Back in AK, SAF Review, Natural History Museum

We're back in AK! The journey and all associated logistics went very smoothly, it was just so long. About 27 hours in transit all told, and we gained 9 hours! It's 8.15 here in Anchorage: since we arrived at midnight local time and had left our truck some distance away at someone's house, we did what we've never done before and spent the night at a hotel! I'm at Super 8 this morning, while Phil is hiking out in the cold and snow the long distance to where our truck was stored. It was about 10 degrees Celcius when we left London: here, it's about 10 degrees Fahrenheit! So, about a foot of snow on the ground and too cold to snow more.

Phil will be glad of the hike: in London he was underexercised and always looking for more ways to bust a sweat! Here he is using a dull old planer to try and take some of the concave out of my mom's ancient cutting board.

We're not going to be home for a few days, because circumstances and appointments next week dictate that we just stay in Anchorage through next Wednesday, so we'll be home just in time for Thanksgiving! I am so ready to be home right now: I want to see how my cultures and ferments are doing, and would have loved to have had more than a day's lead time to prep for Thanksgiving jollifications. But we'll make our best of some extra days of floating here.

I'm also looking forward to getting back to work and to a more regular schedule with the blog. What that will look like is something I need to muse about some more - any advice or requests? Meanwhile, of course, there are several more review and reflection posts backed up from our time in London.

We did manage to visit the immense Whole Foods Market in High Street Kensington,

with a branch of Saf Raw Food Restaurant in the upstairs food court

Saf stands for 'simple authentic food.' So, it sounds like an ethnic title but is actually an acronym. The simple' may be misleading, though: although the food prep and dining area is all plain, austere, linear and uncluttered...

and the plating style is simple and elegant, with good color and shape contrasts and space on the plate...

...the food itself is quite a gourmet experience and was not simple to prepare by any means, I'm sure. I was attracted by a couple of salad menu options, including a very tempting raw seaweed salad, but decided that in order to really try out what they had on offer, I should get something more 'raw gourmet.' Pictured above is 'Pesto au poivre,' from the appetizer menu. It should really be called 'fromage au poivre,' as the pesto is just a small layer in the cashew cheeze. The poivre is pink peppercorns crusting the top of the cheeze. Served with a small arugula (or 'rocket,' as they call it there) salad, some raw crackers and a beautiful balsamic vinegar reduction. Simple it may look, but there's some serious lead time to produce this innocent-looking fare. The crackers were beet and flax-based and quite delicious. Thinner, crisper and more oily than my crackers, and the one that I saved to take home for my mom held its crunch very well. Close to 24 hours of dehydrating there. The cheeze: probably cultured overnight. Delicious, creamy, slightly sweet, no overwhelming spice notes. The pink peppercorns had that delicious, slightly tannic, almost citrusy note, similar to hibiscus, with the addition of a mild spiciness. None of the dryness of the palate of black pepper. The pesto was a robust, straightforward basil pesto, also delicious.

I ate the salad, most of the crackers and half the cheeze, and took the rest home to share with my mum. She loved it all, and my youngest brother (who lives with my parents) hit the cheeze pretty hard and wanted to know where he could get more. This food was delicious and nourishing to the soul as well as the body. It was expensive, though. That plate at 7 pounds 50, was a pound and a half more than it cost to go through the buffet at Vita Organic/Vantra, where you could get a whole selection of different salads, stews, etc. And the entrees at Saf, which included raw options like pad thai and cooked options like beautifully stuffed squashes, were more like thirteen pounds. They also had juices, elixirs, and a smoothie option, and a dessert menu including raw ice cream, chocolate ganache cake, berry cake. So, Saf is a very different dining experience than Vantra. I was very happy to see both of them available in London. I would imagine myself going to Saf for very special occasions and to Vantra/Vita-O more regularly.

I didn't get a dessert at Saf, tempted though I was, because I thought it would hurt my pocket too much, and I was finally in a place, at this Whole Foods, where there was a variety of raw food bars and chocolates available for purchase!

Those 'conscious' bars are raw chocolate; there were a couple of other things as well on the other side of this display. Super-expensive, but I considered it my duty to buy a couple and try them out. A few such nibbles rounded out my  lunch for the day and will be the subject of another review soon.

We wandered around the Whole Foods some more: it was really something to gawk at! A huge olive and antipasti bar, all kinds of fine wines, great rolls of grana padano and parmiggiano reggiano cheeses stacked high, and even a special little cheese shop, with closed doors to spare us the stink!

And then downstairs on the lower ground floor, a fantastic selection of beautiful produce of all kinds, mostly organic, as well as fresh fish and meat counters. A big raw foods selection, packaged and ingredients both, a 'concoct your own granola' (or 'muesli,' as it's called in the UK) in the bulk area, a chocolatier, big frozen foods section. I was impressed with the variety of non-dairy ice creams available, made from coconut, cashews, almonds and rice as well as the soy kinds. Last time I was over, there was hardly any non-dairy ice cream available.  There was a whole aisle of chocolate beside the chocolatier counter too, and it really brought home just how much more expensive raw chocolate is over there: the chocolate aisle looked positively cheap in comparison, and it was all fine artisan brands!

I wish I'd taken more pictures: it was a truly impressive shopping opportunity. The most impressive contraption that made me giggle but also widen my eyes in awe was a separate side-by-side escalator for trolleys (aka shopping carts) for going up and down in the store. For all that huge quantity of stuff that you're going to buy. Going right into the center of town to buy groceries still seems counterintuitive to me, but of course back in the day, all the markets were in the center. I ended up with several very expensive little goodies that I'll review soon. Their checkout and queue system wasn't the best: they did like they do at REI, with a single line feeding to all the cashiers, and it seemed like a lot of space devoted to queueing without any added efficiency.

We walked alongside Hyde Park and down to the Natural History Museum, where we walked around enthralled until closing-time almost three hours later! It's so many years since I'd been there, and it was just marvelous to go with Phil, who is such a lover and expert on everything naturally historical.

Here is Phil with the front end of the blue whale: one of the most impressive displays, life-size, juxtaposed with a whole gallery of mammals.

Near the back end of the blue whale, you could pick up the phone to hear what the elephant said! Too funny.

 

I need to get back to being here in Anchorage with our friends, am on someone else's computer right now, but really wanted to get this out.

Lots of love to all, and I'll be in contact and writing more.