Author Archives: Jack & Barbra Donachy

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About Jack & Barbra Donachy

Writers, photographers, food lovers, anglers, travelers and students of poetry

Ink and Light: Watching for Whales and a thought about roads less traveled (and places seldom fished)

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Watching for Whales: Point Hope, Alaska

The Inupiat Eskimos of Point Hope, Alaska (population 750) harvest an average of five to 10 Bowhead Whales each spring as part of their subsistence traditions. The season begins in March as whaling crews begin making trails over the frozen sea – at times an arduous task as the sea ice has often buckled up into fairly tall, jagged ridges and it may be several miles over frozen ocean to reach the open leads where the Bowhead and Belugas migrate. Crews still use traditional umiaks, boats made by stretching the skin of Bearded Seals over handcrafted wooden frames. Managed for sustainability, the Chukchi Sea’s Bowhead Whale population is increasing.

When I recall places like this, I wish nothing more than for this to be he way it is for the rest of my life – pointing a pickup truck upstream, upriver, up tide, cutting through forests or along beaches, looking for fish in places only a few people know about, can get to… have time for.
Jack Donachy – from Gravel Lick, 1991

Barbra and I lived in Point Hope, Alaska, from 2011 – 2014.

The Blueberry Bourbon Bomb – It’s Friday… Bombs Away!

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This one’s easy to make and even easier to drink. Happy Friday!

Blueberry Bourbon Bomb

  1. Place two or three ice cubes in an 8-ounce glass
  2. In a cocktail shaker, place:
    • 3/4 ounce blueberry syrup (or blueberry juice with simple syrup)
    • 1 tsp lime juice
    • 1.5 ounces bourbon
    • 3 ice cubes
  3. Shake vigorously.
  4. Pour into glasses, top off with carbonated water and gently stir.

It’s five o’clock somewhere! Bombs away!

Ink and Light: Silver on Ice and lines from John Masefield

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Silver on Ice: Onboard Gillie, Gulf of Alaska outside Resurrection Bay

Also known as Silver Salmon, tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of Coho Salmon return to Resurrection Bay near Seward, Alaska each summer where they constitute the greatest Coho Salmon sport fishery in the world. 

I must go down to the sea again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
John Masefield – Sea Fever, 1912

John Masefield (1878-1967) went to sea at the age of 16. About a year later he deserted ship, initially thereafter living as a vagrant and taking odd jobs, but the awe he experienced on the open sea never left him. Masefield was England’s Poet Laureate from 1930-1967.

Razzle Dazzle ‘Em with Raspberry Cream Pie

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Looking to expand my cookie recipe collection, I bought a new baking recipe book a couple of weeks ago. I found a beautiful book which boasted over 150 interesting cookie ideas. After reading the book cover-to-cover, I decided to try a layered chocolate biscuit. It was a disaster. The biscuit dough completely and totally fell apart when I rolled it out and there seemed to be no way to salvage it. I really hate wasting anything, so I baked the crumbs of dough anyway figuring that if they tasted good, I’d find a way to put them to good use. Well, they did taste good, and so for several days they sat on the counter in an air-tight container awaiting inspiration.

This past weekend I reached for my tried and true Williams-Sonoma Baking Book. The book fell open to a beautiful picture of a pie with a deep brown cholatey crust and a creamy pink filling. Raspberry cream pie – of course! As luck would have it, we still have a good supply of frozen raspberries from last summer’s berry picking. Raspberries and chocolate are a perfect match, in my book.

What a delight! The look of this lovely pie certainly suggests Valentine’s Day, but any day would be a good day for this light, airy dessert. I think the best way to describe the flavor is to imagine a 50/50 bar, otherwise known as a Dreamcicle – creamy vanilla ice cream in the middle surrounded by a slightly tart, fruit exterior, usually orange. This pie filling has that same creaminess with a slight tang of sour from the fresh raspberries. The crunch of the chocolate crust provides the perfect textural counterbalance. Next time you want to tell someone you love them, make them a raspberry cream pie!

Raspberry Cream Pie

Ingredients

  • 1 1/4 cups chocolate cookie crumbs
  • 5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  • 3 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1/4 cup cold water
  • 1 package (2 tsp) unflavored powdered gelatin
  • 2/3 cup natural raspberry juice or fresh raspberry purée
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/2  cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions

  1. Place oven rack in the middle of oven and preheat to 350° F (180° C).
  2. In a medium bowl, combine chocolate cookie crumbs, butter, and granulated sugar. Stir until all is evenly mixed.
  3. Press the cookie crumb mixture into bottom of 9-inch pie pan or springform pan.
  4. Bake until firm, about 5 minutes.
  5. Let crust cool on wire rack.
  6. Pour cold water into a saucepan. Sprinkle with gelatin and let sit until gelatin softens and swells (about 5 minutes).
  7. Heat gelatin over medium heat. Stir until it is clear and fluid.
  8. Stir gelatin mixture into raspberry juice. Set aside.
  9. In a medium bowl, whisk eggs, sugar, and salt until pale yellow. Set aside.
  10. In a large bowl, beat or whisk the cream until thick, soft peaks form.
  11. Add egg mixture to whipped cream. Whip until smooth.
  12. Add raspberry mixture to cream mixture. Whip until smooth.
  13. Pour filling into the crumb crust. Even out with a rubber spatula.
  14. Refrigerate until the filling is cold and firm (4-6 hours).
  15. Let the pie stand at room temperature for about 20 minutes before serving.
  16. Serve topped with sweetened whipped cream and fresh berries.

Waiter! Another oven fresh Soft Pretzel with a Deep Red Ale, please

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A couple of weeks ago, Jack and I took our biannual trip to the big city – Anchorage. Since we’ve been brewing our own beer this year, we felt it was our moral and professional obligation to sample different types of beers in order to best serve our customers. All right, morals and professions have nothing to do with this tasting quest. And we happen to be our own best customers, but whatever. Tasting beer is fun and actually educational! We met up with a guy at the 49th State Brewing Company who told us he is studying to be a Cicerone (think beer sommelier). He will become a trained and certified beer professional! After talking through the beer menu with him, we diligently read descriptions and critically tasted several beers in order to get a handle on what we really liked and what food pairings we could imagine with 49th State’s brews. By the way, they have a diverse selection with beers featuring imaginative and complex flavors. We highly recommend making 49th State Brewing a stop on your tour of Anchorage. We came back home with a new appreciation of the levels of complexity we are producing in our little home brewery.

When we returned to Chignik Lake, one of our batches of new beer was ready to try. This beer recipe was produced by a company called Brew Demon. The brew, Deep Red Ale, came out nicely. It had a deep red-brown color with a slight nutty flavor, mildly hoppy, with a touch of malt and a beautiful head. Jack says, “When I drink this beer, I imagine enjoying it with fried or grilled by the campfire.” 

One night in Anchorage, we decided to enjoy a Giant pretzel along with our beer tasting. The bakers at 49th State Brewing nailed this pretzel. It was delightfully chewy with that expected glossy exterior speckled with high quality salt. And it was Huge. It was a perfect accompaniment to a delicious beer – and a perfect idea to recreate in my home bakery. To go with our deep red ale, this time I stuck to my time-tested regular-sized pretzel recipe. The giant pretzel is on the baking goal list. Stay tuned for that recipe.

Soft Pretzels

Ingredients

  • 4 tsp active dry yeast
  • 1 tsp granulated sugar
  • 1 1/4 cups warm water (110° F/45° C)
  • 4 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tbsp granulated sugar
  • 1 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • 1/4 cup baking soda
  • 4 cups hot water
  • kosher salt for topping

Directions

  1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tsp sugar in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes.
  2. Mix one cup of flour and 2 tbsp sugar into the yeast mixture.
  3. Mix an additional cup of flour and salt into the dough mixture.
  4. Continue adding flour by half cups.
  5. Add additional flour if dough is too wet.
  6. Knead dough until smooth (about 7 minutes).
  7. Oil a large bowl. Place dough in bowl and turn until coated.
  8. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let dough list un a warm place for an hour. Dough should double in size.
  9. Preheat oven to 450° F (230° C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
  10. In a large pot, dissolve baking soda in hot water.
  11. Divide dough into 12 equal pieces.
  12. Roll each piece into a rope and twist into a pretzel shape.
  13. Once the dough pieces are shaped, dip them into the hot baking soda solution.
  14. Placed dipped pretzels onto prepared baking sheets. Sprinkle with kosher salt.Bake in preheated oven for 8 minutes. Finished pretzels will be golden brown.
  15. Let pretzels cool slightly and enjoy them with your favorite mustard and a delicious red ale.

Ink and Light: Snow Birds and Basho

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Snow Birds: House Sparrows, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Come!
Let’s go snow-viewing
till we’re buried!
Matsuo Basho, 1644 – 1694

House Sparrow males and females are dimorphic: a female is center in this photo, accompanied by three males. This species has adapted so well to life with people, they’ve become nearly ubiquitous in places of human habitation throughout the world – and nearly absent in more natural environments.

Basho suffered from severe bouts of depression, occasionally becoming recluse for long periods of time. A solitary nature took him on a number of journeys, alone, along routes that were often well off the beaten path. The Edo Five Routes which he followed on one of his earliest journeys were considered to be among Japan’s most dangerous roads; When he first embarked on this trek, he expected to be killed by thieves or to simply die along the way. Widely regarded as the world’s finest master of hokku (haiku), his poetic travel log Oku no Hosomichi (The Narrow Road to the Interior) is considered to be his finest work. 

More Vegetables, Please! Spiced Carrot Cake with Rich Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

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Packed with raisins, pecans and puréed carrots, this is a tasty way to enjoy a serving (or two) of carrots!

Living out in bush Alaska, there are certain ingredients that are a luxury in our pantry – like cream cheese. With recent outdoor temperatures agreeably mimicking a nicely chilled fridge, it was time to mail order dairy items requiring colder temperatures. Our here in Chignik Lake, Alaska, we’ve been relying heavily on the wonderful services of the mail order department at the Anchorage Fred Meyer (Debarr store). About every two weeks, we email a grocery list to the store and within four to five days, we receive  our items carefully wrapped or zip-top bagged for a nominal packing fee. A few weeks ago, we received heavy whipping cream, cream cheese and sour cream all nicely chilled in the belly of a little bush plane. Culinary feats take a bit of planning ahead, but with the cooperating weather, we can get most of what we need out here in tiptop condition. I can’t speak highly enough of our mail order friends in the Debarr Fred Meyer store!

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that I periodically bake for my students. This has now become a time-honored tradition that has followed me through several schools. Last week, one of my students requested a cake for our “bake sale” (students can spend tickets they earn in class on a variety of rewards, including my baked creations). After my students polished off a bag of trail mix packed with raisins and nuts last week, I was confident that a carrot cake stuffed with nuts and raisins would be healthful and would be well-received by my young customers. Ok, and I like carrot cake, too, so I picked up my trusty Williams-Sonoma Baking Book to see what they had to say on the subject. Every recipe I’ve tried in this book has come out fantastically. The carrot cake recipe looked delicious. The one difference I noticed is that it called for puréed instead of shredded carrots. Pumpkin purée is a favorite, so why not a purée of carrots? Turns out the purée adds more moisture and the carrot flavor is slightly sweeter. I modified the recipe a bit and was highly pleased with the result. The cake was moist and smooth. The texture was only improved by the chopped nuts and raisins. What did the students say? They loved it! They especially liked the spice and the frosting, of course. If you won’t believe the kids, all the adults I shared the cake with agreed it was delicious!

Spiced Carrot Cake with Rich Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

  • 3/4 lb carrots, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch slices
  • 1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • generous pinch salt
  • 1 tsp ground cinnamon
  • 1/2 tsp mace (or substitute nutmeg)
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/3 firmly packed light brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup whole milk
  • 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
  • 3/4 cup pecans, chopped coarse
  • 1/2 cup golden raisins
  • cream cheese frosting (see recipe below)

Directions

  1. Boil carrots until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain and let cool.
  2. Purée the carrots with a blender, stick blender or food processor. Set aside.
  3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180° C). Line the bottom of an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper. Set aside.
  4. In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and mace.
  5. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs, brown sugar, milk and butter.
  6. Whisk the flour mixture into the egg mixture.
  7. Whisk in the carrot purée.
  8. Fold in the pecans and raisins.
  9. Pour batter into square baking pan.
  10. Bake 45 – 50 minutes in preheated oven. Cake will be lightly browned and wooden pick inserted into middle of cake will come out clean when cake is done.
  11. Let cake cool on a wire rack.
  12. Run a knife around edge of pan. Invert cake onto serving plate. Peel off parchment paper.
  13. Frost cake and serve right away.

Rich Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients

  • 4 oz. cream cheese
  • 2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  • 3/4 cup powdered sugar
  • 3/4 tsp pure vanilla extract

Directions

  1. Using a mixer, beat all the frosting ingredients on medium speed until mixture is totally smooth and well-mixed.
  2. Alternatively, hand-mix all the frosting ingredients until smooth and totally mixed using a rubber spatula.

Ink and Light: The Bones of Tikigaq and a Tribute to Tatanka Yotanka, Sitting Bull

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Whale Bones and Ruins: Old Tikigaq Village, Point Hope, Alaska

Tikigaq’s sod, driftwood and whalebone igloos (homes) were occupied until the mid-1970’s when the village was abandoned due to erosion from the sea. By this time, some of the houses were wired for electricity. Sigluaks, freezers dug deep in the permafrost at Tikigaq, are still used by the people of nearby Point Hope to store the whale meat they’ve harvested.

If a man loses anything
and goes back and looks carefully for it
he will find it…
Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotȟake (Sitting Bull) – Pine Ridge Reservation Speech, 1883

Tatanka Yotanka (1831-1890) was a Lakota Sioux holy man who earned his place in history through his fierce resistance to white encroachment on Lakota lands. A vision he had seemed to foretell the victory a combined force of Sioux and Cheyenne would have over United States troops led by General Custer at The Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. In 1880, Tatanka Yotanka was assassinated by Indian Agency Police at Fort Yates on the Standing Rock Agency (reservation) who feared that he would lead an uprising. His remains are buried near his birthplace in Mobridge, South Dakota. A monument marks the site.

dg nanouk okpik’s Corpse Whale – Sifting through Myth and Time in the Far North

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Reading these poems is reminiscent of carefully digging through an archeological site located in Arctic permafrost as fossils, bones, carvings, memories and spirits emerge.

While looking for a few words to accompany a photo of umiaks (seal skin whaling boats) framed in Northern Lights I’d made a few years ago, I came across these lines from dg nanouk okpik’s poem “Tulunigraq: Something Like a Raven:”

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Okpik arranges her images across the page in a manner that forces the reader to go slowly, to breathe slowly, to see, and to hear, and as Barbra and I read, we felt ourselves being taken back – to Alaska’s North Slope, to the village of Point Hope and to other places we’d been in the far north, and then further back, to places we’ve never been – to old Tikigaq, to villages and settings scattered across Alaska and Greenland and beyond, to a time, indeed, “before iron and oil.”

Okpik’s writing is sure and precise, at times reminiscent of carefully sifting through an archeological dig, creating anticipation for what might be found and reverence for what is found. The place she invites the reader into is one of myth-making, spirituality, subsistence hunting and gathering, veneration of elders and ancestors and an intimacy with sinew and bone and cold. The landscape is of ice and sea, of magma cooling and the vast sweep of the tundra. Threaded through this are spirits and caribou, whales and ground squirrels, edible plants and seal oil lamps, Eucharist wafers and hooligan jigs. Okpik has given us poems that take us to places and to times few of us have experienced or will experience. The journey is mesmerizing.

Assignment #6: A Sense of Place – Suutei Tsai in a Mongolian Ger

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Outdoor Photographer’s challenge two weeks ago: an environmental, visual or cultural photo depicting a strong connection with a specific place. Here, our hostess at her ger in the Mongolian countryside prepares a pot of suutei tsai to take the chill off an October night – piping hot milk with a little tea and a dash of salt.