The Silent "I"

North to Alaska

In case the last couple of pictures weren't enough of a clue, we've headed north to Alaska for the week.  Frank is chairing a technical conference in Anchorage, so we decided to make the trip a family affair.  My parents are coming from Ohio, along with Frank's stepmom, Chris from Indiana, and her sister Ruth and husband Ralph from Michigan.  We traveled with Chris, Ruth, and Ralph on another adventure involving bears on our trip to Churchill, Manitoba, to see polar bears in 2002.

Frank had to leave early, so Alex and I caught an Alaska Air flight after school and work from San Francisco to Seattle, with a connection on to Anchorage.  I give Alaska Air kudos for the friendliness of their flight crews.  Plus, they are one of the few US airlines that allows families with small kids to board early.

Alex asked if he could meet the pilot, and they obliged, showing him the hundreds of buttons, lights, and knobs on the control panel prior to take-off.  He found his way back to our seats and declared, "These pilots are the nicest ever!"

We landed in Anchorage at 1:00 am, and as we descended, the fellow across the aisle from us exclaimed, "Look! Northern lights!" pointing at the burnished red streaks on the horizon.  We checked it out, and I told Alex I thought it looked more like sunset.  I'm not sure if Northern Lights are visible in the summer, but it was a pretty spectacular sight, regardless.

Flying at odd hours, you don't get much in the way of food on these flights. Even though Frank snagged the two of us first class upgrades, we were served vegetables and hot dip on both legs of the journey.  Not being a fan of either spinach dip or celery, Alex was starving, so we hit the McDonald's in the airport, which was miraculously still open at 1:00 am. 

Walking outside, the still twilight was a little unnerving.  It was dark, but the sky was lit with purple and gold, pre-sunrise colors that made it seem like it was just about time to get up.

We arrived at the Hilton Anchorage, but even though we were tired from the trip, it was hard to get to sleep.  I think it was partly the excitement of a new travel adventure beginning, and the strangely beautiful twilight outside.  Either way, we were all happy to be together in an exotic new place.

Coming up: Downtown Anchorage, Wasilla, and Denali National Park.

Bear in Denali National Park

We visited Denali National Park today, after a long drive in from Anchorage, via Wasilla & Talkeetna.  We saw four of the "big five" of wildlife in the park -- bear, moose, eagle, Dall Sheep.  Only the wolves eluded us.  This bear was moving fast across a plain, probably on the hunt for Snowshoe Hares or Arctic Ground Squirrels.

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Midnight in Anchorage

We arrived at 1:00 am in Anchorage, after a short layover in Seattle.  The sky was not completely dark, even after midnight.  More later...

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May in California: Strawberry Fields Forever

It's May (well for a few more days at least) and in California, that means strawberries.  When we drove to Monterey a few weeks ago, we could see strawberry fields stretching across the terrain, red, ripe berries glistening in the sun.  There are dozens of fresh fruit stands along Highway 1, all beckoning with promises of ripe, fresh berries, jams, preserves, pies, and all sorts of strawberry concoctions.  I love this time of year.

Our local farmers' market had a special on strawberries a couple of weeks ago, $10 for a half flat, which is 6 of those little plastic baskets full. I was reluctant to take so many, since they tend to get fuzzy before we can eat them all.  The woman at the farmer's market stand told me the secret to keeping them fresh longer:  take a paper towel and place it on the bottom of an airtight plastic container.  Put the unwashed strawberries in the container, and place another paper towel on top.  Seal with a lid, and store in the refrigerator.  She said they would keep up to a week without turning bad. The key, she said, was not washing them until you are ready to eat them.

I tried it, and it worked like a charm.  We had fresh strawberries all week, and by the end of the week, only 2 had gotten a little fuzzy, but the rest were fine. 

When I was a kid, my mom would clean strawberries and put sugar on them, then put them in the refrigerator to marinate.  We used them for ice cream topping, shortcake, or just ate them by the bowlful.  The strawberries grown around here are so naturally sweet that I can't imagine putting sugar on them.  For a great treat, just add a little creme fraiche to the top. Perfection!

One of our family favorite desserts growing up was Strawberry Pie.  You can use a pre-packaged gel to make a pie, but it's just as easy to make it yourself.

Strawberry Pie

1 pie crust, pre-baked to golden brown
1.5 quarts fresh strawberries
1 c sugar
3 T cornstarch
3/4 water or ginger ale (for a little extra zip)

Clean strawberries by removing tops & cutting in half, then rinsing & drying.  Use about half of the berries to fill up the pie shell. 

Mash the remaining half with a potato masher & mix with sugar.  In a medium saucepan, heat over medium heat until it comes to a slow boil.  Stir frequently.

Mix together cornstarch and water or ginger ale in a separate bowl.  Add to the heated strawberries a little at a time until thickened but still pourable, stirring constantly. 

Pour mixture over the berries in the pie shell and refrigerate several hours.

Serve with whipped cream or dessert topping of your liking.

Sustainable Foods Information Fair

After the wonderful, thought-provoking cooking demonstrations at the Cooking for Solutions event,  I wandered into the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  As part of the weekend's events, there was a Sustainable Foods Information Fair inside the Aquarium and out on the deck overlooking Monterey Bay.  Aquarium-goers were treated to a variety of booths, talks, and cooking demonstrations by some outstanding chefs, including Rick Moonen, Jesse Ziff Cool, and Sam Choy, all of whom are leaders in the local and sustainable foods movement.

I wandered out to the deck, where there were a number of tents set up by Whole Foods Market, and a Viking cooking station and grill for the demos.  Chef Rick Moonen of RM Seafood at the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas was getting ready to start his demo, and joked around with the crowd. Chef Moonen is a featured chef on Top Chef Masters, where established, world-renowned chefs compete for the title of "Top Chef Master." 

Moonen recently released a new cookbook called Fish Without a Doubt: The Cook's Essential Companion, the product of four years of work applying his culinary expertise to making preparing seafood at home less daunting for the average cook.  He was passionate about seafood, sustainability, and the debt that people owe to the oceans. I bought a copy of the book, since my husband recently converted to a semi-vegetarian to lower his cholesterol levels.  I've never been particularly good at cooking fish, but I aim to try it out.  The recipes look fantastic, and hopefully I will get over my fear of fish with this book.

Chef Moonen, like the three chefs I saw in the morning, was an engaging, charming speaker with a passion for his craft. He prepared a grilled salmon with a homemade barbecue sauce that we all got to try, that was just delicious. His secret weapon? Clam juice, which he claims could "cover up a multitude of sins" in the kitchen.

Celebrity Chefs Cook for Solutions in Monterey

This past weekend, I attended a great event at the Monterey Bay Aquarium called "Cooking for Solutions".  It's an annual event in its ninth year, featuring celebrity chefs doing cooking demonstrations and speaking on sustainable food efforts.  The events lasted all weekend, but I signed up for the cooking demonstrations on Saturday morning with chefs Anthony Fusco, Kevin Gillespie, and Gerald Hirigoyen. Each Chef presented a seafood-based recipe, answered questions, and spoke about their commitments to local and sustainable food sources in their respective restaurants.

Chef Anthony Fusco, formerly of Harbour Restaurant in New York City, was up first, and showed us how to make Scallops Crudo, an appetizer similar to ceviche using passion fruit vinaigrette instead of citrus to marinate the scallops.  Chef Fusco explained the various unusual ingredients in the dish and what they meant to the balance of flavors, such as adding cocoa nibs for an earthiness and shiro dashi for smokiness. 

Both he and Kevin Gillespie waxed poetic about the olive oils and vinegars from Katz & Company, a Napa Valley artisinal oil and vinegar company that supplies great restaurants throughout the country.  He emphasized that it is important to know where your food comes from, and who is making it.

I hadn't heard of Anthony Fusco before this event, and unfortunately, his restaurant, Harbour, closed in December. He is working on opening a new place in New York called Carmela's, scheduled to open at the end of the year.  Chef Fusco was very engaging, and spoke lovingly of growing up in an Italian family in Brooklyn where Sunday dinner lasted all day.  His father, a "Wall Street man", was sitting behind me in the audience, beaming with pride at his son.  He said their favorite dish was a simple pasta with garlic, anchovies, olive oil and red pepper flakes.

Aside from his love of seafood, Fusco seemed to hold a particular reverence for bacon.  "Popcorn cooked in bacon fat will change your life," he said, drawing a laugh from the crowd (and for me, the desire to go home and try it).  He invited everyone to come to Carmela's when it opens, and assured us that "there will be pork on the menu."

Monterey Bay Aquarium: A Jewel of the California Coast

After the inspiring talk by Jean-Michel Cousteau, we were able to see some ocean creatures up close and personal at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  This is one of our favorite places to visit in California, and we try to go several times a year.  We have been members of the Aquarium for a number of years, and try to make it down there as often as we can.  This time, my brother Troy was in town with his wife, Michelle, so we took the opportunity to show them the Aquarium.

One of my favorite parts of the Aquarium is the jellyfish exhibit.  Although I am kind of terrified of jellies in the ocean, watching them for a safe distance behind a glass is a mesmerizing experience. I'm not sure how they get them to appear to light up, but they looks like the floating ghosts of flying saucers, and take on an ethereal quality in the dimly lit backdrop of the Aquarium.

Saving the Oceans with Jean-Michel Cousteau

A few weeks ago,  we were invited to hear a lecture by oceanographer and environmentalist, Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of the late Jacques Cousteau.  Frank and I grew up enthralled by The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau and are proud owners of several of Jean-Michel's video series on PBS.  We wanted Alex to hear what he had to say, since care of the ocean will largely be left to the next generation. 

Cousteau was speaking at the Northern California regional convention of Rotary International.  We were invited to the dinner as guests of District Governor Loren Harper.  The Rotary Club has a longstanding tradition of community service and involvement in important issues, and it was an honor to be among this distinguished group of community leaders.

Jean Michel Cousteau's passion for the deep blue see was evident in his remarks, probably a result of his taking his first dive below the surface at age 4.  He showed video clips of amazing animals and underwater habitats, along with startling scenes of plastic debris washed up on the shores of one of the uninhabited islands of the Pacific.

Cousteau runs the Ocean Futures Society, which runs educational programs on conservation of the world's oceans and how people can get involved.  The Ocean Futures Society runs an annual family camp on Catalina Island, where families spend a week in August learning about the ocean.

During his remarks, Cousteau urged everyone to consider the environmental impact of throwing trash into the ocean and into landfills.  Millions of tons of plastic garbage are floating in the Northern Pacific Gyre, in a mass the size of the state of Texas.  Cousteau's group and others are working toward cleaning up the mess, but in the meantime, wildlife ingest bits of plastic debris and die from it. 

He spoke about the practice of shark finning and showed a video of Chinese fishing boats capturing sharks, cutting off the fins and throwing the shark back into the sea to die.  The fins are used in Shark Fin Soup and other delicacies in China and other parts of the world, without regard for the impact on the shark populations. Cousteau noted that sharks have a particularly bad rap, mainly due to Hollywood's portrayal of Great Whites and human-hungry predators.  He showed footage of himself diving and catching a ride on the dorsal fin of a Great White.

Book Review: Insight Guides "United States on the Road"

I recently received a free review copy of a beautiful USA travel guide from Insight Guides called United States on the Road. I was interested in this because of our road in 2008 through the western states, and our visits to Yosemite, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, and Mt. Rushmore.  The book served to bring back a host of great memories of our road trip, and inspired me to want to take another.

We love traveling outside the US when we can, and often forget the amazing bounty of beautiful, scenic places we have to visit in our own country.  When time and budget constraints don't allow it, it's easy enough to hop in the car or board a train and see the USA.  Every part of the country has something unique and special to offer.  This book, chock full of gorgeous photography and interesting places to see, should serve as a great source of inspiration, whether you're taking a day trip from home, or coming to visit the US for the first time.

The book is divided into geographic routes with selected cities, towns, and attractions along the way. It has a simple straight line map to guide you to some pretty fantastic highlights.  You won't find "where the locals eat" or a lot of detail on each place, but this is a great book to start with when planning a road trip.  If you know where the highlights are, you can use the web to search for points in between and where to find the best barbecue or a cheap hotel.  That's not the focus of this guide.

I really enjoyed looking through the book, and reading the sections about places we've been.  The Pacific Coast section is spot-on in it's description of a trip down Highway 1, mentioning Big Sur and Hearst Castle.  We spent last weekend winding up the coast from Monterey to Half Moon Bay and through the mountains back to Palo Alto.  It was nice to see portions of our weekend getaway in the book, along with a special section on San Francisco.

Part of the reason we took our western road trip in 2008 was to recreate a little of the magic my husband felt 40 years earlier when his family did the same trip.  When I think of road trips, I think of family vacations, singing along to the radio, and gazing out the window at some unexpected delight, whether it's a moose by the side of the road in Yellowstone or the crashing waves of Big Sur or the skyscrapers of Dallas off in the distance.  I hope that your family finds a little inspiration to see the world around you.

This book reminded me of the passage in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy returns from her journey to Oz and says, "I learned that, if I ever go looking for my heart's desire again... I shouldn't look any further than my own backyard."

Perhaps if you want to go looking for your heart's desire, you should look no further than Insight Guide's United States on the Road.

Disclosure: I received a free review copy of this book, but no other compensation or incentive for writing this review. The opinions expressed herein are my honest assessment.  If you wish to purchase a copy of the book via Amazon.com and use the link below or a sidebar link or ad, I will receive a small commission through the Amazon affiliates program.