who turned off the lights?

We are well into our season of dark. The sun said 'see ya later, alligator' a week ago.
It's not so bad. We get a couple of hours of dusk in the afternoon when the edges of the sun's light manages to escape above the horizon.

So far no signs of oozing into a puddle of depression or turning into  an epic emotional volcano (well, no more than usual). I am feeling a tad rundown and frayed around the edges but that has to do more with the fact that I've been working the last 5 weeks without a day off than solar abandonment issues.

I think the reason I've be able to keep the hairy SADD monster at bay is because I spend 2 hours every night walking and playing with the pups under the sodium glow of moonlight and surrounded by the stark beauty of an arctic winterland. The fresh air, though cold is crisp and pure. As my friend Moe says, the air is so clean you want to eat it.

Oh yeah, and spiced Frangelico toddies (recipe below) help too :P

Of course, it helps to have a pair of baboons to snoogle with all night.

My dear, dashingly handsome, darling husband has been putting together videoettes of this past year's escapades to keep me smiling. It's awesome! It's like having my own personal video production team.!

Here's a videoette of what I was up to last spring:

Spiced Frangelico Toddy
serves one slightly hypothermic dog walker

1 generous ounce  of Frangelico
1 cup of boiling water
squeeze of lemon
sprinkle of nutmeg, cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice

Directions:
1) Toss ingredients into your favorite mug.
2) Gather your puppies around you.
3) Snuggle under the arm your dear, dashingly handsome, darling husband.
4) Enjoy!

Carcass Soup

(Warning: This post contains harvesting images that may be disturbing to some. If you are squeamish and don’t like seeing fluffy animals  all covered in blood as a result of a well placed headshot, you’d better move onto this entry where there are some photos of some very cute puppies.  But heck if you’re going to eat meat, you might as well face it sooner or later that a living creature had to die because you wanted to have a hamburger. At least the creatures in these photos had a life frolicking about the land, free from factory farms and didn’t have a clue what corn-based food pellets tastes like. Anyways, 'salad' is just a nice way of saying ‘vegetable massacre’.)

There are still plenty of  critters are still out there, however the odd storm event mades it tricky to catch anything but frostbite.  Kevin caught some really swell photos along with dinner.

wolf paws compared to husband`s gorilla paw

There were a number of wolves and other big fluffies other there this week. Kevin even saw woodland caribou and a moose cow with two newbies.

I don’t know who’s going to break it to the children of Inuvik but next year’s Easter Egg Hunt may have to be cancelled due to the lack of Easter Egg delivery bunnies thanks to dear, dashingly handsome, darling husband. Apparently he has a vendetta against the bunny tribe.

Most of these went to his grandmother who is actively encouraging this vendetta. 

It was a crazy whirlwind long weekend for me (as if there is such a thing as a calm, quiet long weekend around here :P )

I made ‘Carcass Soup’ to sustain us through this chilly weekend. (Recipe below.) Carcass Soup is my response to folks that tell me that the only parts worth eating on a upland bird is the breast meat and that there`s not enough meat on the rest of the bird to be worth the effort.
Seven Hells! If you`re gonna snuff out a creature`s light with you`re own two hands, you do it the courtesy of using as much of the creature as possible. I have an army of elders to back me up on this one.
I will admit, it`s a pain to be dealing with the tiny slivers of tendons that are found in the drumstick but there are ways around it .Carcass Soup is one easy way of seperating the meat from the bones for small birds.  The basic premise is to simmer it until the meat falls off the bones.  The tendons just slip right out.
Check out this video showing a slick trick for removing tendons from game birds.

A good chunk of this weekend was spent getting ready for the Great Northern Arts Festival Christmas Craft Fair (November 25-27th at MSRC). Yes, it`s that time already. I`ve rented a table to sell my handspun and hand-dyed yarns. My house looks like a muppet slaughterhouse with a gzillion skeins of newly dyed yarn hanging all over the place to dry.

The rest of my weekend was spent playing outside. Whee! My friends and I, with a pack of dogs in tow, went for a ski along the East Channel just outside of town.  There was just enough snow on the river to make for good skiing. There weren`t many skidoo trails and so there was a quite a bit of trailbreaking involved. The fun ended when I broke a ski in an attempt to  gain higher ground which sucks musk ox balls.  I hobbled back with my transverse fractured ski and a long face. However, it`s next to impossible to be too sad for long when you have these two running around you:

Afterwards, my friends and I had a big doggie biscuit baking afternoon. We had volunteered to bake dog cookies for the SPCA`s craft fair table. We made liver biscotti, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal and molasses treats and cheesy biscuits. Conservatively, I think we made over 1000 cookies.

The doggie biscuit baking crew

This week started off with a sharp cold slap to the face.  It was around -30C this morning when I trudged off to work. I walked home for lunch and arrived looking like this from my 15 minute walk from the office:

armed with beaver mitts

Frost tipped eyelashes! No winter outfit is complete without this icy bling.

Have a great week!

Carcass Soup

3-4 ptarmigan or grouse skinned carcasses (basically everything but the breasts)

water, stock, wine

couple bunchs of spinach, kale or chard (shredded) or 1 box of frozen spinach (thawed)

1 can of white kidney beans or whatever bean you feel like

• Dump the birds into a crockpot. Top with water or stock or wine or any combination of the three.
• Cook on low for 7-8 hours or until the meat begins to fall off the bone.
• Remove the bird from the broth and set aside to cool.
• Dump in the other ingredients.
• Shred the meat off the bones. Careful to slip all the tendons out of the drumstick meat. You should get about 2 cups or more of meat.
• Return meat to the soup. Let simmer for another 20 minutes.
• Serve.

This is a basic broth. You can add all the culinary bells and whistles. I added some red chili flakes and a couple shots of soy sauce. I wanted to taste the bird and the greens.  The beans provided some earthiness to the soup. Simple and tasty!

Dawn of the Ptarmigan

Out of the pre-dawn mist, rises a Ranger of the North.

The young world is held captive in mist and wind,

frost and ice.

Yet, our hero braves the arctic break of light in search of the (not so elusive) feather footed creatures of the tundra...

There! Off in the (near) distance, a wing of premature winter.  Your mistimed camouflage did you in, snow wing.

The Ranger of the North, stealthily (or as stealthily as one can while wearing Gore-Tex), takes aim.

Our Ranger of the North, returns to camp with his brace of feather footed prey of the silent 'p'.
( A little etymological trivia: The word 'ptarmigan' originates from Scottish Gaelic 'tarmachan' .  The pt- spelling is a mistaken Greek construction from 1680's, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. I know, I'm such a geek.)

He heralds two of the tundra’s most feared tailed mercenaries to flush out the rest of the (not so elusive) feather footed creatures of the tundra. 

Lyra squeals,  “I smell them! Over here! Hurry, hurry!”

“For dog’s sake,“ mutters Loulou,  “calm down before you pee on yourself.”

Onto the rolling tundra they traverse, in search of the rest of the feather footed creatures of the tundra.

In the end, our Ranger of the North returns to camp with the morning’s bounty.

My darling, dashingly handsome, dear husband (yes that his official blog designation) ran off for a few days with the girls and a hunting buddy in search of caribou and moose.  This was the closest they got to a caribou:

LOL!

As you can see,  he did find plenty of small game to fill the Rubbermaid bounty bins.  

Apparently, he was keen on taking down the equivalence of a caribou’s worth of ptarmigan. Not that I’m complaining...

Stay tuned to find out what madcap culinary adventures are in store for these feather footed yummies.