2020 Baking Highlights

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My friend David made fruitcake with so much candied fruit and booze that it is still mostly wet after three hours of baking.  It is delicious.  I'm trying to offset it by consuming actual pounds of kale, but I know it doesn't exactly work that way.

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January: lemon bars -- Hut 10 kitchen, McMurdo, Antarctica.  Aside from the first lettuce anyone had eaten in over a month, the lemon bars were the crowning glory of the Shuttles holiday party.  

February: chocolate chip cookies -- also Hut 10.  I disappeared for a while on a slow day of work to mix dough with a friend, and got to deliver a few samples to my new boyfriend.

March: croissants -- The Swedish Bakery, Nelson, NZ.  I didn't bake these, but I sure are the shit out of them.  

April: scones -- 273 Bealey Ave., Christchurch, NZ. a.k.a. my international shelter-in-place pad, temporary quarantine "flat" while abroad.  The buttermilk over there is incredibly thick.  And my clandestine meeting with a friend all the sweeter for a shared snack.

May: blondies -- Kelly's cousin's house, Montrose, CO.  I loved the gooey caramelization from the Betty Crocker recipe, and they went down pretty well with Kelly's friends.

June: biscuits -- tiny trailer oven, somewhere in western CO.  I baked off my frozen rectangles in a few locations, and they came out light and crisp and fueled high-altitude hikes.

July: potatoes in foil -- the campfire, Ironton(?), CO.  I guess technically they steamed, and perhaps were cooked by all three forms of heat (convection, conduction, and radiation).  Whatever the science, so delicious with ketchup.

August: fish -- mom and dad's house, Traverse City, MI.  Mom doesn't like the house to smell fishy, so I coated it with mustard and walnuts and shut it in the oven.

September: decadent pizza -- Pixley Pioneer homestead, Kalamazoo, MI.  There were multiple cheeses, olives, pepperoni, and we all chowed down.

October: whole chicken -- Katie and Ken's house, also Traverse City.  Beautiful juicy bird, beautiful jewel-like root veggies, beautiful picturesque dock on the lake, beautiful goofball friendship.

November: potato rolls -- Trucker's Cafe kitchen, Coldfoot, AK.  We make our own hamburger buns, and they are just really damn good, especially right out of the oven, with three pats of butter.

December: adolescent redemption -- also Coldfoot.  BUCHE!  I made a pretty great Yule log cake for staff dessert.  The secret?  Chocolate on chocolate on chocolate, with a scattering of crushed Oreo.

So it's been a good year of baking, despite the obstacles and shifting sands.  And hey, we had homemade lobster ravioli for Christmas, and the sun is coming back, and there's a new season of "Big Mouth," and so many more things to pop in the oven and transform into delicious goodness. 

dusky cafe

Regarded-vous les champignons mignons!

Adventageous

Presents started coming in almost two weeks ago, and of course I didn't wait to open them.  Chocolate, cheese, books, and cards to fix on the wall -- all very delightful.  The skies also delivered, with some big aurora on the solstice, as well as bright half-moon light and long-trailing meteors.  Solstice Silent Dance Party successfully traveled from the Antarctic to the Arctic.

I faced up to a self-imposed challenge tonight and tempered chocolate for the dipping of truffles and other items.  It didn't really go right, but at least there are now deliciously enrobed sweets.  A group of us also decorated sugar cookies, some less traditionally than others.  We have an army of pride-rainbow snowmen/persons and my raisin-bedazzled candy canes mixed in with wreaths and stockings.

About every third day, one of us night cooks cleans the deep fryer.  This is one of my more technical tasks, requiring screwing on a drain pipe, opening and closing a valve, floating creepy gunk on water, and cleaning around the heating element.  (Note: most of my job is moving chicken fingers from a big freezer to a little freezer to the fryer to a plate.)  The old oil gets dumped in a big plastic cube outside and, evidently, the maintenance guys burn it for some sort of fuel.  I bring all this up because, as it's difficult to pour the oil without spilling, we have attracted and -- it feels wrong to use this word in such a context -- nourished a large flock of ravens.*  I've counted as many as twenty shuffling around, cawing in human-like voices, pecking at the grease-laden snow surrounding the waste bin.

*whoa...an "unkindness," or "conspiracy," or "treachery" of ravens

Uhhhh, so, with that, merry Christmas!  Like the ravens, may we all feast on fat things, and look forward to the new that is coming.

our giant cafe tree

coming back from a walk about 3pm

Lords of the Fryer Oil

Mooses and Wolveses and Hares, So Shy

The Coldfoot Ski Team, as we jokingly refer to ourselves, drove up the road to Marion Creek the other day.  Dan generously plowed a path through the untouched snow with his wide, skins-on backcountry skis for me and Abby to follow.  We wound up the valley, which afforded broad, open vistas.  It was clear and the blue dusk hung on for hours as we glided over and around sugar-snow mounds and hillsides in the sharp -25F afternoon.

We also took advantage of the moonlight last week to night ski without headlamps.  You could see individual dark trees etched on the sides of the mountains, race your shadow cast on the snow beside you, and scan the distance for the makers of myriad animal tracks crisscrossing our trail and disappearing again into the woods.

A group of us managed to squeeze sixteen feet of spruce into the cafe and decorate it as our Christmas tree.  It is festooned with intricately cut paper snowflakes.  The thirsty fellow drinks a few gallons of water a day, and we hope he can hang on to his needles through the end of December.

I missed Antarctica and re-watched Frozen Planet for the tenth time.  But then I went to the kitchen and cut up a bunch of fresh vegetables, got a bowl of homemade caribou curry, and admired my friend's marinating ahi tuna.  Being able to cook and eat a delicious variety of foods that were not frozen for eight years and/or graded "For Institutional Use Only" is pretty nice.  I was even encouraged to request fancy cheese on our weekly food order.  Oh, and Will -- we grew our own alfalfa sprouts, openly, without breaking an international treaty.

fresh powder

whole lotta pipe

I tried but it was basically too cold for pictures at Marion Creek.