Happy Birthday Phil; Not Much About Refeeding

It's Phil's birthday and I'm eating enough for two people living through an Arctic winter. In a tent. What was that, Phil? Distorted who???

I'm going to save feeling sorry for myself with refeeding woes for another post--although it is really uncomfortable and scary, and I've discovered a new oxymoron (as my friends are exhausted from hearing): masochistic gratification. More on that soon. For now, I quit feeling sorry for myself, and feel sorry for Phil instead--because he has to live with me? No, because he's so OLD!!! Cue music: "When I'm sixty-four!"

Sorry, I must have lost my tongue in my cheek. Both are so engorged right now--both tongue and both cheeks--that it's hard to tell one from the other.

Let's see if I can get one thing right. Phil is universally beloved in his local and his wider community. Check.
This year, he's achieved yet more notoriety in the local press, as a wise counselor for the Library Advisory Board (that's where you advise the City to give the library more money because reading is vitally important to the liveliness of the community and new books keep us vibrant)...

Source: Homer Tribune. Notice his book!

But Phil also has a sideline, although he would probably call it his mainline; his desired time allocation for it is mainlining the clock chime, as...a mammoth hunter! Yes, mammoths trod the ground we live on, or more likely, ground that formerly occupied  the space on which we stand, slump, or slide. As Phil's hiking speed has slowed to slightly less than warp, he's learned to appreciate the fact that you see more at a slower pace. And so, every time (the mainlined time) he's out the door, he's hunting, semi-systematically, for mammoth parts. Our neighbor recently told me that after hiking with Phil a couple times, he's found himself looking at the ground in certain places in certain ways at certain tides just as Phil does. On our hikes together, we sometimes divide up the beach, and tease each other with bits of petrified wood or layered metamorphic rock that could resemble "the real thing." 

Here's his hand with a piece of molar found last December...

Source: Juneau Empire

...and here's the whole Phil with that same molar

Source: Fairbanks News Miner--this news travels!

The pictures haven't hit the press yet, but he found another piece just a couple weeks ago.
Well, record-time post here. I need to round up the gifts, food, etc, for Phil's party we need to leave for imminently. Oh, and get out of my cooking clothes. I think I might have dirtied every single utensil in the cabin and the water to the kitchen is frozen off.
Next post, if I manage it, I'll be heading out on my trip to see my psych for a very very important decision. Although my mom just told me that bipolar is just a thyroid imbalance. So maybe I just need to get my thyroid dose right and I won't need my magical lithium after all.

The Dangerous Affair of the Black Dog in the Night-time

Plus Sides to House/Dog-sitting:

• Indoor plumbing, including running water (including warm water, shower, laundry)
• Lots of space, so you can spin in a circle without running into something
• Full-size kitchen with a full-size oven (I was the main appreciater of this)
• Impressive dvd/streaming/tv set (Phil was the main appreciater of this)
• Lots of indoor plants (we only have room for a couple if we want to be able to set down a cup or piece of paper)

Minus Sides to Dog-sitting:

• Dog hair on your plate
• Being woken multiple times in the night by a dog obsessed with her dead bunny out in the yard but not wanting to stay out
• Getting stuck somewhere (home or a trailhead) because a dog isn't coming when called
• Dog coming home wearing a stench so noisome, the other dog recoils 
• Two dogs puking in the wee hours of the morning, having feasted on porcupine bones during a hike
• And, the BIG minus--take a big, goofy, brave foolhardy dog, like the one on the left below (she's much bigger now than in this photo from last year, a fair bit bigger than the other dog)...

 ...and take a bluff like this, with our cabin eighteen feet back from it (our neighbors where we're staying are just a couple hundred yards farther back, and Phil had been working down here with the dogs running around...

 ...and I got home at 6pm last Thursday to be told K had been missing for several hours. She didn't show up for dinner, which was a bad sign. We checked all closed doors in the barnyard, checked the truck...
We called the radio stations, the animal shelter, the police. We called everyone in the neighborhood. Phil and another neighbor drove everywhere looking. 
This is a big black dog on a dark night. Phil walked all over our and our neighbors' properties, paying special attention to the bluff edge where she'd been fascinated earlier.
Phil walked up the highway checking the ditches.
Phil drove the truck out on the beach, all the way up to beneath our cabin, shining lights up. He thought he saw a pair of eyes 30-40 feet down from the top of the bluff, the area to the far right of that photo.
Phil burst into the house, where I was working, and told me to come quick, this was an emergency, we got to get the dog, pretty sure she's clinging on to the edge of the bluff.
Phil, torn elbow tendon, bum knee, plantar fasciitis and all, ties a rope around himself, we deadman it around one of those posts up top, I hold on, and down he goes. First time, wrong place, so up he comes; we tie off to another post and try again. Yes, there she is; not enough rope; untie, pay out more--for a moment I'm all that's holding him there.
Stupid dog, very pleased to see Phil, but she doesn't want to climb up. And why did she never respond when he was calling from above?
Phil ends up having to climb one-handed while pushing her up with his knee and other hand. Did I mention she's a big dog?
When she gets to where she can sort of see the top, I start the cheerleading endless stream of noise which is so totally out of my character it just seems totally ridiculous--Come on K, yes come on, good girl, yes, you can do it, come on--blah blah...But it worked.
We got her home, and the first thing Phil had to do was pick her up and carry her all the way to the bathtub. She was caked. It took both of us scrubbing and soaping for several minutes. 
Almost done, I left Phil to finish up, and went to fix her dinner.
When I came back, there was a zig-zagging flail of muddy tracks all over the bedroom carpet, and she was back in the tub. Phil had let her out without realizing there was clay impacted between every toe, and she had done a dizzy happy dance all over the bedroom carpet. The funniest part about that was, the cleaner had just been there that afternoon; the whole place was, or had been, pristine!
I think we finally got to bed around 1.30.

Irish Cream Mousse Recipe, Kneeling Moose, Phil Adventures

Homer is known as the town at the end of the road. Well, there's a long road out the end of Homer, opening into the back fold of the bay, a huge and gorgeous wilderness. I dropped Phil there yesterday with his loaded sled, jury-rigged with skate-ski poles for him to pull it by.

He's headed out for a couple days in this glorious wilderness. It'll be a combination of reconnecting with something he's loved doing every spring, and discovering new territory. He used to go on a lot of ski-camping trips in the backcountry around Anchorage all the years he lived there, come March, when there's still lots of snow but the days are luxuriously long. But the backcountry around Homer is less explored for him, and he's excited to change that.

His playground: (and this picture doesn't do justice to the mountains on the horizon and the gorgeous sweep of valley below--two river drainages).

When I was driving home, I saw this moose in our neighbors' yard. Snow had melted or gone away under this spruce tree, revealing some tired, brown grass from last year. Apparently, that was the best food available right now. Moose are browsers, not grazers, so they have to get down on their knees to eat from the ground. Pretty poignant.

I've had several requests to share recipes recently, and will work on catching up on that. First, the "Irish Moss Mousse." I threw this together from off the top off my head when we got back home and had a St Patrick's Day party to go to. We shared it with some other friends the next night, and then Tuesday was Amy's birthday party, so it got another outing then--and now it's all gone! And this is the only picture ;)

Note: this is not a "pristine purist" raw food recipe. It contains some instant coffee, and some whisky! It is very low sugar, though, and my Naturopath recently told me that whisky and other hard liquors don't bother candida (not sure why he was telling me that, lol)! But I'm sure you could sub out both of these if you didn't want them in--I'll offer some suggestions for how to do that.

I also did this in such a hurry that I used warm water to soak my irish moss and nuts. Ideally, I would have soaked the irish moss for longer, in cool water; ditto the nuts.


Irish Moss Mousse (mostly raw, vegan, gluten free, low sugar)


1 cup irish cream irish moss gel *subrecipe below
3/4 cup whisky! Or use nut milk, or water with butterscotch extract (if you can find it gluten and dairy free, if that matters to you), or water with more vanilla
1 cup young coconut meat (I get frozen young coconut meat in Anchorage. It does have a little added sugar, so I don't use it often. If you're anywhere but AK, you probably have easier access to young cocos!)

1 cup soaked cashews

1/2 cup coconut sugar (for the tawny color)--or use a half cup erythritol if you want it sugar free

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon vanilla
2 tablespoons non-gmo lecithin granules (or use sunflower lecithin)


Put everything in the blender except the lecithin. Put the ingredients in in the order listed--it blends more smoothly that way. Blend until very smooth. Test the flavor, add a little stevia or a pinch of salt if the taste isn't quite "in focus," add the lecithin, and blend again.

Pour into a 9-in pie plate and chill. I sprinkled cacao nibs on top as decoration--some coconut whipped cream or similar would have been beautiful too.


*Sub-recipe: Irish Cream Irish Moss Gel
2 cups irish moss, soaked (approximate measurement)
3/4 cup brewed coffee, cooled (you could brew up some chicory or maca instead of real coffee, or you could use a few drops of Medicine Flower coffee flavor extract in water).
1/2 cup erythritol
Blend all three together in a Vita-Mix or high speed blender, on high, until a smooth gel is obtained.

Notice, this recipe has no coconut oil or cacao butter in it! This means it doesn't set up quite as firm as a recipe with oil added--it's more of a spoon pudding really, but it also means it's way lighter! So, low or no sugar, light on the fat, and that really brings out the kick of the coffee and whisky. I couldn't eat very much of it because I'd have gotten drunk and buzzed, probably, but a little went a long way, and it received rave reviews from everyone else! If you did want it thicker/richer, you could use nut milk in place of the whisky, and add either some coconut oil (half a cup)--or even cacao butter for a chocolatey flair--or some xanthan gum (one teaspoon).

Let me know if you try it! And thanks for the encouragement to post the recipe before I forgot what I did!