Food, Mostly

Just made my last flight reservation for tomorrow (the little hop between the village and the hub city, Bethel). Other Teacher #2 and I will be flying out at 12:30, which will give me three hours, weather permitting, to go to the bead store (they have a great selection I've yet to find equalled Downstates) and grab some food for the journey.

Speaking of food, I attended a birthday feast for one of our school aide's daughters. There I had what will probably be my last taste of akutaq (eskimo ice cream), walrus, seal, caribou, and dried smoked salmon strips where you have to peel them off the skin. Diet food it ain't, but I've really developed a taste for it... even the "weird" stuff that I only tried for the sheer adventure of it.

Seal meat is surprisingly "meaty" (as opposed to fatty) and not at all what I would have expected, at least when cooked up in a pan. Walrus, on the other hand, is unlike anything I've ever eaten. It's so... smooth. So many dense (and probably horrifically fatty, but who's countin?) calories... I ate a little around noon yesterday and wasn't hungry until well after 7. Caribou is a lot like venison. Dried smoked salmon strips are the beef jerkey of the Eskimo subarctic. No wait, better. Jerky is a pain to eat because it's so tough, but dried smoked salmon strips (or simply "strips" as they're known in village English) is fun. Grab a hold of the meat with your teeth and hold on to the skin. Now peel. It takes a certain flair... I'm now to the point where I get everything off but the skin. Dogs LOVE the skin for a treat, but only if they're outside dogs, because salmon skin dog farts are the epitome of disgusting.

Christ, I have been an obnoxiously prolific blogger over the past week. If anyone actually reads all this, kudos to you, but I certainly don't expect everybody to do so. For me, it's been a sort of personal housecleaning of my thoughts... hence the stream-of-consciousness style writing.

This should be my last post for a few days. I fly out tomorrow, weather permitting, at 12:30-ish. I'll turn 26, assuming the flight boards on time, at 12:07am... 48 minutes before my flight out of Anchorage is set to depart. I'll make it to the Twin Freakin Cities at 11:45 Tuesday morning, Central Time. While it looks like I'll be spending 23 hours in transit, if time zone changes are taken into account, it's only 20. ONLY.