Yes we ain't got no water

Poo and Pee: February in Alaska

With an outhouse sometimes you need a reminder to bring out the essentials...


"Penelopee, the miniature moose"


If it ain't one thing it's another. We needed to fill up our water tank (did we mention we have a one thousand gallon water tank buried somewhere under the frozen ground around our cabin??). Every 2-3 months we go to the pump station with our landlord who lets us use his 500 gallon water tank mounted on his trailer. It took an especially long time to get the water last night (450 gallons = a mere $7 at our local pump station) but you can't put a price on hauling a fully loaded water tank up a steep grade on icy roads on a Monday night against the time clock of freezing temperatures to a cabin nine miles hence tucked into a narrow driveway surrounded by trees through which you have to maneuver and thread 30 or so feet of hose to connect to the underground reservoir. It involved endless backing and forwarding of Simon's pickup, plus some last-minute landscaping (snow shoveling, sawing away of small obstacles, etc etc) and by 10:30 PM---VOILA! Gallons and gallons of water!

Except now the pump in our cabin seems to be broken |:-{

Thank god for bottled water and baby wipes {:-(

Not to confuse you, we don't use a drop of our water for the toilet. It's strictly for drinking, cooking and bathing. The outhouse is just good old-fashioned 19th century no-flush "technology". In fact the most modern thing we use in there is 21st century toilet paper.

Oh, and the cute little moose in our yard we named "Penelopee" (Me: "Was it a boy moose or a girl?" Joe: "Well, when it peed in our yard it peed like a girl.")

Thanks, Bugs Bunny!

For Valentines's Day, Joe and I bought our own copy of The Princess Bride as part of the ingredients to a romantic dinner. What's the cutest thing we could eat, we wondered? A cute, wide-eyed, furry--

WABBIT!

OK, for those of you who don't eat meat, this is not gonna sound very yummy. But for those of you who do--TRY RABBIT--IT'S FANTASTIC!!

I simply didn't know.

Of course I'm lucky to be married to a talented cook. Joe made "Coneglio in porcetta"--a whole rabbit marinated overnight, Italian style, in white wine, and stuffed (Yeah, Joe did the whole trussing thing with needle and thread) with bread crumbs, organic salami, Black Forest ham, sauteed fennel and fresh fennel sprigs, and four cloves of garlic, served with a cream fennel sauce and bits of crisp fried bacon on top. The combination was perfect. The fennel was a mild, sweet compliment to the delicate white meat and the savory stuffing.

Rabbit is low in fat but not dry, and tastes like young turkey or duck without the heavy notes that a fattier type of meat can give. We got ours frozen at our local supermarket (Joe had contemplated shooting a snowshoe hare, but I'm really glad we settled on the domestic kind--it was absolutely not gamey tasting).

Served with a bottle of pinot grigio chilled outside on a 10 degree Fairbanks evening, had this been a first date, I would have fallen madly in love all over again with my intense and quirky but decidedly hot little cyclemaniac with his odd sense of humor and many talents.

More Yukon Quest

Our picks:

Joe: 1st=S. Deltour; 2nd=K. Anderson; 3rd=L. Mackey; last=K. Griffin; DNF=D. Jacobs
& if he wins: a growler of beer from Silver Gulch!

Dee: 1st=L. Mackey; 2nd=H. Neff; 3rd=B. Sass; last=P. Heritier; DNF=T. Williams
& if she wins: a steak dinner at the Turtle Club!

Gareth: TBD (C'mon Dude, get yer picks in!!)

Simon: 1st=L. Mackey;2nd=Z. Steer; 3rd=H. Neff, Last =T. Williams DNF=D. Jacobs
& if he wins: 40 lb bag of dog food (we're just guessing this is it)


see video on YOU TUBE

The 2010 Yukon Quest

This is THE big event in Fairbanks!! The YQ is a 1,000 mile race from Fairbanks to Whitehorse, Yukon (in Canada). It takes about 10 days to complete, and this year 24 mushers are competing. Joe and I stood on the frozen Chena River in downtown Fairbanks with a cast of thousands to watch the start of the race-- 
It was truly a sight to see!

Ice Bowling

 


Here's Gareth Bowling (from Flickr)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31869215@N02/sets/72157623332438244/show/

Here's Joe
bowling(from Gareth's You Tube)