Dear Friends and Family,
Nothing big going on this week, well I mean no Fair or 1st Birthday parties. Steve made an amazing zucchini lasagna for dinner on Weds., on Thurs. we had our friends Kay and Rick over for a Brazilian dinner but this time he made a flan with guava caramel! IT WAS MAGNIFICENT! The party didn’t end until 10:30- we are working stiffs and still needed to clean up-LOL! Needless to say, Friday morning was a bit rough for both of us! I’m not sure if I have told you about them but Kay was raised in Haines and married Rick who is now a pilot for Delta. They live in Savage, MN and come up for a few months every summer. They are just gems and sometimes come and hand us a crab or two that they had caught!
Friday was the first Friday of the month and all the little shops open for locals, they have samples, wine & cheese, fun little cocktails with fireweed or some other local thing. So now that Steve can actually walk, we decided to go…unfortunately, most of the businesses didn’t participate because they needed a break. The cruise ship season had been nonstop and they have been open much more than usual. We decided to just go home and eat our steamed artichokes!
Saturday, I got my hair cut and colored. She REALLY does and excellent job and I couldn’t be happier that I found someone who can do my hair. (For those of you who don’t know, I have A LOT of hair and it is rather course and curly, so finding someone who can actually cut it correctly-basically a long crew cut-and color it correctly is a BLESSING!!!) Our almost daughter-in-law, Lauren, told me I have Viking hair, which makes sense. What she meant was, that when you process my hair it takes much longer than most people and she was always afraid to process it that long for fear of frying it. Saturday evening, we made Lion’s Tap Smash burgers on our griddle but on the grill outside, well it was our attempt using their seasoning. I thought they were AMAZING! I thought, if Steve can (almost) imitate Lion’s Tap, I think I can live here for a while!
Sunday, we had the McPhetres over for brunch. We had Shakshuka, beet and turnip greens salad, and naan. It was DIVINE!!! I’m not sure what we did the rest of the day, all I know is I NEED a week off to recuperate from our social calendar here in Haines! I guess everyone is exhausted in the summer because there is so much going on and everyone knows, come fall, that all ends
Steve made refrigerator pickles…for those of you who don’t know, he wouldn’t go ANY WHERE NEAR a pickle for the 43 years I’ve known him! But last year when we went to Daytona for my water aerobics convention, we went to a “farmer’s market” that was HUGE!!! Not so much produce but more like a flea market on steroids. We saw this long line of people and whenever we see a long line, we get in line because they are obviously on to something! It turns out it was a line for STEVE’S PICKLES!!! Steve decided all these people can’t be wrong, so we stayed in line, and they were giving out samples, he tried a few and was HOOKED!!! I think I had told him for 43 years that he would love pickles…but wouldn’t listen to me! He listened to all these strangers standing in line and finally realized, “Hey, I LOVE PICKLES!” So much so that he bought a couple of containers of them and ate them up before we left Florida. This summer he bought pickling cucumbers from the farmers market and tried his hand at pickling. They turned out awesome!!! I am so BLESSED to be living with this amazing chef!!! I’m sure I eat better than most of America-LOL. We had a Salmon bowl this week, honey sriracha salmon, brown rice, avocado, cucumber, red cabbage and left over elote corn drizzled with a bang-bang sauce! You would pay a LOT OF $$$ for this creation!!! He found a recipe for elote corn ribs. You cut a piece of corn in half and then quarter each half lengthwise. You then mix them with garlic, paprika, salt, pepper, cumin and put them in the air fryer. They curl while they are cooking and you can eat the corn off the core, like a rib. They were DELICIOUS!!! The corn here, sorry but it has 0% flavor…maybe less that that…we miss our corn crack dealer, Klingelhutz Corn from Waconia, MN!!! But we are making the best of our of a bad corn situation. Last night we had Salmon with a green peppercorn aioli that Steve made, along with prosciutto wrapped asparagus and ribbon zucchini with parmesan and crispy prosciutto. The salmon was caught by friends, we bought the zucchini at the farmers market so much of the meal is locally sourced.
We got the SEARHC kitchen cart in Haines for a whole week. The kitchen cart is a portable kitchen that travels around Southeast AK to different SEARHC clinics. It is really cool, has a burner, small oven & a blender. The sides all flip out so that you can cook and people can sit around and watch or participate. We took it to Klukwan, which is a town where most of the Native Alaskan’s live. It is basically their land and their village. They have a little grocery store, but they don’t have much fresh food, it’s mostly junk. They have a HUGE community garden but many of the Natives don’t utilize the garden because they have no idea what to do with these vegetables. We made a green smoothie with spinach, a kale salad with shredded carrots & beets with a balsamic dressing and a kale, white bean, potato soup. We were trying to show them what to do with spinach, carrots, beets, potatoes, and kale. We had about 14 women and they helped us chop and wash and put things together. They LOVED IT! They want us to come back. You have to understand, they were used to eating Hooligan oil (made from Hooligan fish) and moose, deer, rabbit, beaver, muskrat, hooligan, salmon, halibut, crab & shrimp and berries, rhubarb, that they could forage. There are also several local greens that they harvest. The most interesting thing is a Fiddle Head Fern. It must be harvested early in the season because at some point, it goes from being nutritional to poisonous! We bought some pickled fiddle head ferns at the farmers market when we first got here which were pretty good. At some point, I will show you some traditional recipes. Some of them look TOTALLY DIGUSTING to me, but they grew up eating it and love it! I’m starting to really enjoy my work as the learning curve of Mt. Everest, had been summited!!!
We love you all and miss our friends and family!
Kiss, Kiss,
Stephanie
Haines Happenings 