Last Post from Alaska -- Eight Pictures, Five Anticipated Changes, Unifier of Friends

After another stunning drive, I reached Haines in the middle of yesterday, and this evening I'll be on the ferry bound for Bellingham and the Lower 48.
That ferry ride neatly bisects my trip, and I've been reflecting on some of the changes to expect.

 Change 1: I expect to exchange empty roads and very cold weather for increasingly warmer weather and more heavily trafficked roads. "Cold and empty roads" means one can pull over--gawk, breathe; pee, even--wherever one pleases.
At sites like Lake Dezadeash, just south of Haines Junction...

 Turning around and photographing from the same spot...

Cold means descending a stairwell of spruce back into the US, to a sudden cathedral of winter-bare cottonwoods.

 Just past the ferry terminal east of Haines is Lake Chilkoot. I hiked there yesterday afternoon, getting my final lungfuls of glacial air. The air was above freezing, but you can see how deep the snow is: check out that buried interpretive sign.

 This is the outflow from the lake--thaw underway; check out that straight and sheer drop of frozen waterfall.

Other changes involve how what gear I have on hand and how available it is.
Change 2: No more cleats and boots. Normally, my very heavy duty ice cleats live in the gutter of my driver-side door--sometimes I can't get out of the car without putting them on. I wouldn't have been able to hike without them yesterday.
Don't think I'm going to need them that handy anymore! Likewise the kneeboots I've been wearing all winter. My sneakers will probably come out come Bellingham!

Change 3: No more snow shovel and ice scraper! I have a small snow shovel and good-sized ice scraper in the back of the car, and even as loaded as it is now, those items are up at the top of the pile. Some repacking soon will disappear them, I think.

Change 4: Coats. Usually I wear my North Face down jacket with a heavy duty (and very high visibility!) fisherman's waterproof coat over the top of it. And a fleece vest underneath, and a sweater, a long-sleeve, and a T-shirt under that. The pocket-patting dance as I try to figure out where my keys/wallet/phone/notebook got slung is pure comedy, I'm sure. Now we're going for streamlined.

Likewise, my cooler up to this point has been for preventing apples and carrots from freezing (while trying to keep frozen peas frozen); onward, I suspect the cooler will reflect its name more accurately.

Change 5: Plethora. The flip side of being in a more densely populated area will be the plethora of offerings available. More high-speed Internet, more organic produce--more produce period; more cellphone coverage...More old friends too, although I'm going to miss so many friends in Homer and Anchorage.

That's the common thread. Dear friends here, dear friends there, dear friends wherever I go. As introvert as I am; as poor at expressing this appreciation, I am so thankful for the love by which I feel myself surrounded and protected and blessed on this journey.

Thank you.

Receding Snow, Snow Smoothies

I've never been much for ice in my drinks. So typical of my timing, then, that I should acquire a penchant for "snow smoothies/ice cream" just as our epic snow streak starts to dwindle. Especially at the edge of the bluff, the snow is receding fast...

...although we still have a snow field back from the bluff. Last night I don't think it even froze here.

A glass of snow blended with spirulina and other ingredients makes a wonderful soft-serve type lunch, as I shared in my last post, or just mix the snow with water and chosen flavor (as in this rosewater cordial) for a refreshing mid-afternoon lift. Unfortunately, snow drinks tend to make me chilled as well, but I'm enjoying the taste and texture so much right now that it seems worth it!


So far this week, I've stayed off the caffeine pills and caffeinated tea, and I've stayed off the cacao, and I've slept at least more than I had been, and gobbled down meds like a good girl. But I still wanted my snowy spirulina lunch, and I discovered that it could be just as delicious without the cacao!

This one was: 
1/3 cup nut milk (I used unsweetened Almond Breeze)--just enough to spin the blades
1 cup fresh local snow (I'm going to have to start thinking of alternatives)
1 spoonful spirulina
1 teaspoon lucuma
1/2-1 teaspoon mint extract
stevia and xylitol to taste
1 pinch lecithin granules and/or 1/2 teaspoon xanthan or guar gum


Blend until smooth in a high speed blender.
Mint ice cream! OK, maybe not quite, as there's no fat in there. You don't miss it, though. Definitely mint sorbet--refreshing, a little sweet, delightful.


NB I know that this is very light on calories. However, it's also very easy to make into a more substantial offering. You could use full-fat coconut cream instead of unsweetened almond breeze. You could add some melted coconut oil, which would make it more ice-cream-like and creamy in general, and would add good nutrition too. You could triple the amount of lucuma, and add some tocotrienols, which are also creamy. You could even add some flax seeds, although you should make sure to blend very well so that they're not gritty. Carob powder? Carob goes beautifully with mint. Protein powder? Sure. I feel spirulina offers a good dose of protein, but doubling up would be good too. And you could substitute some of the snow with frozen nut milk. 


One of the things I love about smoothie-type recipes is how infinitely elastic and versatile they are--so easy to make your own. 


On a very different note, RIP Adrienne Rich, role model and inspiration for poets, especially women poets, for over half a century.

No-Sugar Maca Mojo Bark (aka White Chocolate Take 2) and New Finds

I mentioned on Monday that a good friend had nudged me to share a recipe that turned out really well. I'm really grateful for the prod (thanks, Terry!) because I threw this together in a blur in the midst of grading, and if I don't post it, I'll forget what I did. It's already been almost two weeks, so let's see how I do.

That "blur" of work seems to be a fairly consistent state at the moment. It's midterm week, and there have been various technical bugs all along--I've spent hours on the phone with the technical support folks, which has eaten into lecture-writing time. Today was one of those gorgeous bright-sun-in-the-eyes days that's why Phil got me this billed cap for my birthday, together with the happy green top and some long underwear under my jeans. I feel so lucky--and not just because I can keep working with the sun right in my eyes!

Yes, the little computer nook in the background of the next picture isn't so much sun-in-the-eyes, but most of my work for this course is on the "window workstation" computer.

So, about this second go at white chocolate/bark. You might remember my "not quite white" chocolate for the holidays. That used quite a bit of coconut cream powder, which some people find undesirable for various reasons, including the 1% casinate (dairy derivative) in it. I wanted to make another version that didn't use that--and this resultant attempt uses quite a few "unusual" or not-right-there-in-the-supermarket ingredients. But it also features the embedded fig and goji pieces that I so enjoyed last time. If you omit those, it's sugar free and candida friendly. Given the recherche ingredient list, let me share this "easy to find" tip: this stuff--creamed coconut--is basically the same stuff as coconut butter! It's incredibly cheaply available in Europe, and you can even find it in Anchorage. Just make sure to get the organic kind: some of the conventional brands have sulphates or other preservatives added. This package is 7oz, which is just under a cup. I used a whole block for this recipe.

No-Sugar Maca Mojo Bark (no dairy either!)
1 cup coconut butter, melted (or use one package of "creamed coconut")
1/2 cup cacao butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla powder

1 teaspoon white stevia powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

7/8 cup lucuma powder 

1 tablespoon maca
3/4 cup inulin (oligosaccharide, feeds good bacteria, naturally sweet-tasting)
1/4 cup yacon powder

3 dried figs, chopped
1 tablespoon goji berries, chopped

Mix together the coconut and cacao butters. Stir in the stevia, vanilla and salt.
Gradually add in the rest of the dry ingredients--lucuma, maca, inulin and yacon powder, and stir gently until everything is fully incorporated and there are no powdery pockets! Once everything is smooth, add in the finely chopped figs and berries.
You can pour it onto a tray, or into bar molds.
Refrigerate to set.

 This is not very sweet, very rich, but in a tummy-comforting, not a stomach-turning, way, and I was taken by surprise by how maca-ish it is! It really has a predominating malty flavor--which goes well with the figs and gojis. And actually, maca and coconut is an incredible flavor combination--it's like they're made for each other--so having the chocolate base contain more coconut than cacao butter worked well for this combination.

What do you think? Do you think you'll make this, or is the list of unusual ingredients offputting? Lucuma is getting easier and easier to find, as are inulin and maca.

Recent Discovery--Flax Milk!


I'm probably not a pioneer with this, as Homer, Alaska, is often the last place on the planet to see new health foods, it seems, but I found this "Flax milk" at the store today, and had to try it out. I was puzzled and curious, because flax is not a creamy seed at all--you wouldn't get a "milk" if you blended flax seeds and water like you would with hemp seeds.  It turns out that it's blended with flax oil, not seeds, and contains a fair amount of tapioca starch and gums as well (as do most store-bought nut milks--I'm ok with it).

Only 25 calories in a cup! Lots of calcium, and obviously lots of omega-3's, with fewer omega-6's than hemp milk.

 It's also unsweetened, which I really like, but it has the consistency and color of regular milk.

It doesn't have a distinctive "flax" taste at all. It actually tastes very good to me. I go back and forth on the economics of buying something with so few calories per serving--if I buy something with 100 calories in a cup, I'll take a quarter or eighth of a cup and water it down, thus getting more bang for my buck. Sure, I can do that with this too, but it'll end up pretty watery real quick (which doesn't mean I don't do it anyway!) Nonetheless--definitely worth a try, and a great new addition to the growing array of non-dairy milks!

I hope you enjoy the maca bark/white choc! Have you tried flax milk? Would you?

Through Blizzards and Avalanches Home...

Well, we sure saw some weather on our Anchorage trip of Wednesday and Thursday...and a lot of snow fell back at home in our absence!

Yes, this is an Alaskan winter, but by all accounts this year's is extraordinary. It's only my third winter here, so I have less basis for comparison, but old-timers are saying it's been many years since there was this much snow and cold. I have lots of pictures to share.
Driving up to Anchorage on Wednesday, there were blizzards most of the way, with strong winds gusting across the road, cramming the air with powdered snow, both falling snow and blown snow. I'd never thought of air as something with no gaps in it before.

 At our friends' house in Anchorage, the snow was above the mailbox.

 Snow half as high as a house...

 See that pile of snow in the middle of the picture as tall as the building next to it? And the snow berms along the roadsides were generally well above my head, some of them as tall as the bus stops! I am in constant awe of the infrastructure and constant work it takes to keep roads open in the winter here.

 We were glad that the truck was fully loaded: increased stability and traction, you know ;) We stocked up at CostCo, and Phil purchased a used wood-burning stove at Habitat for Humanity--that was some serious weight. And so aesthetic!

While we were town, it warmed up by 40 degrees, after hovering right around zero for the whole of January. Warm-up above melting point plus all that snow, and then some rain on the snow, equates to avalanches: big ones across the roads on the way from Anchorage to the Kenai Peninsula and Homer; smaller ones onto roads and buildings in town.

Coupled with the strange concept of air as something crammed and having no gaps was this eerie monochrome light, dissolving distances and making everything feel very intimate and immediate.

 When we set out for Homer on Thursday, we knew the highway was blocked by an avalanche at one spot, and that there were avalanche warnings in many other places. The avalanche blockage was right around the turnoff for Homer, and we were hoping that it was just beyond the turnoff, so we wouldn't be stuck. But we were prepared to stop. And stop we did, for 30 minutes at one point while they let off howitzers to cause controlled avalanches up ahead.
Most people were sensible and stayed off the road. If you look at the picture below, you can see that there are no tire traces in the oncoming lane opposite ours--what looks like one to the far left is the shadow of the snow berm. No one was on the road coming from Homer or Seward!

Closer to our turnoff, we stopped again, for about an hour--this was where the avalanche was being cleared. As you can see, it was raining on top of the snow at this point, which can't have made the job of clearing the mess any easier.

 We got lucky, though: it turned out that the avalanche itself was beyond our turnoff, so we were allowed to head on after that not-so-long wait, but the people heading for Seward got turned back. We've waited six hours for avalanches to be cleared before, so this really wasn't so bad. Phil took a nap. I broke the back of one of my critical essays for my "packet."

We had word that it had snowed non-stop since we left in Homer, warm, soft, blanketing snow, drifting over everything as fast as it could be cleared. But as we headed south, the temperatures began to drop again, as had been predicted. The roads were not so slick as things froze tight again. We even had the sun in our eyes for a bit. Welcome back, colors! In this particular stretch, the sun through storm clouds looked like a celestial body, angelic and radiant.

 But when we got home, I had to plow my way out of the truck using the door!

This is the path down to our cabin. You can just see where the path should be: the snow was up to my hips.

The cabin itself looked like a model house inside a snow-shaker. But what a delight to reach home at almost 6pm and still have some light to see by! Finding our way down to the cabin through such deep snow would have been even harder in the dark.

Kudos to my hero Phil for much heroic driving. He felt short on exercise after his recent trip, so this morning while I worked out and made breakfast, he was quite happy to shovel. I was impressed with how quickly he made our path into a reality again. Also impressed by how tall the walls on either side are.

Forecast says it's going to warm up again tomorrow. Everyone's anxiously anticipating what will happen when all these huge piles of snow start to melt. Our entire bluff, cabin and all, could become an avalanche! At the very least, there will be a lot of water downtown. Ebb and flow, change of state, pole to pole with ulterior harmony all over again. I am grateful for the experience.

So many other things I could talk about, but I want to let this stand alone.
There's a major discussion on my mind about the relationship between goal-setting, body image, and success: I'll try to get out a weekend post to talk about that.
love to all!

Carob Chocolate Recipe and Follow-Through

A few people asked for more details on how I made the carob chocolate that was a main ingredient in the wonderful mint-carob chocolate truffles I just posted about, and I realized that I hadn't really posted a very specific recipe before. I'm so willing to please...

...I actually made up a batch today just to be sure that I would share the best possible recipe. There have been times when I've brainstormed a lot about how to make the best carob-based or "white" chocolate with no cacao powder, but I've been off that tack lately. Nice to resurrect it again: I'm grateful for the encouragement!

Today's post was originally going to be about the party for our wedding anniversary yesterday, but that party got postponed because of the spectacular snowstorm (or series of snowstorms) we're in the midst of. Yesterday morning, all our windows were snowed up, like being in a cave, and I had to dig (not shovel) my way to the outhouse!

 So, a good time to take a work break and make some carob chocolate. I really admire the concept of follow-through.

What I ended up making was a cacao butter-carob chocolate with a little mesquite, which gives it a milk chocolate-like flair. For the earlier batch (with which I made the truffles), I'd more or less followed Sweet Gratitude's "chocolate" recipe but substituting carob and mesquite for the cacao powder, so there was some maple syrup and some xylitol (my sub for their rapadura) in the mix.

This time, I got to thinking: you know, carob and mesquite are both really sweet! They don't need much sweetener. I remember Bitt, chocolatier extraordinaire, saying that she didn't love stevia in chocolate, but it occurred to me that a little stevia, with its hint of bitterness, would be just the right sweetening note in here.

The other challenge was emulsification, especially since carob and mesquite are much lower in fat than cacao powder. A little sunflower lecithin was just right for this.

I strongly recommend you sift in the carob. It's a little extra work, but it makes such a difference to the texture. You can mix it all together by hand, but if you have an immersion blender, whizzing it a few times right at the end will help with the final consistency. My kitchen is so cold that the whole thing firmed up right when I was at this stage, so I had to wait a few hours until the heat came on again, and then had it melt in front of the heater to play with some more.

OK already, what's the recipe? Get to the point, girl!
Here 'tis:
Carob Chocolate--vegan, gluten free, (mostly) raw (depending on your carob), low sugar, soy free
1 cup melted cacao butter
1/4 teaspoon stevia
1/8 teaspoon good salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder (really best to use dry vanilla here as opposed to liquid extract)
1 teaspoon sunflower lecithin
3-4 drops Medicine Flower dark chocolate flavor extract (optional)
1 3/4 cups carob powder
1/4 cup mesquite powder

Stir the stevia, salt, vanilla, chocolate flavor extract (if using) and lecithin into the melted cacao butter and mix well.
Gradually sift in the carob and mesquite, a little at a time, stirring regularly.
When you've added all the carob and mesquite, pulse with an immersion blender to combine fully (I guess you could also do this in a food processor).

That's it! I was intending this as a very basic recipe, to which various things could be added, and I'm back to brainstorming all kinds of possibilities for add-ins that would make it more chocolatey or just 'better.' But I also wanted to see how it would stand alone with nothing added.

So, when I got it melted again, I poured a little of it into one of my bar molds and set it in the fridge.

 It popped right out! Beautiful sheen and, as you can see from the picture at the top of the post, it breaks cleanly and holds its texture well.

I could see using this as a coating for truffles... adding mint extract and nut milk to make truffles like last time... mixing in goji berries and figs for a lovely chewy crunch... and all kinds of other uses. Luckily, there's lots more left to play with. I'm curious to see whether it needs tempering like regular chocolate--time will tell.

What would you use it for?

Speaking of follow-through, a few posts ago I had "wet ingredients" from the zucchini ginger cake mixed with carrots and chia seeds in the dehydrator. Here's how they turned out:

Thin, crispy, crunchier than anything with chia normally gets in the dehydrator, sweet but not too sweet, carrot-tasting. Delicious.

 Back to work I go--thanks for reading, and I really hope you enjoy both this and the mint truffles that depend on it.

Weather Day Gratitude

It's a weather day. Weather several days, at that. Sleet then snow then rain repeat repeat, power outages, the frozen ground a sheet of ice under all the helter-skelter precipitation.

Even Phil, who couldn't help himself and had to go out across the bay in his tiny inflatable boat in a short break in the weather yesterday, is saying that it's not a good day to be out and about. And our kettle quit working yesterday and my immersion blender died this morning (just as I'd been so appreciating and loving on it!), so I'm motivated to see if they can be replaced locally!

Meanwhile, I'm appreciating the challenge to focus on Bliss, and to make lemonade from life's lemons. Honestly, I haven't been all good. But coming here is like a toll on the bell to remind me that I don't need to feel helpless in the face of the weather, either outside or within my own head! I'm grateful that our power is mostly on. I'm grateful to be warm, and to be able to heat water for tea even without the kettle. I'm grateful that the dehydrator is humming with the first batch of goodies I'm planning on sharing as holiday gifts. Grateful to have people to give them to.

To Phil, I'm sorry that I've been difficult lately. Parallel to my breadcrumb trail of pills, I'll aim to build a trail of reminders to try to do better.