Good Eats

Behold, my classic salmon and black bean enchiladas, made with actual Mexican cheese this time. These are the best thing I can ever think to make with leftover salmon.


I use enchilada sauce from a can, no embarrassment.


And put frozen corn in the oven with a modest amount of butter:


The veggie is the only thing that varies in this meal. This day, I decided on roast cauliflower, with olive oil, salt, and minced garlic. I learned this from loyal reader (and meatworld friend) Rena:


Other recent tasty things...

Potato cakes, made with leftover mashed potatoes!


These are precut boneless chicken thighs that I baked in the oven wrapped in barbecue sauce and aluminum foil:


Veggies and fancy sausage to toss with pasta:


And here we have one of the world-famous Copper River Red (Sockeye) salmon, all ready to go into stew. The fillets contain pin bones, which I remove with needle-nosed pliers.


This day, I made a cioppinoid. A cioppino base, but with nothing but fish, no shellfish, alas. I love me some mussels, but I just don't feel comfortable buying them in the interior of Alaska!


Herbs and hot peppers!


I boil the skins for the dogs:


Cricket likes fishy skins!


Thistle likes fishy skins!


The fish again. Is it not beautiful? Everyone loves kings (also called chinooks), but not me (nor DL). There is nothing like a Copper River Red!


Cioppinoid! And if I add veggies, it's a one-pot meal!


This is how the fish is packaged from the Alaska Marine Conservation Council:


All ready to just dump into the freezer


It's quite nice!

Semester winding down

This Monday is the last day of class! I have been teaching classes via zoom. It has been a pretty straightforward shift for us, although of course it's nowhere near as thorough as a truly online class should be (with recorded lectures and thoughtfully prepared self-study materials). But there is only so much you can do on a week's notice, alas. Ironically, our lecture rooms on campus would be great places for staging online classes--they have huge whiteboards and integrated cameras and overhead projectors for recording lectures. But of course, going to campus is not an option!

I for one am thankful that the University President will not say whether classes will be in-person or online in the fall. No one knows what fall, or even this summer, will be like! To pull predictions out of your butthole based on mere hope would make you lose credibility.

When I was a small child and things were scary, adults would say, "Don't worry, it'll be alright." When I got older, they shifted from those platitudes to things like, "We don't know what will happen, but let us be brave and prepare for several possibilities." The most inspirational words people can honestly muster for a mature adult are, "I believe in you. Be Strong. We'll get through this together." But nothing more. No lies, please!

Here are some photos of the girls on a weekday. We still start our days with a morning run, and then I proceed to my "home office", while they do this.

8 a.m.:


10 a.m.:


Noon:


5 p.m.:


5:30 p.m.:


6 p.m.:


And that concludes my work-from-home photographic study.

Dog Heaven

I had a dream a few nights ago about these ladies. They, DL, and a small group including other humans and dogs and I were walking down our dirt road in the sunshine. When we got "home" to where our cabin is in real life, in my dream there was a sun-drenched field and a big barn, like at Calypso Farm. We put the dogs out in the yard, and they all flopped out in the sun-warmed dirt. Then I went into the barn to take care of some goat kids.

I had always pictured dog Heaven being always March, because they lovelovelove to play in the snow, but I suppose there are seasons there too, and dogs love a good sunbath, too. And apparently we'll have goats! Well now! Isn't that something?

I don't believe I have ever shown you this lovely pendant I ordered made from Roo's fur shortly after we lost her:

The white furs are from the Heart on her Chest. The forget-me-not is extra meaningful, not just because of its name, but also because it is the Alaska state flower. The shop does all kinds of memorial keepsakes. Link here.

I am still mourning my Starbuck-A-Roo pretty hard. I don't talk about it much because we have Thistle and Cricket (and DL, a good job, and so many other things to be grateful for), and it seems ungrateful to the Universe to dwell on the holes that are still in my heart. But they are still there.

Roo always got nervous when DL or I would cough, even if we didn't have a cold and were just clearing our throats. I wonder now if she knew that COVID-19 was coming, and she was getting nervous, and she left us so that she could comfort all of the people that would soon be ill and/or die in lonely rooms, saying farewell to loved ones over Skype and gchat. I hope that the first thing they feel on the other side is her soft paw. I know that she is also running through the snow (and laying in sunwarmed dirt!) with Autumn and Linden and other dog-friends. I know that she is also welcoming her Friends from the Denali Center (none of whom have passed away of COVID-19, but who continue to die away for various mundane reasons as the elderly are wont to do). I imagine that she can do all of these things at once, since, unencumbered by a physical body, the laws of physics no longer apply to her. Just as humans over there can look over multiple grandchildren all at once, she can play in the snow with her dogfriends and offer her paw to all of the frightened people on earth, all at once.

Well, here is a photo of our present schweeties.


Do you think they are comfy? I sure hope they are comfy.

Now I will have to think about mud in the afterlife. Maybe the thought of mud in the afterlife will help me to realize that mud is not so bad in the present one. We are well into breakup season now, when the ice breaks up on the rivers and the frozen ground breaks up in our yards, making copious mud. At least in the mornings it is frozen:

Happy Chinese Easter!

This is the first time in a long time we celebrated Easter instead of Chinese Easter. Usually we get a half-priced ham the day after Easter, and have it with friends a week later (that would be today). But alas, there are no gatherings at this time. Funnily enough, I had a half-priced ham in my freezer from the day after Christmas last year, so I decided that as long as we were breaking with tradition, we'd go all out and have it on actual Easter. What a shame that we could not have anyone over to share it with us. But DL was so kind as to inform me that he would happily eat an entire ham with me. He is so kind! Actually, most hams in the supermarkets today are half hams, not whole hams, which would be what Dorothy Parker was referring to when she defined eternity as "a ham and two people". :)

My first task for the feast was a pie:


And here is the ham!


For a veggie, I braised collards with garlic:


A rare photo of DL, with the ham:


There it is!


There was extra pastry dough from the pies, so I made tiny cheese empanadas. Another trick from loyal reader and meatworld friend Rena!


The finished pie!


Peach is DL's favorite. And I finally mastered a semi-healthy crust, made with half barley flour, which is less gritty than whole wheat.


Leftover ham uses!

Grilled ham and cheese sandwiches:


And now we interrupt our food reportings with a photo of the dogs cleaning their fangs!


Yes, fangs!


OK now a classic ham and white bean soup, which kale and carrots:


And finally, the last ham scraps in omelettes, which we had exactly one week after Easter:


Omelette you enjoy this photo. DL staged it:

Goodbye, Winter

Last weekend was our last weekend on the trails. The snow was already getting poor on Sunday, turning to slush in the daytime and then solid ice at night, leaving a slick crust in the morning. Over that slick ice, I have no breaking ability in my skis!

But I'm glad that winter had one last hurrah, and we were able to ski a bit more after that last warm spell.

Saturday was cool and overcast. We went down to the pond where I did the snow studies for my graduate work. I used to go there with Autumn and Linden pretty frequently.

My last cup of tea before heading out!


Look at these schweeties! They stand there so patiently while I am prepping to get out the door. They don't jump up and down and howl, the way they would at the start of a race!


Made it to the old pond!


Look how nicely Thistle holds out her line when we stop for anything. She is a true leader--a veteran of multiple Iditarods, multiple Yukon Quests, and of course many 100-300 milers. Autumn and Starbuck-A-Roo were also leaders, and you can see the commonalities in their bearing and habits, even though their personalities are quite different. They are never in a hurry and always thoughtful and analytical.

Cricket, in contrast, is impatient and easily distracted:


The hay field was looking very mysterious in the flat light:


Once again, Thistle holds her line taut, Cricket wanders around and screams. :D


That night, the clouds cleared away, and Sunday was bright and sunny! The glacier on the shed roof, which had hung on all the previous day:

came crashing down!

The girls and I headed back down to the pond. They were Very Good Girls, and held a Very Reasonable Pace the whole time. Cricket is a speed demon. When I used to skijor with her alone, I had to bend very low and snowplow very hard and remind her to slow down the whole time. I developed a chant. "Easy, easy, slow and easy. Easy, easy, slow and easy. Easy, easy, slow and easy." If I stayed quiet for a bit, she'd take that as permission to speed up again! When we got Thistle, Cricket yielded control to her, and Thistle never goes faster than I am comfortable with. A true leader!

It was so warm that when I stopped to pee, Thistle laid down and panted.


This trail to the old pond has gotten wider and wider. I'm not sure why. It connects to a larger trail system, and you can go all the way to Nenana and beyond, but I'm not sure what's changed.

And here we are at the pond:


It's easier to turn them around on a pond!


They even went at a Very Reasonable Pace going home! Going home is usually a dash. Dogs just love to race home!

I'm in awe of this sweet girl.


She reminds me a bit of Autumn, and I hope I have not smothered her too much. I love her as if she had been with us all along, but from her perspective, she just got plucked from the only home she had ever known, moved to a strange house (although seeing her old teammate Cricket must have been a comfort), and then informed that she was Home and Loved and she was the Best Dog Ever, and that we Loved her to Bits. I mean, maybe we moved too fast? :D