Week Ten Meals

Our final week on the Alaska Food Experiment! Here's what we ate:

Sunday, January 5:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers
Supper - "zoodles" in beefy tomato sauce with kohlrabi

Monday, January 6:
Supper - sausage/burger patties, edible pod peas, fried potatoes

Tuesday, January 7:
Supper - beefy tomato sauce, kohlrabi, broccoli, potato chips

Wednesday, January 8:
Supper - leftover beefy tomato sauce, edible pod peas

Thursday, January 9:
Supper - chuck roast, roasted carrots and onion, baked potatoes


Here's where it came from:
Beef - Homer
Butter - homemade
Carrots - Palmer
Dairy / Cheese - homegrown, homemade
Eggs - home grown
Kohlrabi - Soldotna
Onion - Soldotna
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton
Tomatoes - Soldotna
Zucchini - Soldotna

On Tuesday, two of our goats, special pets, were picked up by their new owners and moved to the village of Sleetmute. I missed them a lot, and rifled the cabinets for something to stress eat. Yes, I know that stress eating does not help. But I did it anyway. I wanted to feel better. I found some chocolate chips left over from Christmas baking and ate some. Yes, I made myself sick. I got the jitters, and if I thought I was crabby beforehand, well, that was nothing compared to afterward. Note to self - you can't handle chocolate like you used to.

Friday, I had a doctor appointment at 9:15 a.m.. Understand that I'm a night owl. I could happily stay up until 2:00 a.m. but that means I sleep until 10:00, so I was going to get up three hours early for this appointment. Jim spent Thursday night working 'round the clock (again) and he literally got into bed as I was getting out of it. In the interest of being quiet and not waking him, I skipped breakfast and left the house. Once I got to the doctor, I found out my appointment had accidentally been deleted from their schedule! Fortunately, the nurse remembered talking to me and trying to make the appointment, so they still got me in to see the doctor. Ten minutes and $150 later, I found out I could treat my owie with home remedies. Having spent so little time at the doctor, I found myself with 45 minutes to spare before my next appointment to meet one of the people I sew for and pick up some work. I drove around a bit, walked through a couple of stores, and eventually decided I was hungry enough, and would still need to be away from home long enough, that I could justify a trip through the drive-through for just enough breakfast to tide me over until the afternoon. I pulled in to McD's and ordered an Egg McMuffin. It wasn't until I had driven down the road a ways and got out my sandwich that I looked inside it to discover a slice of cheese, a slice of Canadian bacon, and a sausage patty. No egg.

After the stress of the week, the early morning, the sleepless schedule Jim's been on, the sticker shock of ten minutes of my doctor's time... an eggless EGG McMuffin was the most ridiculous thing in my world. I just sat there and laughed.

And decided that this unplanned meal cheat would signal the end of the Alaska Food Experiment.

We're getting so low on veggies that yes, I could still squeeze out a couple more days, but then again, ending on January 9 means a nice round 70 days of being a full-time locavore. That's a good place to end it, I think.

I still plan to post some recipes and how-tos for a few of the things I did while on The Experiment, as well as a summary post, but those will be for later. 

Week Nine Meals

This week sees us reach our original goal of two months on our Alaska Food Experiment! Here's what we ate:

Sunday, December 29:
Breakfast - unless otherwise noted, breakfast is eggs fried in butter
Lunch - unless otherwise noted, lunch is leftovers
Supper - Dinner out for James' birthday

Monday, December 30:
Supper - chicken-fried moose steak, edible pod peas, hash browns

Tuesday, December 31:
Supper - steak, cheesy bacon baked potatoes, beet greens

And although New Year's Eve was the last "official" day of the Experiment, we've decided to go on until we run out of local veggies.

Wednesday, January 1:
Breakfast - bacon and eggs
Lunch - chicken broth soup with napa cabbage, carrot, and egg, with bacon
Supper - steak "stir fry" with potatoes, carrots, garlic slices and beet greens

Thursday, January 2:
Supper - steak, cabbage, edible pod peas

Friday, January 3:
Supper - pork chops, edible pod peas

Saturday, January 4:
Supper - bbq beef ribs, homemade potato chips, edible pod peas

Snacks: honey candy, dehydrated zucchini slices, cheese, potato chips

Here's where it came from:
Beef - Homer
Cabbage - Soldotna
Carrots - Palmer
Cheese - homemade
Chicken - Funny River
Edible pod peas - Soldotna
Eggs - home grown
Garlic - Nikiski
Moose - outside Fairbanks
Pork - Funny River
Potatoes - Sutton
Tomatoes - Soldotna

James' birthday was on Sunday, and we took him out for upscale pizza and to the movies. It was very good food and a fun time. Sometimes it's nice to take a vacation from strict eating, but it's also good to go back to it when the party is over. Between Christmas treats and dinner out, I put back on some of the weight I'd lost. Now that I know how to get it back off, though, I'll lose it again and hopefully lose more besides.

On New Year's Day, I decided I wanted some candy, so James and I made Honey & Cream Taffy (recipe here). Well, it would have been taffy if I hadn't taken my eyes off of it for a second and let the temperature go past soft crack stage to hard crack stage, and then forgot to add the baking soda. It did make a nice (albeit ever-so-slightly-scorched) hard candy. James and I each pulled some of the hot candy, but his got cold before mine did, so I managed a lighter color. Next time I make this, and I definitely will, I won't be so easily distracted and will make a nice, soft candy!

Honey & Cream Candy

A few minutes ago, I counted up the frozen Alaska veggies that we have on hand, and there are six baggies left. That doesn't count the potatoes and carrots, or the dehydrated veggies, so I'm thinking we can do another week pretty easily. As you might have guessed from the menu of this past week, we had a lot of edible pod peas left! We only have one or two bags of them now, though. The next few days' meals will be interesting to eat as we clean out the odds and ends from the freezers! Wish me luck!

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?

Snowy Goats

This winter has been one of the snowiest in recent years. It's certainly been the snowiest winter Jim or I have ever been through! I don't know how much snow we've gotten here at The Green Half Acre, but I do know that Anchorage is close to setting a record, with almost 10 feet of snow so far.

Having this much snow during our first winter with the goats has been sort of a trial-by-fire for keeping livestock during Alaska's cold season.

Earlier this week, we woke up to the results of an overnight heavy snowfall. Looking out over our balcony rail, this is how the "farm" looked.

We keep paths dug out around the property, from the house to the chicken coop and the goat barn via the lakefront in a big circle; from the front porch to our neighbor's house; and from the coop/barn to the driveway. The paths were flanked by snow banks varying between two and a half feet tall and about four feet tall. They were almost half gone that morning and we had to dig our way out to the animals.

Molly's dogloo is starting to look like a real igloo! Poor princess.
Herd queen Zipper is NOT pleased with a new 8 inches of snow overnight.
Molly trudged through the snow to her gate and waited to be let out.
Pretty little snowy face!
Jim has been digging diligently and has freed the goat yard gate so that we can open it.
He's got a flake of hay to give the girls. Fresh snow is falling fast.

Inside the barn, it's relatively warm and cozy. The girls have their breakfast of hay and are happily munching. Molly prefers to eat from inside the manger, where she is less jostled by the big girls.

Our neighbor Brad brought his snow blower over to help us clear out the paths to the animals. We sure are glad for his help! Zipper and Chloe are nervous about the noise the blower makes and wait in the corner until the blower is further away again before going back to their food.

Molly, however, is not concerned by it.

While the girls have been eating, Jim's been shoveling out the paddock so that the girls have less snow to wade through. Molly is much happier now. No more chest-deep snow!

Zipper discovered a week or so ago that the livestock feed is stored in the chicken coop, and she bolts out the gate whenever she can, and tries to get to the goodies.

We're trying to break her of that habit, especially since she taught Chloe to do it, too.

One advantage of Zipper's escapades during the winter is that we can let her and Chloe out for a walk around the yard a bit. After all, where is she going to go? The banks of snow make pretty effective pens, and the allure of animal crackers will always get her to come back to her pen.

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The following morning, another foot of snow had fallen, and we had to do all that shoveling all over again. Later in the day, the snow from the barn and the coop roofs slid off and nearly filled the space between the buildings all the way to the top of the fence.

The chicken coop door had to be dug out before we could open it and get to the feed. There are three steps up to get into the coop, and you can tell by the previous photos how much snow had filled in the paths. The chickens themselves, bless their little hearts, have largely spent the winter underneath the coop, where it's warmer than you'd expect, and they have the most non-snowy room to walk around. The underneath space is open on all sides during the summer, but this year, it's more like a walk-out basement.

Knee-deep goats. Again. Not to worry, though, shoveling is a way of life for us by now and pretty soon the girls had free space to play.

The snow bank out our back door is now close to six feet deep. The banks flanking the front steps are five feet deep.
We know the snow isn't finished for this winter yet, but we would like for it to let up sooner rather than later. We're running out of places to put the stuff!

Summertime Revisit Part 2: SawFest and the Highland Games

SawFest is an annual competition for local chainsaw carvers. After showing you the Ice Around Town, I thought you might like to see some photos from last summer's SawFest.

Here are some of the carvers working on their pieces.
More carvings in progress:
My favorite was this otter, carved by Ben Firth of Anchor Point.
The otter gets his fish:
Another favorite was this eagle:

A fisherman with his catch:

There were lots of carvings, and I thought we took more pictures than we did, but evidently not. I'm sorry about that.

At the same time as SawFest, the Highland Games were going on. We didn't stay for all of it but it was fun to see people in kilts throwing things long distances.

Ice Around Town 2012 part 2

I hope you liked the photos in the previous post on this year's Ice Around Town. We took so many photos I needed to split them up into two posts, so this post is about the interactive sculptures.

I already showed you the Tustumena 200's musher, but what we didn't realize when we first saw this one was that the sled is big enough for a person to sit in. I didn't realize it until I saw someone else's photo with an adult man sitting in the sled. I wish we'd done it, too. Next year, we'll be more observant!

The Soldotna Visitor's Center never disappoints us with their interactive sculptures. This one echos the saddled salmon at the chainsaw carver's in Sterling. Jim took a ride first:

The salmon didn't waste any time grabbing Jim by the hand, though!

Let a Texas girl show you how to ride!

The Sports Center in Soldotna hosts game tournaments for children, free hot dogs and other activities. The giant slides are always fascinating and covered in details. The kids love them, and the adults wish we could play on them, too.

Before we get to the main attraction, let me show you the Peak Oilfield kiddie slide, and the cuteness of this big sister helping little sister go down the slide:

Across the parking lot, two giant Oriental dragons face off. Oh my!

Eager children go through the arches to climb ice stairs to the dragons' mouths. (Note that there's a small slide on either side of the stairs as well.)

Easily 20 feet of very fast slide await the children once they are "swallowed" by the dragons. See the legs and scales on the dragon? Remember, you can click the photos to enlarge them. [update: there are some problems with Blogger enlarging the pics right now, which hopefully I'll be able to clear up soon.]

Notice the size of the dragons' heads. Both heads were different.

Breaking news: The ice sculpture winners have been announced! First place goes to the T200 dog sled. Second place goes to the Soldotna Professional Pharmacy's whale, and third place is a tie between Dr. Hu's Bugs Bunny and Soldotna Mini Storage's Bear. Congratulations!!!

Update: Ben Firth and Family carved seven of the ice sculptures around town, including three of the winners!

Ice Around Town 2012 part 1

Every January, local chainsaw carvers and businesses team up to decorate the area with fabulous ice sculptures. The sculptures are finished in time to coincide with the T200 and the Peninsula Winter Games. Jim and I spend the first part of the day watching the official start of the race, then have some lunch and drive around taking photos of the ice. It was a brilliant, sunny day and the ice was gorgeous against the blue sky.

Click on any of the photos to enlarge them. Seriously, do. The detail in the ice is amazing and I wish you could have seen them in person. And I wish I could convey the scale of the sculptures, too. Some of them were made from several large blocks of ice and were easily 10 or 12 feet tall.

My personal favorite (well, one of them) is this breaching whale in front of Soldotna Professional Pharmacy.

McDonald's in Kenai offers a large fries:

McDonald's in Soldotna offers a coffee to wash them down with:

Soldotna Mini Storage commissioned a bear catching a salmon.

It was one of our favorites, but it was in shadow enough that we weren't able to get photos that even pretended to do it justice. Here's the best we could get of the bear's face and the salmon:

Davis Block and Concrete's snow machiner was really impressive:

The Duck Inn has a frosty mug in case you're thirsty on this fine chilly day:

ConocoPhillips and the Peninsula Winter Games offers children on a sled:

Alaska Communications gives us a school of swimming salmon. Oooooh, pretty. I could see this as a crystal sculpture in any art gallery anywhere.

Foster Construction proves that bulldozers can be adorable:
Dr. Jerry Hu and Bugs Bunny team up to remind us all to brush our teeth!
Binkley Street Dental likes Swiper the Fox from Dora the Explorer:

Soldotna Dental Arts completes the toothy-animal theme with an extremely lifelike woodchuck:

Blazy Construction's howling wolf:
Sweeney's and Mykel's wouldn't be right without a leprechaun and penguin:
Bucket's Sports Grill has a Super Bowl trophy. Y'know, in case you needed a suggestion for a place to eat while watching The Big Game.

Stanley Chrysler's Dodge Ram is incredible:
Stanley Ford in Kenai puts a moose in the driver's seat (which sounds a bit scary to me!):

Kenai Watershed Forum's logo:

Arby's in Soldotna hints that even bears need Good Mood Food:

The Tustumena 200 and the Soldotna Aspen Hotel had a wonderfully detailed musher, sled and dog:
The Kenai airport continues their animal-in-the-cockpit theme this year with a wolf aviator:

We missed the next two sculptures on the day we spent looking at the ice, so I went back a few days afterwards, after a heavy snowfall, and took pictures of the ice in front of Airport Equipment Rental:

And Lynden Transport.

That's probably enough photos for one post, but I hope you liked these and will check back in a few minutes to see photos of interactive sculptures!