For the first time in our lives, we can point to nearly every single thing we've put in our mouths and tell you where it came from / who grew it / harvested it / butchered it / caught it / foraged it. I have a better appreciation for the amount of work it took to bring it from field to table, to blanch and freeze it, dehydrate it, can it, culture it, age it, cook it. It's a new feeling, being that connected to my food. I think I like it.

Jim and Deanna's Alaska Food Experiment

Jim and Deanna's Alaska Food Experiment starts November 1!

Not sure what that is? Well, let me explain...

I've read about people who have set their own goals for eating only locally-grown Alaskan foods for whatever length of time they've decided would work for them. I've heard of them lasting as long as a year and as short as two weeks. My goal is to eat only Alaska-grown foods for two months. I sourced my vegetables and some fruits from farmer's markets, a Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription, a gardening trade group, small amounts of local produce from the grocery store when they've had it available, and gifts from friends. Our meat is mostly pork and beef grown here on the Peninsula, as well as moose, our own poultry and eggs, plus additional poultry bought from the feed store. Our goats give us milk, cheese, butter and cream.

Every week, I'll post what Jim and I ate for the past seven days.

There will be a few small exceptions to the Alaska-only rule, and here they are:

Beverages. I've decided not to restrict beverages, within reason. Jim is a willing participant in the Experiment, but this wasn't his idea. He's been such a good sport and enabler that I'm not going to ask him to give up his beloved coffee and tea. As for myself, I'll be giving up sodas in favor of water, locally-grown fruit juice, or home-brewed kombucha.

Leavening agents. Not that I think we'll be using them often, but just in case I decide we want pancakes or muffins, I'll need some baking powder or baking soda. There are ways to leaven breads without them, and it was my original intention to avoid them, but honestly, there are enough things I make myself that I decided to have this option in my back pocket, just in case.

Cheese starters and cultures. I milk my own goats and make my own aged cheeses. I think that amount of devotion earns me some latitude there, right? Of course it does!

Seasonings. I'm fine with making my own sea salt, but other herbs and seasonings, not so much. 

Minimally-used preservatives. Mostly lemon juice, vinegar or olive oil, used extremely sparingly, and only in preserved foods.

Holiday meals. I've got locally-grown ingredients for much of the traditional holiday feasts, but here again, the Experiment wasn't my family's idea, and I don't want to ask them to skip pie, for example. If I do use non-Alaskan ingredients in my holiday meals, I promise to confess them to you.

There you have it: our Alaska Food Experiment!

Well, Here's Something I Never Thought I Would Say...

I am tired of waiting for snow.

Yep, you read that right. 

Not that I want there to actually BE a lot of snow on the ground (and all the extra work that snow would both prevent and cause) but because I had planned to start our Alaska Food Experiment when we got our first sticking snow.

This fall has been very, very wet and warmer than usual, and that means our first snowfall still hasn't come. According to the forecast I just checked, it's going to be a week before there's a chance of snow, and they are saying it will be mixed with rain, so it won't stay around.

Thus, I've decided to start the Alaska Food Experiment on November 1, snow or no snow. It's my party and I can start early if I want to, right?

Jim and I will be eating only local Alaska-grown foods until we run out of what we've stored up this summer. My goal is two months. There will be a few small exceptions and I'm going to post the "rules" and exceptions in the next day or two so everybody knows what we're doing.

Alaskans are already familiar with the concept of the Alaska Food Challenge, when a group of people in the Anchorage area ate only local Alaskan foods for a whole year. It will be different for Jim and me. I can't exactly turn my whole yard into a garden and I don't have a greenhouse. I have a tourist-driven job that doesn't leave a lot of time to forage or fish. So, I've decided to call ours The Alaska Food Experiment. Instead of having the goal of eating local for a whole year and challenging myself to make it happen, I'm going to experiment to see if it can be done, for people who work long hours and have no real gardening skills. Can it be done if we don't have a greenhouse? Can it be done if we don't forage? Can it be done if we don't fish? 

Through the farmer's markets, gardening trade groups, a CSA subscription and trading for fresh eggs, the freezers have filled up with veggies and fruit, both wild and cultivated. Jim bought half of a locally-raised pig and half a cow so we have pork and beef, and there is moose as well. Neighbors with a boat shared their halibut. We have our own poultry and eggs, plus some chickens and a turkey we bought from the feed store. And of course there are the goats providing milk, butter, cream and cheese. 

I think two months is a do-able goal. And it all starts November 1!

Meeting An Original Member of the Alaska Food Challenge

Last month, my friend Patty and I went to town to hear Saskia Esslinger speak on her experience of eating only Alaska-grown foods for an entire year. She and her husband converted most of their yard into gardens and greenhouses, hunted and fished for their meat, and foraged for fruit and mushrooms. Even though their original Challenge is long since over, they still eat mostly Alaskan foods and plan to continue.

Her group had a pledge to grow as much as they could themselves; support local growers for the things they did not grow themselves; use up spoilable pantry items but don't replenish them if they are not local; make an exception for 'small carbon footprint items' (this is where she made her exception for leavening ingredients); and if someone invited them out to eat, they could go, but to make up for eating a non-Alaskan meal, they would invite other people to their house and feed them an all-Alaskan meal to balance things out.

Saskia's year-long challenge started on the Summer Solstice. I decided to start ours at the first sticking snowfall because it would give me the entire summer to prepare. I don't have a greenhouse or garden, so my produce would come from local growers, and that meant weekly trips to the farmer's markets and my Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription to a nearby farm.

Originally, I thought I would only be able to obtain enough extra produce to get us through a couple of weeks of local eating, but as the summer went on, I met more and more growers and found more and more sources of goodies. Now my goal is to eat only local foods for two months - longer if we can, but two months during the winter is the goal. Two months is nowhere near a year-long endeavor, of course... If I manage to do a longer experiment next winter, though, Saskia gave me a lot of new things to consider.

This morning, there was frost on the ground and ice in the puddles. I don't think it will be much longer before Jim and Deanna's Alaska Food Experiment begins!

Me and Saskia. Thanks to Patty for the photo!

The Post In Which I Make A Return To Blogging

It's been a year and a half since I posted here on Jim's Wild Ride. Time has flown, and so much has happened. I admit it - I've been too embarrassed to come back here after so long, after so many events have gone unpublished, so much water under the bridge, that I've put it off over and over again. Yet, if I don't come back some time, I will never come back at all, so here am I, hat in hand, hoping you'll welcome me back into your lives for a while.

It seems like all of a sudden, the leaves have turned yellow on the birch trees and the fireweed has turned red. No longer End-of-Summer. It is now more like Beginning-Of-Fall. Where did the summer go?

Where did the past 19 months go?

James graduated from college last summer, early, I might add (more than a little proudly). He's moved to his own apartment in town and is enjoying autonomous adulthood. The dairy goat herd has grown considerably and has become a much bigger part of our lives. We've had quite a number of precious guests come and go - friends from our "old lives"and lots of family. I've stepped up my apprenticeship at work and Jim stays busy with his work, too. And this winter, we're doing an All-Alaska Food experiment (more on that in a later post). I can honestly say I've never done so much canning in my whole entire life, combined, than I have in just this one summer. I've met a lot of new and fascinating people getting ready for this project, and I've had a ball.

Speaking of canning, my kitchen smells of apples from today's trip to the orchard outside Soldotna. Tomorrow I hope to get tiny spiced trail apples in jars, and if I don't start getting ready for that, I'll be behind schedule, so I should make this quick and say goodbye for now.

So, see you next time, okay?