Tuesday, November 29, 2022
Let the Christmas Cookie Baking Begin - A Visit from Friends
Saturday, November 26, 2022
Tales of Sourdough
The term sourdough originated during the Klondike Gold Rush when settlers began to flood into Alaska. Due to the limited availability of leavening in the remote bush of Alaska, settlers made their bread using a sourdough starter which uses flour, water, and sugar to naturally collect yeast from the air. The use and consumption of this bread was so widespread that these settlers began to be known as "sourdoughs."
The history of sourdough, however, begins long before miners came to Alaska. Sourdough is the oldest form of leavened bread and was used at least as early as ancient Egypt. It was probably discovered by accident when bread dough was left out and good microorganisms -- wild yeast -- drifted into the mix. The resulting bread had a lighter texture and better taste.
All sourdough recipes begin with a starter -- a mixture of flour, water, and a little sugar. Sitting at room temperature, wild yeasts in the air and on the grain settle into the mix. The fermentation that occurs after a few days gives the starter its sour smell. Then it's ready to use, for years if treated with respect.
A starter, or "sponge" as the pioneers called it, feeds many families over many years. Starters have always been passed through families and from friend to friend. I have kept my last starter alive for 10 years and there are stories of starters that are much older. There is one starter from a famous bakery in San Francisco that started back in 1849 and is known as the "Mother Dough".
Starters can be kept thriving simply by adding equal parts of water and flour to a portion of the starter every couple of weeks. Replenish it, keep it stored in the refrigerator, and it will last indefinitely, acquiring more personality as the years go by. The extra tanginess that comes with age is highly prized and is why older starters become treasured members of the family for sourdough junkies.
So for the start of your sourdough adventure . . . a tale from Home on the Range.
Sourdough Starter & The Mad Trapper Of Rat River.
Nobody knew much about Albert Johnson. He arrived in Fort MacPherson,Northwest Territories, Canada on July 9th, 1931 on the southern edge of the Mackenzie delta (67 degrees N latitude). His arrival was uneventful, a man simply descending into the town on the idle wind with a lot of cash in his pocket. He was by all accounts, in his mid to late thirties, with a rugged build, icy blue eyes, and a taciturn disposition, keeping to himself. These physical characteristics in men that trapped for a living in the north were nothing out of the ordinary, some youthful, some old, most bearded, yet all with that same attentive attention to the wilds around them. Among such men, Albert Johnson melted quietly into the landscape.
What the locals noted as strange was this young man had pockets of money and build a large cabin with a good view on three sides in the prime trapping area of the Rat River, but did not obtain the requisite trapping license. He didn't invite questions and shunned visitors. Most often he was found alone, leaving quarters only to stride to a small bluff overlooking the river, his woolen shirt fluttering around him like a flag, as he stood watchful and mute.
When the trapping season went into full swing, something changed. The traps in the area were disrupted. Smashed, bait tossed about. There was no evidence of the act but for the cry of the wind through the trees that seemed to assume the human sound of rage and pain. Indian trappers complained that someone was interfering with their work. In this region trapping was the only source of food and livelihood for many, settler and native alike, and interfering with it was the most serious of crimes.
They returned with two more Mounties. Steam came from the edges of the cabin door as if it was warm inside. Men and beasts moved slowly in the cold, white fog brightened only by a shortened sun, the cold air gusting around the men, heightening the sense of urgency. A simple knock on the door and without warning, a shot rang out, three bullets splintering the wood and smashing into Constable King's chest. McDowell did not wait. He dragged his friend to their sled and cracked his snake whip as loud as Hermit Johnson's rifle. Tongues out, the husky dogs plunged forward, racing back through the night, fueled by hunger and the smell of blood. They made the 100 miles back to Aklavik in 20 hours. It was a record that saved Constable King's life.
Ten days later a new patrol mushed out to Rat River to avenge Constable King. Albert Johnson had used the interval to turn his hut into a blockhouse. He had dug the dirt floor out to a depth of four feet and cut loopholes at the floor level. For 15 hours Albert Johnson, ruler of that minute world, held off the Mounties. Dynamite charges blew the roof off his hut. Albert Johnson retired, like an angry woodchuck, entrenched in his dugout, willing to fight to the death. With temps at forty below and food for both men and the dogs running low, the police withdrew, thwarted again. As the coppery twilight gave way to a dark sky, only a few stars that dangled near earth like shards of ice, were witness to Johnson's thoughts.
For the third time, a police patrol set out from Aklavik, but this time Albert Johnson had fled from Rat River, trying to beat his way through the arctic winter to Alaska and safety. What followed was the northern country's greatest manhunt. Trappers rushed their wives to trading posts for safety, then joined the posse. They were loosely organized but realized as we still do today that it is the spirit of the law, and not the form of it that keeps justice alive, and they were willing to leave all behind to ensure justice for an officer taken down simply trying to preserve a man's work and the fruit of their sweat.
Thirty miles further in the posse finally tracked where Mad Albert had built a fort of ice and snow. There was another battle. In it, Constable E. Millen died. Police ammunition ran out and the posse withdrew for supplies, leaving three men to watch the fort. In the middle of the night, Mad Albert Johnson slipped away again in a blizzard that covered his snowshoe tracks, winds wailing a hymn of mourning for another fallen officer.
They called in Capt. W. R. ("Wop") May, a survivor of the epic battle which ended in the death of Germany's famed Baron Manfred von Richthofen. "Wop" May was at Fort McMurray, Alberta, 1,100 miles away, when Constable Millen was shot.
Flying in that day was slow, it was risky and clouds were low to the hard earth. There were no instruments to guide you in bad weather, no controllers to help you find your way. All you had were wings and courage. Articulate honor in the face of death. Men like Captain May, those that earn their names, know what risk is, and they elect to it anyway. With winter weather making the sky a time bomb of ice, May took their frantic call for help and took off in an Army monoplane, headlong into the swirling snows of the pursuit, armed with nothing more than a craft about as maneuverable as a Brinks Truck equipped with a single bomb rack.
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Even flight in a blizzard couldn't hide Albert Johnson from the eyes of Capt. May. Days later May reported that Albert Johnson had crossed the Yukon River, and was tracking west from the Pierre House trading post, only 175 miles from the Alaska border. The manhunt resumed full cry.
On Jan 30th he was confronted once more. After a short shootout, Constable 'Spike' Millen lay dead - shot through the heart. Johnson made his escape by climbing a sheer cliff in the dead of night, somehow rising out of the darkness like a phantom from the grave. The Mounties' reputation was on the line, their ability to take down one lone man reduced to a whisper of cold promise left in prints of a snowshoe.
Albert Johnson seemed to be no average trapper. The Mounties said of him to be capable of great feats and was crafty beyond belief. The local Inuit said at one point in the chase that Johnson could snowshoe 2 miles for every 1 mile a dog team had to break trail. The cold was brutal, pulling the air from your lungs, as the hairs in your nose froze to Brillo pads that blocked the little breath you could take in. Yet Johnson was able to flee, and at a pace faster than the best of the best, so many times they thought they had him, when his departed form split the night like artillery, breaking the lie of silence.
He took down one other officer before being felled in one crashing volley. On February 17, 1932, May directed the Mounties to a hairpin turn in the middle section of the Eagle River where a gun battle eventually brought Johnson down. It took 9 bullets to Johnson's body to finally end this week's long order. The fallen officer, Sargent Hersey was rushed back for aid in May's airplane. The Mad Trapper, Albert Johnson came back on a police sled, dead, frozen stiff. No one ever claimed his body. No one in Alaska or the trapping fields had heard of him. No one had ever heard him utter a single word. Yet he had the modern-day cash equivalent of the cost of a new home in his pockets (as well as a knife, fish hooks, nails, and a dead squirrel). His identity was never known, quietly buried, a DB Cooper of the Wild North
For a particular sourdough starter was carried along on that famous hunt for Albert Johnson. As the mounties and their posse stayed on the trail of Johnson for several months, the men had to prepare food on the trail in the harshest of conditions. The mix helped keep the posse fed throughout much of the manhunt.
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As Fall gives way to winter it's a good time to make a sourdough starter, flip pancakes, bake bread or roll out tasty biscuits. If the only "sourdough" you've had has been packaged, preservative-laden bread from the store you are missing out on something truly spectacular. Light fragrant, and tangy, it makes white bread hide in the closet in shame. Add homemade gravy and sausage to it and it's absolutely addicting. For pancakes, they can't be beaten.
Throw in some butter and Birch Syrup and you have a filling breakfast that won't weigh you down for a manhunt or simply provide you nourishment for your soul. I think Captain May and the Mounties would have approved.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Going Home
I loved the city back then, and when I was there for what is probably the last time, it felt good to be back. Seattle is one of the most beautiful cities in the country, the sun skipping off the Olympic Mountains, their serrated edges outlined in gold and white. On rare days it's a jewel of a city, diamond brilliance on blue clarity. But it is also a grey city, grey with the comfort of low clouds that drape over mountains like a shawl, keeping you warm.
My Dad left Montana when he was in his 20s and moved out towards the coast where it's a little warmer, and for years people asked if I'd consider moving back. As I gazed out across the Sound, the call of the ferry a soliloquy to a life long ago, I did think about it. I had always thought that area was a part of me I'd bequeath to my past. Could I live here again? Reliving memories of college and friends and family long since dead. What would it be like? As I think of the ferries, I can picture the spray against my face as I dash toward my car, the memory but a brief childhood dash through the sprinklers on a hot summer day.
St. Expurey said, "he who would travel happily must travel light". And this adventurer did travel light for so many years, my books my biggest possessions, and my photos of friends and family around my bed my only company most nights. There have been so many flights, so many moments that shine in my memory, milestones along the uncharted airway that made up my life. In the early years, I remember not just the airplanes themselves as I instructed to pay for college, but the feel of the cotton shirt I wore, the smell of my student's aftershave, the song that was playing inside when I ran into check the weather again. It seems as if all my early years were reflected in the window of those moving airplanes. I see my reflection, my past, through bug-sprayed glass that tints the world bright.
The airplane, the destination, and the years changed, as did the landscape of my career, but some things never changed. The firm tension of the throttles, the ever-varying display of numbers on gauges that ranged from the antique to the technological sublime. My memory just remembers my hands, clasped on the yoke, a testament to their refusal to be separated for long. The voices of the controllers reminded me that I was of the earth, the window reflecting the satisfied smile of being exactly where I wanted to be. It might have been Fall or Spring, morning or night, but the feeling deep within the remembrance always stays the same. My life's journey have have changed and if I didn't have roots, there was that one constant. That of my reflection in that little plane window, still enraptured by a cockpit's illumination of a dream. No one could take that from me.
Freedom. At an age when many friends have 2 kids and a huge mortgage, I downsized, the house sold, and I found I was living out of boxes again, with more money and time to travel and spend times with friends and family. Live simply, love hard. It beat the heck out of stress and 12 rooms one doesn't need. It's freedom, it's time.
Time. To crawl in the cockpit of a little plane once in a while, watching a new day slowly unfold above the clouds. The sun casts a pink haze over the sky, long before I could actually see its rays, as the ridges that rose from the land took on a glow you can't see from the ground. For just a moment there are no sounds but life whispering the reverent hum of a Lycoming engine. It's a moment in space where you can feel the depth and potential of your existence there in a snippet of sky. There's no time for earthly worries, for when the earth turned on its axis one more time and I saw that sun rising over the nose of my airplane, it was the universe reminding me of all that I did have. Amongst which was yet another day aloft, breathing deep the freedom of choice.
As I sat under the calm grey of that Washington sky, I realize that a journey is not going back, it's going forward. Home is where the heart is, not where you hang your hat or even where you grew up. It's simply home. It's someone that loves you beyond measure. Its faith and strength in the countless days marked with bitter cold and radiating warmth, monotonous wonderful days of work and friends, gunfire and laughter, water and sky. It's countless days of joy now receding like ancient glaciers that once crept down upon the place where my life sits now, leaving the land flat in their wake, leaving an ancient mark upon my heart. A gypsy heart that finally took root.
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I had a few hours before my flight back so I took public transport down to the waterline and watched the ferries one last time. I simply stood and looked, seeing their wake rippling outwards towards where I watched from a great distance, the movement bringing up a smell of the water that reminds me of so many years ago, so many memories, moving away. The ferry's shadow moved away too, towards the vacant sweep of water, empty of movement, empty of the present. I could see nothing in the distance in the evening mist, it was as if the ferry was going to crash into a wall of smoke, only to fade into it and disappear, as if it had never been. To keep it in my mind's eye I had to draw upon memory, the world before me material without being real, memory drifting like lost ghosts breathing the air of forlorn dreams.
That's when I realized, that this land, this city, is composed of memories not likely not to be recreated simply by moving back here. The house where I spent so much time with my Aunt and Uncle here has been razed. The flight school where I got my commercial license has been torn down. The streets are crowded and unfamiliar. I'm not a liberal and I hate traffic. I'm a stranger here only tied to this spot by ghosts on the water. Everything left is spirit and illusion and no matter how hard I try to look out across the Sound, the ferry is gone.
So in those last hours in the city, I stood at the shoreline and looked up. Alone again, having said my final goodbye, and already planning the next adventure. Untended under the heedless sky, the short broken puffs of smoke that linger on the wake, only a forgotten whisper, I turn from the water towards home.
Friday, November 18, 2022
Friday, November 11, 2022
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
On Reality
Whether it's economics, what's in that hot dog, that "perfect guy or gal" you met on the internet (wow, I didn't know Kansas City had the same telephone prefix as Ghana),
politics or that first fishing trip . . .
sometimes it's interesting to just sit back quietly and watch folks as the rose-colored glasses come off.
Wednesday, November 2, 2022
Beefer Madness - Balsamic Beef Dip
Don't give me that look - it's no one you know.
In the last year, after Sepsis tried to kill me, I was left with the muscle tone of a sock after 3 weeks in the hospital including the initial fun stint in ICU (which I don't remember much of). I started weight training with a trainer and generally am doing my part to attempt to be the only grandmother on the block who can "kick @** if required.
After a combination of nutritional coaching, and "is this really food" hospital cuisine" I weigh within 4 pounds of what I did when I soloed my first airplane as a teen. But some parts of getting healthier have been work. We still have a "treat meal" once or twice a week but I gave up alcohol a few years ago but then added pop, junk" and high-salt foods. I eat more wild-caught salmon, limited free range and game meat, and NO fast food except for a Chick Fil-a sandwich when my husband makes a run to the Fed-Ex store every few months. Cutting back on salt was tough. But my blood pressure went from - My doctor: "we need to talk about medication." to "Woah - it's totally normal, what did you DO?" (no more than 1500 mg a day of sodium, acupuncture, and more walking).
Adapting some of the Range recipes has been an experiment.
This was one of the more tasty ones.
Low Sodium Balsamic Beef Dip.