Gardening where I live, part 117: Last night I was reading at the kitchen table when a brown blur crossed my peripheral vision.
A moving brown blur. A really big brown blur.
Turned my head to the left and yep, a cow moose was walking into our yard, followed by a tottery little calf. Right toward our garden full of young quinoa, lettuce, celery, tomatoes, strawberries and other plants.
Yesterday I pulled a T-shirt out of my “play clothes” pile, i.e., the stuff that’s too faded/holey to wear in polite company but just fine for slopping around like a freelancer. It was my old Alaska Sisters in Crime T-shirt, from way back in the 1990s.
In case you are unfamiliar with that organization: SinC is made up of readers who enjoy mysteries and wish to support and encourage those written by women.
The shirt our chapter made up bore the slogan: “Sisters in Crime Alaska: Where the trail is always cold.” Which is a lot funnier if you’re a fan of mysteries, thrillers, whodunits or police procedurals.
(I’m proud to say that I came up with the slogan myself.)
What does this have to do with the late writer Sue Grafton? I’m getting to that.
What the poet says, but for different reasons. For me, April is the month with the most unpleasant associations.
Tax day, for sure; I always panic come IRS time, even though I haven’t done anything wrong. (My tax guy at Block Solutions says his experience is that the honest people are the most nervous, whereas the push-the-envelope or outright sleazy types are completely fine with the annual forms.)
But April is also the month of my ex’s birthday and also our wedding anniversary. His birthday is April 1 – insert your own punchline here. (I certainly have.)
Our anniversary is much more troubling. That was the day I entered into what would become 23 years of gradually unfolding torment. As I was getting dressed for the wedding, my sisters and my mom joked that there was still time: They had fast cars and could sweep me and my daughter out of there.
Now I think maybe they weren’t joking.
On the other hand, if I hadn’t married him I would never have made it to Alaska – which changed my life on several levels.
Yesterday found me waxing housewife-ish because DF was on his way home from a nine-day trip. After long trips I love walking into our home to find out he’s cleaned or boiled up some whale chunks. Thus I make it a point to return the favor when he goes out of town.
For starters, I washed the sheets and hung them on the line, along with the blanket and comforter. Next I opened some windows and briefly aired out the place, taking advantage of high-30s temps and a mild breeze.
Finally I baked one of his favorite dishes: homemade turkey pie. It’s kind of a pain to make because it has so many moving parts (more on that below), and this one was even more challenging because I used a bigger, deeper pie pan than usual. Since I had pastry dough left over I decided to make a raspberry-rhubarb pie as well.
Believe it or not, I’d completely spaced that today is Pi Day.
Jana from the Jana Says blog recently wrote about half a dozen good things happening in her life. The post was an antidote to a previous article in which she screamed rather primally about a whole lot of bad, frustrating stuff.
I hear her on both counts. Now I’m going to steal her format, and share half a dozen decent occurrences of my own.
(Got six good things – or even one – of your own? Do share, in the comments.)
We’ll start with something sweet:
This morning DF cut five pounds of pork loin (99 cents a pound!) into one-inch chunks that he dredged in flour and spices and then seared in hot oil. They went into the slow cooker along with green enchilada sauce, salsa verde, green chiles, and sautéed onion and pickled jalapeno.
Not all the meat went in; the chile verde recipe called for five pounds but the pork loin he’d bought was 5.38 pounds. He brought a chunk down the hall for me to taste.
The meat was tender and flavorful, slightly zingy with spice but not overwhelmingly so.
“Well done you!” I said.
“That’s the name of my cooking school: Well Done U,” he replied.
DF is known for his love of charred foods, from blackened salmon to burned toast. He is also known for his puns, which means I’ve found the man of my dreams: Someone whose mind is wont to take the same slightly twisted paths that my own brain favors.
Instead of writing one long column, I’m doing a handful of random short takes.
Local boys make good: Portugal. The Man took a Grammy for best pop duo/group performance. Still giddy over this, even though I don’t know them. At one point I may have met Eric Howk, the guitarist, because I used to work with his mom.
Point being, it was a band that originated in the Last Frontier and has worked hard since the oughties. It’s great to have something Alaskan other than oil fields and giant cabbages being celebrated nationally (and internationally).
Rock on, guys – and I say that as someone who listens exclusively to the classical music station.
Winter-ish: We got a little snow, and the temperature has dropped below zero at night so it’s sorta-kinda-winter. On the whole, the season has been a disappointment, especially for Nordic skiers and the guys and gals who plow driveways as a side hustle.
Dear Lower 48: Please give back our snow. We miss it.
Tonight’s dinner featured quinoa eaten within 30 feet of where it was grown. Not too many Alaskans – or too many U.S. citizens, actually – can say that.
This was our first year of growing quinoa and it did quite well. It grew tall quickly and never actually flowered, but its colorful seed heads were lovely to look upon.
What we ate was based on a recipe called Chicken Enchilada Quinoa Bake. “Based on” because I nixed the cheese (DF isn’t a fan) and also the green chiles (didn’t have any). The enchilada sauce* was homemade, from the Budget Bytes recipe, because it’s so easy and so cheap to make.
The cheese- and chile-less version was delicious. What made it even more special was how we got the seeds from the stalks. We’d done some by hand, which is a laborious (though oddly contemplative) process. At some point DF suggested we look up quinoa harvesting machines. We found one, too, but the cost was $899.
So we kept looking – and found the Rube Goldberg-esque design of our dreams.
Last night I participated in Nerd Nite, Anchorage-style. Which is probably like Nerd Nite across the nation and in some other countries: Three speakers get 20 minutes each to talk about whatever subject geeks them out the most.
Also, there’s beer.
You can probably guess what I talked about.
Yep: personal finance. Specifically, why we lose our damn minds at Christmas and how to go about breaking the cycle. I was the second speaker, following a retired judge who spoke about Alaska judicial selection, which was a lot more interesting than it sounds. Then again, I’m nerdy.
It was 20 degrees this morning. About time, too: This has been a weirdly warm fall, with temperatures in the low 50s as recently as the past weekend. Not that I like shivering when I get up, mind you, but it seems appropriate to the season.
Yet while putting the yard to bed today DF harvested the last of the green and red leaf lettuce. Planted right next to the house, it escaped the freeze. We ate some of the leaves on our suppertime hamburgers.
“The last of the outdoor harvest,” he noted. “Eating lettuce from the yard on October 16…Most years you think you’re lucky to be eating it on September 16.”
As I said: weirdly warm. Yet I felt a pang even as I snapped the crisp lettuce ribs between my teeth. Delicious – and the last. We’ll be blessed if we eat fresh salad again in June.