Spring Has Sprung!

Yes, that's right, in March! Anchorage really is balmy!

Here are my tulips peeking their slender green heads out - I'm so proud they came back after I completely dug them up, redressed the soil, added bonemeal and then put them all back afterwards! Some were buried too deep under straw...they are a weird yellow color and I hope I didn't smother them on accident. We'll see I guess!


And of course I'm thinking about starting some of my vege seeds, top on my list are the tomatoes, and the watermelon. Many of the others will have to wait until we make the raised beds and mix up some growable dirt!

And I couldn't resist the packages of flower seeds too - I have a thing for blue flowers this year! I also hope the sweet peas will grow around our front porch and smell as good as the magazine said they will.

Becoming An Outdoors Woman

For Valentines Day, Richard registered me for the most awesome thing - "The Becoming an Outdoors Woman Program" or BOW for short. Now, you may be thinking that I'm already quite the accomplished outdoorswoman, and you'd be right. But we all have lots more to learn about the outdoors - and how often do 130 adult women get together and learn without kids or husbands or chores distracting them?

Victory Bible Camp - in Chickaloon, Alaska. Very posh. Probably the nicest camp facility in all of Alaska.


Here I tried to learn fly fishing. I learned how to tie flies years ago, and because it's a lot like embroidery, I can still tie them easily. Getting the fly out into the middle of a stream... a little harder. I would like to try this class again when I could actually cast into water, instead of the frozen parking lot.

This was by far my favorite class - field dressing a caribou. In this case it was a reindeer from the commercial reindeer farm. Apparently no-one was naughty and illegally shot any caribou this winter! Caution - it's a bit graphic if you're not used to dead animals!

I have already processed an entire caribou that Rich brought home two years ago, and I'd like to bring in my own someday. The meat is just so good, and for a good meal I don't mind hunting. Trophy hunting I won't do though.

Look at us go - sawing away! The best part is that we cut all but a small amount of the meat off the carcass before we ever opened the gut sack. A really cool way to dress the animal and keep gut and ureaic fluids from tainting the meat.

Ahhh, field map and compass. This should have been an easy class, but our instructor was a bit confused. I did find the great big mountain though...hard to miss!

And then Karin and I went sledding, in the dark, on inner tubes, down a really steep hill. Yeah it was pretty darned awesome!!!!

Here we are going down the hill as a human chain!

And then later that night, at the cabin, someone broke out apples to apples and some licorice - and we had a blast. I haven't had this much fun since girl scout camp!

Cross Country skiing was wonderful. Even though I knew the basics I still learned a lot, and won the cool green neck gator you see here. The class instructor was a fabulous, world famous skiier, and she also happened to be a great beginner instructor.

Some other gals were ski-jorring circles around us...

And I ran into an old friend - Katrin from Fairbanks. Good times and lots of shenanigans!!!


This is Angela and Panther. She really love the mushing session. I may take this next year. It looked really, really fun!

Organic and Fresh Taste Better!

So we've received our second box of veges from our Full Circle Farm CSA, and I thought I'd share the bounty of our box!

Our attention was immediately grabbed by the sweetness of our vegetables and fruits. This time of year the produce available in the grocery store often tastes bland, watery, or bitter. Not these vegetables!

A few surprising things:
1. At first the portions seemed a bit tiny, but when I got around to cooking them, it turns out they are perfect for two people. Enough for two servings at dinner and some leftovers for the next day. We are just used to buying one large bag of something to save money, and not having any variety. The variety is wonderful!

2. Some of our fruit came from South America??? I thought it was a local Co-op, but after emailing CSA, they replied that they 'strive to provide a nutritionally complete set of vegetables and fruit each week' so they must bring in some fruit and some vegetables from South America. They personally verify that the farms are organic, fair trade, and use fair labor practices. My mango from Peru is from a 40 farm agricultural co-op, that raises organic fruit for a premium price. Hmmm....so still not local, but I guess if I want a mango in February in Alaska, that's where you have to go. I'm still thinking about this. In the future I may swap out the mangos for local produce. That mango was delicious though.... Tough decisions!

3. We're trying new vegetables! We ate garnet yams and bok choy for the first time last week (both delicious by the way), and new this week is kale and sunchokes. Can't wait to see what they taste like!

Also nice is the small amount of waste - one large plastic bag (that I used to wrap the veges in within my refrigerator), two small paper bags, one small plastic bag from the salad greens, and two small plastic net bags. That's it. The box it comes in gets flattened and re-used.

Before

After

No, this isn't the vegetable box, but it was so cute I couldn't resist. Our Quentin Cat is just so adorable sometimes!


Love to all, hope everyone out there is staying safe, and yes mom, we're being careful on these slick roads.

Vegetables!

We've been buying local produce for a long time. But living in Alaska it is tough during the winter to find a variety of locally grown foods. Many of the fruits, vegetables, and herbs are obviously flown in from warmer climates.

I always buy potatoes and carrots locally, and in season tomatoes, zucchini and of course, I pick blueberries and freeze rhubarb.

But how to avoid fruit flown from Chile, where who knows what pesticides and working conditions are used? Well, a friend has convinced me to try a community subscription service (CSA) from a farming cooperative out of Washington State. (Full Circle Farm if you’re interested) It’s still flying in produce, and not local, but they guarantee all member farms are organic, in the northwest, and use fully legal labor to harvest their produce. For $38 per box I get 12-14 different kinds of vegetables, fruits and herbs. I chose to receive a box every other week right here in Eagle River, and for the comfortable price of $76 per month for almost all my fresh veggies – I’m pretty happy. It fits in my budget, is supporting good farms in the US, and gives us the variety we’re craving.

I can’t wait for my first box full of tangello's, leeks, yams, basil, spinach and apples!

PS If you're in Anchorage and want to do this too - just go to their website and sign up. There is no minimum order and you can start and stop at any time. Also, if you list us as your referral, we get a free box :)

December Update

Hello! We've been too busy lately to keep up, so here is a smattering of our December :)

We hosted a Holiday Block Party, and invited our neighbors and friends. It was a big success, and I think we'll definitely do it again next year!

Here I am all dressed up for the holidays. I wore this santa hat everywhere. To the store, to work, to open presents, everything!

My front door wreath, made from the bottom limbs of our tree!



Here is our fine tree. I think this is the nicest tree we've ever had. So bushy and tall! Our dogs liked it too :)

Here is my living romo all decked out for the holidays.

Another view - notice the cool mantle scarf that my friend Heather and I made while I visited her in Vermont. It looks awesome - thanks Heather!



Oh yeah, I turned thirty...woohoo. See my other blog for my thirtieth birthday project.


Rich took me on the coolest date - here in Anchorage some people put up about a million lights and broadcast music over the radio, you can drive up, park and watch the show. Rich happened to know this guy from the fire station in Fairbanks. He was super nice and told us that he had over 62,000 lights and planned to add even more next year. He accepts donations for the MatSu Boys and Girls Club, amazing! I can't even imagine his electric bill for Dec!!!

Finally, the big hit of the season was a batch of Angel Wing cookies - they were delicious, and I've put the recipe down below - Happy New Year!!


Angel Wings

1 stick butter (1/2 cup), softened
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1 large egg
1/2 tsp pure almond extract
1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch

2.5 inch heart shaped cookie cutter

Decoration: white of one large egg, slightly beaten, sliced almonds and granular sugar

1. Beat butter, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl with mixer on low speed to blend. INcrease to medium high and beat until fluffy. Beat in egg and almond extract. On low speed, beat in flour and cornstarch until just blended.

2. Divide dough in half. Shape each portion into a 1 inch thick disk. Wrap individually with plastic wrap adn refrigerate at least 4 hours or until firm enough to roll out.

3. Heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Roll out dough on lightly floured was paper to 1/4 inch thick. Cut out hearts with cookie cutter. Place hearts 1 inch apart on cookie sheet. Cut a 1.5 inch slit at bottom of hearts. Spread apart slightly to form wings. Brush hearts with egg white. Attach sliced almonds as shown - to form feathers. Sprinkle entire cookie with granulated sugar.

4. Bake 8-10 minutes until just golden brown at edges. Remove to wire rack to cool.

Richard's Hunting Trip

This is the sheep hunting trip that my friend Adam and I went on in August 2007. As he was coming from Fairbanks and I from Eagle River, we met not too far from here on our way to the lodge we were staying at for the night. We saw this sign along the way and decided to stop for a picture. This is where Adam and I first entered GMU 12, where we would be hunting for the week.

Here I am on our first day of hunting. Adam and I were hiking up this creek, making numerous crossings, when we finally got to this little canyon. So we had to hike up the hill on the right to continue up the valley. On my pack is all of my gear for the week. The total weight was about 70 pounds including my rifle! Yeah, 70 lbs, almost 1/2 my body weight.




















This is the following day of hunting. We woke up to find a perfect weather day. We were packing light and mainly out seeing what we could see. This ended up being a really long and demanding day of hiking.



















Here are some examples of the cool rock formations we ran into. There were quite a few really cool looking rocks that we considered bringing back until we thought about the additional weight.


















I thought this one was kinda cool. It was a huge rock, but it had lots of little rocks stuck in it.





Here is Adam making a stream crossing. We crossed these mountain streams hundreds of times.



































This is about where we first spotted rams from. Our camp is below us and behind the camera about 2 miles.




















Above is my favorite picture from the trip. Behind me across the valley is where we first spotted a band of rams from. We were trying to sneak up behind them on this little hike. Unfortunately, we were a little off on our view of the mountain and there were two ridges.



















This is a little further up the same mountain. What a long day!


















Here we are at the top. As tired as I was, Adam looked even more beat. This is about 6600 feet high. Good thing we brought snacks and found water way up high. Adam is digging into a powerbar here.




















One more creek crossing. I think this is the day after our really long hike.

















This is a sheep that we saw across the valley. He wasn't legal, but we had some fun watching him for a while. This is a picture taken through my Zeiss 85mm spotting scope.










































Ok, time for a little break. We took turns on the spotting scope. We only brought one to save on weight. I wish we had saved a little more! We were just a little below the crest of a hill looking at a large group of rams. We couldn't see any way to get closer without being seen, so we decided to watch them for as long as we could to see what they were up to.








Here are two of the guys we were watching. They were on a hill one over from us that was long, high, wide, steep, etc. They could see everything in all directions from their little perch. When we first saw these guys, they were a group of four. One was looking around while the others were sleeping. One had his face almost upside down, another had one horn augered into the slope and the other one was sleeping in a fairly traditional fashion. Eventually another group of five joined up with them and they spend most of the day together.

We watched these guys for the entire day and ended up walking back in the dark. In the end, we decided that none of them were legal. There was one guy that was close, but we figured it wasn't worth the effort. We could only see one way to get close enough to age him (count the growth rings on his horns) and that was to spend the night very close to where they were hanging out and be right on top of them in the morning.






Along the way we found some snow that hadn't melted yet!





This is our last day in the field. We loaded up the trailer with all of our stuff and rode out to the lodge.





We took a little time on the way out to look for moose. The season was open for a few days, and we figured it was worth a little time to look around. The temperature was pretty high, and we didn't see any moose moving around.






This is generally the area we were hunting in from a distance. We were on the other side of this mountain.




Ahhh a nice cold beer!






Even though we didn't get a sheep, we had a great time!