Ferment everything

Inspired by the ancient Sumerians, my beer-brewing boyfriend, and the evidence everywhere of natural yeasts—in unfortunate places, but including my fridge and socks—I began to ferment items with purpose. I have yet to ferment either of the cats, though one of them lately has begun to smell like a Swamp Thing. But to date:

1. Beer. A precise craft, I learned, at least when the boyfriend does it, but likely not as much so if I ever take the helm. He is accessorized with tubing and gadgetry, which increases his allure. We made a tasty brown ale and bottled it yesterday. A week ago the mother bear who is roaming Starr Hill broke into the kitchen and dragged off thirty pounds of malt grain, but lost interest or hope partway through the drag and left it—or perhaps could not juggle both that with the seven-gallon bucket of animal crackers (the roommate’s) that continues, at this date, to be missing.

2. Sauerkraut. The recipe I jotted down in Trencin, a small town in Slovakia, from a friend’s cousin whose English was terrible but way better than my Slovakian. “Cut cabbage hearts out,” I noted ruthlessly. “Slice. Hard cabbages, the winter cabbages. Mix with a jar of salt (for 12 big cabbages). Wait couple hours. Layer with: allspice [could have been juniper, now, I'm thinking], pepper, bay leaves, apples. Stick in barrel. Squeeze out all air—anaerobic fermentation. [This was a particularly difficult point to translate.] Go to Croatia. [Easier.] Come back. Eat.” The first effort failed completely. I bought five cabbages and followed only the stick-in-barrel exhortation, thinking I’d get to it right after I returned my library books. As they turned black, my roommate and visitors began to avoid that part of the kitchen. The second effort, with new cabbage and renewed determination, used allspice. I don’t have any juniper berries.

3. Sourdough. Starter begun last month as a classic biga, using a bit of store-bought yeast, was at first slow and uninteresting, is now active and interesting. It is mainly used for pancakes, which boyfriend makes for me. The key bit learned so far: a. Mix everything but the eggs and the soda the night before. In the morning add soda-in-water, eggs, wait an hour before cooking. This week we may try screen-printing them, a la the weekly Instructables, with Gov. Sarah Palin’s image and a “Thank you, welfare mom!—$3,269 in 2008″

Except my pancakes will say nothing of the sort. Since I’ve only been in Alaska this time for eight months, I don’t qualify for the PFD—which means, though I’ll be paying just as much for fuel as the next Alaskan gal, I also don’t get the state energy assistance handout. That would be a big deal, more than a month’s worth of income for me. But I’m going to pretend I have an ethic of self-sufficiency through hard work and not whine about it, because I don’t deserve it. It’s hard to do, though, when I see my lazy, shiftless, born-in-Alaska friends raking it in. I’ll just say: Drinks are on y’all this year.

LOUDER IS MORALLY SUPERIOR

Every day I get a message from Obama’s Alaska campaign head that makes me a little less likely to vote for Obama, let alone write about him in my newspaper. OBAMA GOES WITH THE TUNA FOR LUNCH. Etc. Thanks, I heard you. Tuna, really?

It’s hard to imagine anyone remotely typographically hip who would vote for a campaign that sends all its messages in capital letters. My god, how will they write if he gets dessert?

Fortification

I will spend my Saturday morning doing overtime, writing about the death of the Southeast Alaska timber industry. On the side of light and goodness, though, I have excellent coffee and scrambled eggs with cream, arugula, basil, and nutmeg. I cook eggs in the spirit of MFK Fisher’s instructions in the 1942 “How to Cook a Wolf.” She says:

Scrambled eggs have been made, and massacred, for as long as people knew about pots and pans, no doubt.

And then the recipe. The essence: “This takes perhaps a half hour. It cannot be hurried.” I first discovered it in Africa, with malaria and limited rations, when we were really fighting the wolf, and it was one of those dishes I promised to make myself as soon as I got out.

I have almost never had scrambled eggs properly made outside my house. (The exception was someone else’s house in Valancay, France, and the quality of my eggs have rarely approached hers.) As much as I love my diner breakfasts, their eggs are compromised by the proprietors’ decision to serve me in a reasonable amount of time. So I make my own eggs at home, several days a week, before I descend into my harried, often lunchless reporting. They tempt me to another pace and fortify me.

And now to fight the wolf. He comes in different forms.

What would Shackleton have shopped for in Juneau?

Perhaps a bracelet is in order. What would Shackleton do?

I just read the part in Anne Fadiman’s “Ex Libris” where she discusses how Dr. James McIlroy asked the 22 men stranded in Antarctica with Ernest Shackleton what they would eat if they could have one dish. “Marmalade pudding with Devonshire cream,” said McIlroy himself. I don’t know what a marmalade pudding is but anything is good with Devonshire cream. “Syrup pudding,” said James. I was unaware of this English penchant for making puddings out of condiments. I’m ashamed to admit I did a similar thing with ketchup, as a child. “Devonshire dumpling with cream,” said Clark. I imagine the dumpling is made of Devonshire cream, too. I can relate. I spent a year living in a forest, and I have multiple volumes of food fantasies.

This section struck me because I awoke to a glorious day and a middling feeling of guilt. The guilt I experience is somewhat free-floating—it wanders around in my brain searching for justification, until settling happily to munch on something I had previously agreed to not worry about. In this case I realized that my morning coffee, eggs and bagel would require energy—electricity—which has just shot up in Juneau to an ill-placed avalanche over worse-placed power transmission towers. Thinking of my quintupled May bill, I considered microwaving tea and eating raw foods for breakfast. They would of course embark me on a healthier path, too. From now on, I would only eat whole, raw foods. I looked at the dried beans on my shelf. Could they be eaten raw?

Thank god, the coffee was next to the beans. It brought me back. The reality is that I am a (usually) unrepentant epicure, and a certain amount of electricity is necessary to support that. And it’s not so much—it’s not like I’m making elaborate marmalade puddings all day. I think I could shop for a barbeque this weekend, though.

Wolf cooties

A new sign at the Mendenhall Lake warns people to keep their dogs away from Romeo (not named as such) because they could get lice from him.

Juneau Empire has a story on the infestation. Apparently wolves all over Alaska have cooties now. Remarkably, state biologists are now intervening by leaving ivermectin-laced meat near wolf dens. I don’t understand why the intervention is appropriate, though—Are humans to blame for the lice? Did they perhaps come from dirty schoolchildren’s dogs?

I think ivermectin’s a pretty safe drug, at least. It’s a dewormer for dogs and cats and horses, but I took it as a cootie prophylactic for a year in a forest in Africa. It did what it was supposed to and I still have my liver.

k

It snows here on non-primary days, too

Alaska has never mattered before—so it’s a step up to get any political coverage at all. The AP’s headline was on voters braving cold weather and going to primaries in odd places. A woman in Barrow was hosting a primary there and making oatmeal cookies. A nice detail—I’m covering the Juneau Republican primary tonight at the Hangar on the Wharf.

But hey there, national media: it’s no big deal and just no story at all to brave snow for the primary. At least not in Juneau. (Time magazine said it was -50 here. It’s not.) Hint: The kids up here don’t get snow days unless they’re covered in an avalanche. Snow is what we’ve got here. We brave it to get the paper in the morning, to take the dog out, to go to the grocery store. I consider it a novelty, but I just moved here three weeks ago.

What’s big news is that anyone is voting at all. Or that Ron Paul supporters have been registering “in droves,” according to the local Republican party organizer.

Off to the Hangar—

Self-confidence earned in Starr Hill

My street is narrow and covered with ice. It is the only street on Juneau, I’ve heard, where you’re allowed to park the wrong way, because it is a cul-de-sac with no sac. The cars have worked two deep ruts into the ice. So even though you can’t see the pavement, you know where to drive. I find it easier than Glacier Highway, which is just a plain flat mix of white and black ice. But people who live in Juneau — downtown, as in below us — choose not to come up here if they can avoid it. I like to make a daily try just to see whether my car can do it with the California tires; why else did I get a Subaru?

So far I have not failed or even slipped much. The gravel-layers are usually reliable. But one day last week I parked at the end of the cul-de, on the hill. I parked facing up the hill. In the morning the snow around my car had solidified into an ice tureen, such as would serve punch to a party at the Ice Hotel up north. Any way I wanted to go was up a slippery hill.

I learned that the newfangled cat littler I buy is worthless for not only keeping my house free of cat stink, but also for traction. I bought it because it was made of old newspapers — being in the news business, I want the physical product to come to some use.

A white-bearded man started his big truck behind me as I was spinning on newspaper pellets.

“I’m too old and tired to help you,” he said. “There’s gravel in a bucket at the end of the street.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“You could always just walk to work and leave it til spring,” he suggested.

“Thank you,” I said.

The gravel was what I needed. I rolled on out with a greater sense of accomplishment than one ever feels leaving one’s Oakland driveway for work.