Went to Tenakee with Larry and his friend, Pastor Gordon Blue, and a couple people heading to Tenakee, along with a load of freight. Lumpy run down Chatham, and really lumpy across the mouth of Freshwater Bay as the tide was stacking up against the wind. Once we turned into Tenakee Inlet, it was flat calm all the way to town. We saw the usual group of sea lions lounging on their haulout.
We offloaded quickly with our extra help. Gordon was a career crab fisherman before a pastor, so was a great help. We picked up a short term deckhand from the crane dock, and took him with us to help Nick and Molly load their table saw at their beach to send it to their friend in Juneau.

He was a fun 30 something to talk to. He’s met his wife in Idaho, she visited his family in Tenakee, and said “let’s move here!”. So they did. The kid said he was doing odd jobs around town, which I think can be a full time job in this town of retirees and continuous construction, remodel, appliance repair, commercial fishing, and firewood cutting.  When I asked what his dad did, it sounded like the same thing. And his dad was a Toyo stove fixer, which is always in demand. I thought how refreshing it was to meet someone (and apparently his father) just living sort of in the moment, and not on some career path or corporate ladder or professional job with a mortgage. Remote, community life as in much of Alaska’s rural communities without a road system. A lot different perspective that those of us in larger towns with soccer practice and Costco and running around all the time. Every passenger we take to or from Tenakee seems to have their own unique story.

I did all the driving and maneuvering this trip. Earlier, Larry would do the close up work around the docks, and I’d take over for the open water driving. I’m finally getting the hang of twin jets with Larry’s coaching. The main thing to remember is whether you are going forward or reverse, turn the wheel in the direction you want the bow to go. When maneuvering, you generally put the boat in gear, at an idle, and then use the forward and reverse levers on the jets to move to the moorage.  Larry picked it up a lot faster than I did, and now he’s getting me there.

The way home was a lot better seas. We made it back in half the time as the trip down, as we had a lighter load and ran on step the whole way. Still not many boats out this time of year, and I saw one humpback whale heading north near the Kittens Islands at Funter Bay.

Down in Petersburg again for Superbowl. When I’d last visited my friend at Thanksgiving, I noticed he’d slipped abit both mentally and physically. He’d had a car accident over a year ago, and I was hoping he was still recovering from that. I was hoping, perhaps naively, that it wasn’t just a function of approaching 90. Two and half months later, I was pleasantly surprised. He is getting around much better. He was now walking every day and his balance is much better. Likewise, his mental state was very good. His state of confusion is gone. He was back to his old self.

My friend lives on a rocky beach overlooking a long a channel leading to the mouth of the Stikine River. There’s a mountain range on the other side of the channel. He’s got a small flock of resident gulls, and some resident diving ducks. On the other side of a sliding glass door that leads to a small deck, he has a bird feeder. He told me that he is missing one of his pet gulls (Jonathan) and a particular kind of song bird with an altered tail whose species I forget. They had become like family and he misses them. He has a journal next to the window he’s kept for decades, and denotes things like when the first first geese arrived in the spring, and when the first sandhill cranes flew south in the fall.

Another friend was just back to Petersburg. His brother suddenly passed away recently, and he was returning from the funeral. He and another retired teacher joined us – our usual foursome for Superbowl.

The man who lost his brother related how hot it was where the funeral was, and all the traffic. We each in turn concluded how much we all like the winter season here. One liked to have the quiet time to work on his model airplanes. I enjoyed the skiing and the snow. The retired teacher told of going to his place up in the Yukon Territory with friends from Petersburg for a week of skiing during the day and drinking beer and telling lies at night.

This morning, another retired teacher video called from Mexico and told of taking a neighbor who was not in good health and a vaccination denier to the hospital. It took 12 hours to find a hospital who would take her as she had Covid. As he was talking, my friend and I looked across the bay on a flat calm day in February at the snow covered mountains, with the sea gulls out in front, each picking a rock to sit on to enjoy the sun. My friend related on how good it was to be here in his Senior years, where he had care when he needed it, and where he knows everyone. I thought – this was a view I’d want to have if I couldn’t get out for awhile.

At 89, he still has lots of stories to tell that I haven’t heard. He grew up in his early childhood in Montana. His father was a lawyer, and one way or another, ended up being a lawyer for then Brigadier General Eisenhower. Yes. THAT Eisenhower.  His parents wanted to travel overseas to work, but Eisenhower wasn’t having it, as he’d come to depend on the dad’s counsel.

When his dad had to go overseas with Eisenhower, my friend was sent to relatives in Nebraska during his middle school years, where his grandfather was a professor at Wayne State Teachers College. He had always enjoyed running places. Just running. He also stuttered, and that made him keep to himself to avoid teasing. When he got to Nebraska, he and his classmates were lined up to do some sort of a run- maybe for a fitness test or something. It was something like a run around a quarter mile track, and he said he came in first by 200 yards. This got the notice of the track coaches, and he went on to set records in Nebraska and later in California, where he finished high school  More importantly, it allowed him to gain much needed self esteem, and eventually he cured his stuttering. He went on run track at Cal, and he still closely follows track and field.

This morning, we talked for a couple hours before I had to be at the airport to head back to Juneau. His mother was Ms. Montana in 1934 (I think it was 1934). His grandfather in Montana was a plumber, and would take his young grandson to the saloon for a soda pop. He saw Crow nation Native Americans come to the saloon on horseback, and tie them up outside the saloon. It sounded just like the movies.

Rendering the Fat

I tried my hand at something new for homestead cooking. Making bear lard. Andrew saved me a bunch of fat he trimmed from the bear meat we sent him from Craig last spring. I planned to use the fat in making deer sausage, but we already had a lot of pork fat in the freezer, so I researched how to render it into lard for baking and sautéing.

I diced the fat into about 1 inch chunks, cutting away as much of the straggling meat as was practical. I knew I wanted to heat the fat only till it turned to liquid, and to be careful not to burn or fry the cracklins – which, I found out, is the fat and any meat that would not render – if I wanted the best product.

Several articles recommended a slow cooker, but I could not make Sara’s mom’s ancient slow cooker work right. So, I transferred all the fat to an enamel cast iron pot. I put the stove flame on low, and soon, the fat started to “melt” to oil. I looked up what was happening during the rendering process, and found heating the fat drives off the water from the fat, leaving behind the oil that makes lard.

After several hours, I had a pile of cracklins in the center of a growing pool of liquid. The cracklins were soft and looked chewy. I thought maybe they were supposed to be drier and crisp, but after looking at the online images, I saw they looked just like cracklins were supposed to.
I ladled all the liquid I could. It was a slight orange color, so I had not been perfect, as a clearer yellow color was what I was shooting for. I waited a few hours longer for more oil to render, and didn’t see much more fat turning to liquid, so I removed the remaining oil to let it cool. I had about filled the 6 quart pot with bear fat at the start, and it yielded about a quart of oil.

I strained the oil first through a metal mesh strainer, and then through cheesecloth. The liquid had a rather strong, gamy smell. I thought it might not be usable, but I’d gone this far with the hours of cooking, so had to try it.

I poured the cooled oil into a quart sized yogurt container, put the lid on, and put it in the fridge to solidify.

The next day, I was putting together dinner, and had some brussel sprouts to use. I took out the lard, and it looked like it was supposed to – the same consistency as “bacon grease”. It still had a strong odor. I put a spoonful in the pot, and watched it melt. As it melted, I noticed no smell.

I tossed in a handful of quartered sprouts in the oil, and sautéed until they were slightly browned and had softened. I tentatively tasted a quarter. And it was good. No discernible gamy taste.  I threw the rest of the sprouts into the pan and sauteed the rest for dinner.  I’d see if Sara noticed anything when she ate them. She did not.

So, my lard wasn’t perfect, but it was edible.

This morning, I thought I’d see how biscuits tasted using the lard. I don’t remember ever making biscuits before. I found a simple recipe that didn’t involve a lot of chilling this or that.  Just mix together flour, baking powder and salt with lard and milk. It made a dozen little biscuits in a cup cake tin in short time.

The biscuits weren’t light and flaky like they may have been if I’d made the kind you roll out and then use a cookie cutter, but like the sprouts, they were edible. And no gamy taste from the lard.

Tonight it’s going to be some gravy made with the deer sausage I made last week over the biscuits. My guess is Sara will like this, too.