Last year around this time I lived in Fairbanks and the temperatures were way below freezing. We had already received the seasons first snowfall of course, and the sunsets and sunrises colored the sky beautiful every day. During the night, aurora colored the sky.
Halloween was around the corner, just like now, and I made an awesome pumpkin carving, a moose of course.
I do miss Alaska and its awesomeness!
Do you have a place you miss?
I took a short break from the blog. I do spend a lot of time when I want to write on my blog. Sometimes I can think about a million things I want to talk about but lately I have been so busy. I just got a new job a few weeks ago and I am going to balance that (it's only 50%) with the writing of my dissertation... Anyway, I have been thinking a lot about Alaska lately, and that's one o the reasons why this theme exists.
I have discovered that I am really good at collecting memories, well who isn't? I love taking pictures, and sometimes I actually don't have time to look at them immediately, and then I forget about them. I love going through my photo album on the computer and rediscover old memories. I don't think I would ever be able to rediscover old memories in the same way with only text.
I really need the pictures. What about you? Do you keep a diary at all? I know I tried to use one when I was really really young, but it didn't really work that well, and well here I am. I guess you can say that this blog sometimes work as a diary, less private of course, but still a way for me to reflect on my thoughts about different subjects.
In Alaska, as in many other places up north, you start to see Aurora already in late August early September. Last year I remember seeing Aurora almost every night, kind of mellow, was still waiting for that big show to arrive....which kind of didn't happen until I was going in to work early one morning and was completely unprepared for it. Either way, I have seen so many Aurora shows, and back then it was more like a thing you saw on a regular basis, so you didn't really react that much unless it was a great show. Now, well now I really miss it of course.
Last year we also had a pretty bad snowstorm, that took down lots of trees, most of them broke in half literally. We got this really heavy snow that covered the landscape for a few days/weeks before it melted off again. I know people sometimes talk about a fifth season, well I would argue that in Alaska we have six seasons. Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter. It is that in between space that you can or can't call one or the other, it's very interesting to experience. Sometimes we tend to list the seasons based on dates, but that doesn't always work at more northern latitudes. Other times we list them based on what we see, like snow on the ground during wintertime, but what is it if the leaves are still colored and we have snow on the ground, and then a week later the snow is gone?
Heavy snow, falling trees and power lines don't mix well. We lost power for about a week (well off and on), others were without power for almost 3 weeks. I am lucky because I have the wood stove, so even without power I could still prepare food on the wood stove.
The snow came and then it went. Typical Alaskan weather.
What did you do around this time last year? Was the weather different from today? Obviously here in Madison it's very different from Alaska. Lately we have had colder temperatures of course, they are creeping closer to the freezing point, almost there.
Happy Friday you guys!!
Last year I finally tried making fireweed jelly, and I can not believe I haven't done that before. Now, when I am not in Alaska, I regret it even more. Anyone who has ever ventured out in the far north has probably seen these majestic beautiful and colorful signs of summer, Fireweed. Although Forget-me-not is officially the state flower of Alaska, I personally think they should have picked Fireweed as the flower.
When you live in Alaska you become a different person, physically and mentally, weather you want to or not. Along with all the skills I have acquired comes the joy of preserving the summer. Summers in Alaska are so short, and you better catch it in a jar before it's over. They say, when the fireweed start to bloom, summer has official arrived. On a more sad point, when the last flower of the fireweed has bloomed, summer is officially over. Fireweed bloom from the bottom up and the top flowers are the last to bloom before they too fall off.
Before the end, the end of summer and short life of fireweed, you can take opportunity to pick the petals. It's tedious, but oh so delicious in the end, and they are beautiful. You want to pick the petals when the flowers are in bloom, which means that you'll probably start to pick the bottom ones. You don't want to pick the petals from the flowers that are already past full bloom, the flavor wont be as spectacular. You also don't want to pick the buds, of course, because they will give the jam/jelly a bitter taste. And YES, ONLY the petals.
Fireweed usually appears after a disturbance, like a fire, and it grows really well, like a weed. Step one is definitely to find a place where fireweed grows, far away from pollution of course as always when you are going to eat something from nature. They grow all over Alaska, and of course the circumpolar boreal forest, including Sweden. The best would of course be to find a whole field full of fireweed, so you can spend some time at one location. After that, you just have to be patient.. As I mentioned, picking the flowers is very very tedious, but extremely relaxing.
I have a gorgeous book named "The Boreal Herbal", that's where I get all my recipes that includes ingredients from the far north. I made quite a lot of fireweed jelly, and man it was good. That on a piece of cracker or bread along with some brie. YUM! I tweaked this recipe a bit, because it called for quite a lot of grape juice, and I didn't really want the grape juice itself to take all the control. Fireweed jelly is actually really interesting, you definitely get the flowery taste at the end. What you'll need is obviously a lot of fireweed petals, at least 2½ cups. You can also google the internet and there will be quite a few recipes of this, not many, but a few.
You want the lovely fragrance to leave the petals, and to do this you have to:
The flowers will change colors so don't freak out, they will become more bluish.
I did not add any rosewater to my jelly, so I don't really know how it tastes with it.
*The original recipe called for 1/2 a cup of white and 1/2 cup of red grape juice. Now, why grape juice? Honestly I never tried it without the grape juice, but I have tried the liquid, and it's very flowery. This is why you need to balance the flavor a bit. Now, if you try the liquid and like it, by all means, DON'T add the grape juice, add some water instead, but remember that it will dilute the flavor a bit. Yes, the grape juice will almost take over the flavor a bit, but after a few seconds in your mouth you'll get that wonderful flowery taste to it.
If you live in the north and wonder what cook book you should purchase next? Do you wonder how you can learn about everything you can make from the lovely boreal forest? These two books below are a must have: The Boreal Herbal and The Boreal Feast:
I still have two jars of dried fireweed, it still smells like an Alaskan summer. Do you have a favorite recipe of any herbs, jams or alike?
