ALL THE CHEESE

One evening last week, I was talking to a young woman engineering student at a Society of Women Engineers event. She was telling me that she had recently made her own lasagne for the first time, and she recalled the lasagnes she had made with her mom growing up. And her mom would say, "Okay, two cups of cheese. That is all we need." And a tiny voice inside herself would be whispering, 'whynotmorecheese?'. So on her first lasagne, she put ALL THE CHEESE SHE WANTED.


I was so astonished and joyful for her! That memory was as evocative for me as a childhood smell. I suddenly remembered being 22 again, and embracing all that life had to offer, and I was like, GET YOURS, GIRL. CLAIM LIFE. HAVE ALL THE CHEESE.



I'm so proud of our engineering students!

From mud and standing water to ice

The little bit of snow we got a week or so ago is now gone, but we're still getting pretty cold nights, and the days have not been warm. The ground is freezing up nicely, and the mud is going away. This disgusting pond along our walking trail is now frozen on top:


The trail has long slicks of ice!


We humans wore ice cleats:


The dogs have amazing traction! I don't think their nails are hard enough to dig into ice the way our steel cleats do; I think their paw pads actually have some friction properties.


There is one place where the ice has frozen on top, but then the water level has dropped, forming a thin bridge. Roo checked it out and broke through:


I would have soaked a foot and perhaps sprained an ankle, but dogs are so much more robust!


Another thing that happens is that someone will break through the ice, and then the shattered pieces freeze into the new ice! These places are usually stronger:


Here is a photo of Starbuck-A-Roo after visiting her Friends at the Denali Center:


Roo loves her Friends! Yesterday, a Friend who had recently moved out of the dementia ward into general care, much to our delight, was telling us about his time on a navy destroyer during the Vietnam era. "They wanted me to join the army, but I said, 'no way', so I joined the Navy!" That must have been quite a different life than his life in Tanacross and Mentasta, where is is from. Mentasta is a big, beautiful lake, and he has a painting on his wall of his late dog gazing over its snow-covered surface in wintertime. He tells us about the many animals that came through--moose, caribou, black bear, brown bear. Yesterday, he told us about this one time that he saw a baby porcupine. "Its quills were only this long!" he held up his fingers. "The cutest thing I've ever seen!"

I wonder what I will remember when I am old. I hope I have a few lovely little things like baby porcupines in my head.

By the way, have I reminded y'all lately that the dogs' paws are teddy bears?

Good eats

MM's mom apparently picked up a pie bird while the two of them were sightseeing in some tourist joint. I spied it on her windowsill. "A pie bird!" said I. "I have been wondering whether those actually work!" She promptly gave it to me. She doesn't make pies, she said (although I recall her once bringing a key lime pie to my house, but it only uses one crust and thus could not benefit from a pie bird). I should try it.

So I did! DL's favorite two-crust pie is peach, so I made one. This crust is half Delta Junction barley flour:


It did bake up nicely!


And yes! The bottom crust was flaky and tender!


I'm going to call the pie bird a success!

In other Very Exciting Food News, my favorite Mat-Su Valley carrots have shown up at Freddies:


And look who is being So Very Nice and Helpful to offer to help me taste test them!


So nice! So helpful!

The first thing I made with them was sticky noodles for an "International Food Potluck". My suggestion for a group activity for the UAF student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.



They liked that idea so much that they invited the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers and the National Society of Black Engineers to join!

Top o' the Minor News

There is a loose goat running around town.





Okay then.

We have a parking lot fox. Most mornings, he/she comes out to watch the morning arrivals and play in the snow. He is very pretty, isn't he?





He is quite the little character!


And he likes to smear his face around in the snow, just like Roo does!





Later, Fox!



Here are some other Super Important Photos.

Office Dowgs:


Snuggly Dowgs:


Edit: Curry, the Goat, has been apprehended:




"the owner has expressed interested in pardoning the goat... 'He’d like to put him back with the herd so he can heal from this experience. The herd he grew up in will bring him some comfort... He has also been following the Facebook posts and wants to pardon Curry and find him a pet home.'"

First Snow, again!

It's not often that the first snow is a real snow that sticks! Usually, the first snow is a dusting the melts away that day. But after yesterday's snow, the weather got colder, and more came down! This morning, when we got up, it might as well have been March:


In accordance with a Real Winter day, I made egg flower soup and steamed some frozen pork buns for breakfast:


There is not enough snow to ski, or even to walk on the trail system that is accessible behind our house. At one degree below freezing, the mud is still mud, and the giant puddles are still giant puddles. So we walked the "high" trail, which is an "official" (as opposed to historical) trail that is lined with gravel and accessible year-round:


Roo and Cricket were suuuuuuper happy:


The sun came out for a bit, making the sky blue and the scenery really beautiful:


Cricket posed with me!


The sky was bluetrueblue:


Roo helps me pick out the path through the puddles that is least likely to get my pants wet!


Happy beasts!


Cricket and DL:


I tried to get a photo of the two dogs sitting together, but whenever I stand still, they come up to me and remain verrrrry close. Roo sits right next to me to be petted, and when I back away, she follows me. If I even lean back to attempt to fit her whole body into the frame, she paws me:


Okay, so I agreed to pet her:


And her soffffffty schnozz:


This is kind of the shot that I wanted? But they won't look at me and are different distances away!


I can sometimes get nice shots of them individually.

Starbuck alone:


Cricket alone:


When we get home, I give them fang-cleanin' snackie, either a greenie or a rawhide. The last time I was at Alaska Feed, they were out of rawhides, so I bought (ok who knew this was a product you could buy?) dried cow esophagus sticks. I guess I had not looked closely at the dog chewy section in a long time, because they also have sheep lungs, beef trachea, and variety pack that includes all of the aforementioned, along with pig ears, pig feet, and chicken feet. I declined that one. For all of the ills of our modern industrial food processing system, I do give it credit for using every part of the animal.

They approved of the esophagi:

First snow!

Yay!





Roo and Cricket were super happy, and we did our morning walk at warp speed! Now they are asnugglin' on the couch.

Miscellaneous Photo Dump

Fall almost always brings rainbows to the Interior of Alaska:


Oh, oh. I have cuddled them too much, and they have melted:


I thought my salmon looked pretty the other day before I put it into the oven.


I forgot to take an "after" photo, but that's okay. Salmon is much prettier when it's raw anyway.

Here is a photo of my Chief Quality Inspector of Veggie-Buhls:

Cricket helps, too, of course, but she observes from the couch, running over only when there is an Assignment!

She does Not Like Celery (neither of them does; I wonder why their tastes mirror each other's?), but what is this celery?? It is very peanut-butter averse! :(


It went okay into chicken-noodle soup though!


The ladies do not beg at the table during mealtimes, but they do when I eat fruit while I am working! How do they decide that that is acceptable?


The shelving in DL's lab:


And his Amazing Wiring:


I've always told DL that you can tell a lot about character and planning from the way a person wires, especially when they lay the first wire. If they say, "it's only a single wire; who cares if it's a mess?" you know they will not tidy it up when they lay later wires. They'll just slap more and more on top until they have a mess of spaghetti. A person who lays the first wire nicely is a person who plans ahead and has integrity of work! DL is someone that never has to be hounded to do anything. He's just a responsible human, and it's a relief to have a partner who carries that emotional labor. A person that you have to hound to do things may do them eventually, but they may cost you more emotional labor than if you had just done it yourself to begin with.