T minus 2

I've finally got a minute to myself so I'm going to try and get a blog off before I'm surrounded by distractions again. This is gonna be quick and dirty so pay attention. With two days left before touchdown we've got to seriously start thinking about prep work. Believe me, your thanksgiving will be a lot more enjoyable if you don't have to get up at 4 am to cook pies, or make the cranberry sauce, or god help you, thaw out the turkey.

My first suggestion to you is to make a menu and from that menu generate a grocery list. You probably should have done that already, like on Sunday when I made mine, but if you haven't it's not too late, it's just going to mean shopping with a bunch of crazy, annoying shitheads that are going to want all the same things that you're at the store to get. Oh well, next year you'll know better.

I know going to the store super early may present some storage problems but if you're not at a latitude below 38 degrees you should be able to keep a lot of things unrefrigerated for a few days in your garage or basement. Be sure that you don't have a pest problem first though because nothing destroys a Thanksgiving meal quite like rats.

As you can see here I've got some of my produce and a few cheeses (parm, cream cheese and goat cheese) chilling in this box on top of our beverage fridge. We don't usually have this fridge plugged in but now seemed like a good time so it could handle any jello or cranberry set-up or keep the beer extra cold. My garage is about 52 degrees Fahrenheit so it's plenty cold to keep veggies, cheese and eggs. And the beer stays tolerably cold too.

Next thing you're going to want to do is start thawing out your meats. Thawing should be done slowly so I recommend pulling that bird out of the freezer and setting it up somewhere in the garage for a day. If it's being stubborn after that, or if you're like me and freak out about things not being ready when you are then you can bring it into the house to thaw on Wednesday.

I've got a lot of things on my plate. We're having this massive King that my wife caught in Bristol Bay this summer, a 14 pound turkey and I'm going to turn those crab legs into Maryland style crab cakes.

Funny story about the fish. While my wife was bleeding this one, she shoves her hand down their throats and rips out the gill plate, it came back to life and latched on to her wrist ripping her glove and puncturing the skin. Naturally she screamed and half jokingly started yelling "It's got me, it's got me!" This in turn spooked the skipper and caused him to throw the boat in reverse and run clean over their own net. With a shackle and a half of gear still in the water and no way to get the line out of the prop they had to round-haul the rest of the net. It was choppy that day and they were over a mud flat or sand bar or some damn thing and the whole works started twisting up like a great big cork, line, mesh and fish sausage. Justified or not the entire fiasco and ensuing misery of disentangling the giant pile of shit, not to mention having to go dry in order to cut the line out of the wheel was blamed on my wife and her altercation with this King. Call it revenge, call it just desserts but we are going to eat that son of a bitch this Thanksgiving.

So far this is about as far as I've gotten on my preparations. Apart from organizing the menu and cutting bread cubes for the stuffing several days ago I've also made a short list of things to get done today and tomorrow, checking each of them off my master list as I go. I've actually moved the crab upstairs so that it'll thaw by tonight and I can pick it this evening. I'm also planning to make a couple of my hors doeuvres today, stuffed mushrooms and stuffed cherry tomatoes. I'll roast some garlic and make a cayenne aioli for the oyster shooters, and I'll cure some jello for our Cowboy and Indian jello center pieces, and I'll make dinner for six. Unfortunately I'm not going to have time to blog this in real time but I'm planning a retrospective for after the holiday.

One thing I am ahead of the curve on that I'll just go through quickly here are my pies. These can be a real pain in the ass the day of or the day before so I went ahead last week and made my shells for the pumpkin pies and made my blackberry pie.

There's not much to a pie shell but there seems to be a lot of equipment necessary for making one. To mix the dough you don't need one of these fancy pastry cutters but can use two butter knives or a fork. The rolling pin is kind of essential but the scraper you can do without (it's more for clean up than anything). The spatula is totally unnecessary, in fact I don't even know why it's there, I put it away without even even using it.

For our purposes I'm just going to give you the recipe for a two-crust ten inch pie shell. I made this recipe twice, once for the blackberry pie and once for the three nine inch shells I made for the pumpkin pies. I try and stay away from doubling this sort of thing because shit can go horribly wrong with pie pastry and let me just tell you once you've messed it up there's hardly any chance you're going to correct it. Remember what I said about recipes being a guideline, well when it comes to baking the reverse is true. Stick to the recipe. Cooking is an art. Baking is a science.

Two Crust 10-inch Pie Shell

1 cup shortening

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

6 to 7 tablespoons cold water

In a large mixing bowl place shortening, flour and salt. Cut together with knives, fork or whatever. When it gets sort of crumbly start adding the water. Continue cutting until about the fourth tablespoon of water. Once you've reached this point you can just use your hand. It may be a little sticky so put you hand in flour before you begin. Kneed until consistent but not smooth. Separate dough into desired number of pieces.

Taking each section separately ball them up in your hand until fairly smooth. The dough shouldn't be sticking to your hands when you're through so if it is put more flour on you hands and work it a little more. I don't recommend trying to back peddle by adding more flour and mixing it up again. This doesn't seem to work and things just tend to get more fucked up. Just try to deal with the dough the way it is. Use more flour on the counter or on you board, keep flouring your rolling pin and hands.

Take the balls and flatten them on a well floured surface. You can do some shaping with your hands at this point but don't get carried away that's what the rolling pin is for. Roll the dough out flat making smooth and even motions from the center out toward the edges. Pause occasionally to re-flour your pin. If it sticks to the rolling pin in mid-stroke you'll end up with a tear and you don't want that. Once you've got the desired shape, check against the size of the pie plate, flour the flattened dough evenly and begin to roll it up. It took me a while to learn this trick. I used to try and lift the whole thing off the surface and place it on the tin. Usually you'd end up with a torn pastry. This is much easier and less of a headache.
Once it's rolled up just lift it up, place it on the edge of the pie plate and roll it into place. Total Baby Shit (in other words, a piece of cake).

For the pie filling you can do just about anything. Personally for pumpkin pies I like to use the canned stuff and the recipe on the side. I've found that rendering your own pumpkins down to pies isn't all that it's cracked up to be. It's time consuming and to me just doesn't taste right. Maybe it's how I was raised. My Mom, her Mom, and probably her Mom's Mom have all used Libby brand canned pumpkin. Even the recipes they've handed down from generation to generation are just the ones off the side of the can. Is it brand loyalty, or is it just good shit, I don't know. Whatever it is you gotta go with what you're comfortable with. That's what Thanksgiving is all about, comfort food.

The blackberry pie was a little different. We actually picked these back in late August and stuck them in the freezer. That's kind of another tradition. I've been picking blackberries for as long as I can remember so it would be anathema to me to use some store bought brand. It sounds like a contradiction, but again, that's just how i was raised.

After thawing the berries I drained them in a sieve. There is a lot of juice and the berries are pretty soggy so you might want to hold back a couple cups frozen to put on the bottom of the shell. This helps absorb some of the shock of having all those wet berries soaking through the bottom of the pastry. I also put a generous amount of tapioca on the bottom of the shell to suck up the juice that comes out during baking. You can skip this step if tapioca grosses you out, but you're pie shell won't likely be as crispy when you're done cooking it. Along with the tapioca I put in some sugar. These are late berries so you shouldn't need too much. Earlier berries are tarter so you might want to up the sugar but it's all up to your personal taste. Once I've got the base down I put in the berries, sprinkle on a little more tapioca and sugar and then close up the pie. Use your thumb and forefinger to pinch together the edges. Take a fork and poke some holes in the top crust so steam can escape during baking. Wrap in cellophane and store in freezer. I'll be taking my blackberry pie out to thaw tomorrow. It doesn't have to be entirely thawed before baking but it helps to be close. The pumpkin pies I'll be baking tomorrow night. The blackberry probably the day of after the turkey comes out of the oven.

All right, that's all I got. Now I gotta get to work. Have a happy Thanksgiving. Always remember the seven P's, Proper Preparation Prevents Piss Poor Performance.

I know what you're thinking but nobody ever said that fishermen were math wizards.

Let the Countdown Begin

Four days remaining until Thanksgiving. Four days where I will have to organize the meal, shop for the ingredients, prepare what I can in advance, entertain guests, play host to my wife's parents, and write this frigging blog. I must be crazy, or will be by the time this is all over. On top of it all I've been procrastinating. I've got a bunch of stuff waiting to go on this site but haven't had the energy or desire to do it. I have stuff about pumpkins and pumpkin seeds, about pies and sauerkraut, and there was the Marine Expo we were supposed to attend yesterday but didn't. I came down with something in the eleventh hour and we had to cancel. I'm kind of glad in a way. It was too much driving, we weren't really in the market to buy anything, and I was afraid that the only thing I'd accomplish by touring all that gear and mixing with all those fishermen would be the aggravation of my already acute case of sea-sickness (not the pukey kind, but a deep and melancholy longing for the sea, like homesickness, only worse because it entails the loss of wages as well).

I'm not sure what happened to me. Whether this gross feeling I'm experiencing is the result of some bug I caught or simply the penalty I'm paying for being a feckless drunkard. I hardly ever get sick, especially now that the only person I see on a regular basis is my wife, so I have to say I'm a little surprised and disappointed with my body for letting me down at this critical time. I can't afford to be sick right now. On a fishing boat it wouldn't matter. I'd still be expected to go out on deck and pull my weight with the rest of the crew. I wouldn't be pitied or coddled or hovered over with hot liquids and cool towels. No naked woman would arrive bedside with a plate of nachos and a pot of tea asking me if there was anything else she could do for me (I have to admit, my wife is pretty awesome). No, I would be shamed into sucking it up. I would be miserable and feverish and doped up on every kind of cold medicine you could imagine, but I'd get the job done. I wouldn't leave deck unless I lost consciousness or died.

I remember one Opilio season I was sick for the whole first trip. I coughed so hard that I couldn't get to sleep despite my severe fatigue. We were only averaging about four or five hours of rest each day, so each time I lay down I was kind of panicked to fall asleep, I'd curse at myself, I'd grumble and fume, I guzzled packet after packet of Thera-Flu, I tried holding in my coughs, determined to use my will power to cure myself. None of it worked. I didn't sleep a wink for four straight days. Finally I just gave up. I went to the galley to do some extra prep work, cleaned up the floors and range tops. I sat in the mess area and read magazines and talked to whoever was dumb enough not to be in bed. Then on the fifth day, while I was sitting in the dark at the galley table, feverish and exhausted, sleep crept over me and I finally got some rest. When I woke up, sitting there in my sweat pants and nothing else, the Fish and Game observer, Sarah, was standing over me. Then the Chief appeared, and some of the other crew. It was time to gear up and begin again. I was bewildered and felt lost but managed somehow to follow the lead of the other guys and make my way into my gear and out on deck.

For the rest of the day I never heard the end of it. First the Chief would come up to me as I was running the hydros and insinuate something. Then later I'd see him and the deck boss giggling over by the sorting table. In the forepeak between strings they'd grill me about my relationship with the Observer. Were Sarah and I doing it? What was I doing half-naked in the mess with her? Had we violated the galley table? Did the carpet match the drapes? And didn't I know she was married?

Sarah wasn't half bad so I was kind of flattered by the idea. Even so, I tried strenuously to deny everything, explaining that I'd fallen asleep that way in a fever, but I really didn't have the energy to answer the range of accusations they'd flung at me. Besides they were having way too much fun with the idea to let me off that easy.

That night at dinner when the incident was brought up in front of our skipper they gained all the rest of the ammunition they needed when Sarah made some off handed comment about how she wished she would have had some dollar bills to throw at me that morning. That pretty much sealed the deal. I spent the rest of the trip being hounded by my crew mates, alternately being plied for details and indicted for adultery. In all honesty though the teasing kind of helped. I felt revived, less certain of immanent collapse and death. And my coughing grew less and less severe. I no longer haunted the galley at night but slept soundly in my own bunk. By the end of the trip I hardly remembered that I'd been ill at all. I wasn't allowed to forget about Sarah. Even though she'd left the boat for another assignment I was still razzed mercilessly about our imagined fling. Was I gonna miss her? How did I feel about the crew on the Aleutian Douche taking turns on her. On and on.

In retrospect I guess it shouldn't be that difficult to get through this week. Opies and family visits are both terrifying and monotonous propositions, but something I've learned about the two is that if you keep your head down and don't take things too seriously they will both be over before you know it. You may have a few bruises to show for it, both physical and mental, but all things heal over time.

That said, I need to get down to business before our company arrives. I need to get this blog back up to speed or I'll never get it done while the in-laws are here. Part of being unemployed is the assumption that you are capable and willing of playing tour guide while your wife is at work. I guess I'll manage, but truth be told I'd rather just fart around the house, drink beer and watch netflix.

Down to brass tax. I'm sure that by now most of you have already carved your pumpkins, roasted the seeds and thrown away the rotting husks. I wish I could have been there to give you my two cents worth but as I've already said I've been way too busy practicing my inertia to pull off any timely posts. Unfortunately all I can offer is a kind of retrospective.

We've all done this before so I'm sorry if this seems sort of asinine but I'm gonna just go through it step by step for the sake of my own faulty thought process.

1. Cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin. I like to use a victorinox (or vicki). It's a serrated knife commonly found on fishing boats around the world. This particular one is a favorite of crab fishermen because of it's thicker blade and tougher handle. The wimpier red handled ones are fine for some fisheries but they have a tendency to snap off, sending a sharp metal object flying through the air in a random direction. (I've seen people stabbed by these missiles, not fun.)

2. Scoop out the guts and separate the seeds. Most of this can be done with your hands but I find a spoon and a sieve are useful. Whatever you do don't fall for those gimmicky carving kits that they sell at the super market. Those things are usually shoddily put together and don't work as well as they're advertised.

3. If possible you should compost the guts and the excess meat from the pumpkin. And for that matter you should compost the pumpkin once it rots and all the other vegetable waste from your kitchen. I just read an embarrassing fact about landfill in this country. Apparently 17 percent of our garbage is made up of compostable material. That might not sound bad until you find out that in South Korea they recycle 97 percent of their food waste either as compost or as feed for livestock. Get with it America, we're getting beat by the Koreans for chrissakes!

4. Brine the seeds overnight. I don't exactly measure the salt I use in this brine so I can't give you an exact amount. I rinse the seeds once or twice, then fill the bowl with water enough to cover (the seeds actually float so don't go overboard with the water). Then I pour salt in to the tune of about one and a half tablespoons. Mix up the concoction then let sit covered (a plate works great) for 12 to 48 hours. One day is optimum but if you're in a rush to have seeds 12 hours will do fine, or if you're just forgetful or preoccupied you can leave them for two, sometimes three days with out any ill effects.

5. Drain seeds in sieve. Coat with oil and sprinkle with salt. Spread the seeds on a ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. I usually set the timer for ten to twelve minutes, take the seeds our and mix them around before baking them for the rest of the time. This helps to keep them from burning near the edge of the pan. I also went a little crazy this year and tried spicing the seeds in different ways. I tried a rosemary thyme and garlic recipe and one with chili powder and cumin. I liked the latter a lot better. I also had an idea for teriyaki ginger seeds but I didn't get around to that one. We ran out of seeds.

While we're kind of on the subject of brining let me just quickly describe the process of making sauerkraut. I know that sauerkraut is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think Thanksgiving, but it is a part of our traditional New Year's Day meal (Pork roast, potato dumplings and sauerkraut, which should be cooked with a liberty dime if you have one. Be careful not to eat the dime) so it's high time you got it going or it will never be ready in time.

1. First thing you'll need is a bucket. I'm sure you fishermen out there will be tempted to use one of those blue five gallon oil buckets that are constantly overrunning your engine room and forepeak but I'd try to resist this temptation. You want something food grade for this experiment. You can use a pot too, but it's recommended that you use something with a ceramic coating or stainless steel. Never use Aluminum. It tends to make the brine murky and unappetizing.

2. The rest of the process is pretty simple. Surprisingly simple in fact. Get yourself about three to four large heads of cabbage. Quarter and cut out the core. Your knife is going to have to be pretty sharp for the rest of this so make sure you keep your steel handy, and be prepared to have a little bit of a sore wrist. I liken the shredding of the cabbage to cutting bait. It's tedious and has to be somewhat exact and by the end of it you're suffering from a slight case of tendinitis. If you're lucky enough to have a food processor (or a bait chopper)you can use that, but don't turn it into coleslaw. We're looking for long thin shreds here not confetti.

3. For about twenty pounds of cabbage you'll need approximately 3/4 cups pickling salt. I used Morton's coarse Kosher salt. It's good for just about anything, including Passover. As you shred your cabbage you're going to want to toss about a head and a half with a quarter cup salt. Make sure you get it nice and mixed in before you put it in the bucket. Once it's in the bucket use the palm of your hand and smash it down a little. Don't get crazy though, you don't want to totally mash the fibers in the cabbage. Firm but gentle is a standard rule with cooking, unless of course you're beating the hell out of a tough piece of meat.

4. Once you've got it all shredded, salted and pressed down there should be a layer of brine water formed on the cabbage. This water will help keep contaminants out of your kraut as it cures. To keep this layer of liquid above your cabbage you should put a plate snuggly down on top of it, and place a jar filled with water on top of that.

5. This concoction is going to be with you for the next five weeks so it's important to find someplace warm to put it where it won't be in the way or in any danger of being spilled. I put a towel over top of mine and secured that with a piece of line. You could use a bungee cord, electrical tape, whatever, just don't put the lid back on the bucket. The kraut has to breath. And it has to be at a temperature of 64-70 degrees. I'm storing mine in the laundry room next to the heater and water heater. This is where my bottled homebrew lives. It's warm and out of the way. Just be sure not to let any lint get into your kraut. That would be gross and devastating. No way to bring in the New Year.

6. A quick note on caraway seeds. I like my kraut with caraway but I am uncertain when to put them into the mixture. I've decided to let the kraut cure first and then to add them when I cook it and can it. More on that later.

Last of all I want to talk about pumpkins again. I kind of got real fancy with my pumpkin design this year because one, I don't get to carve too often because I'm usually fishing, two because I figured it would be a good way to promote my new blog during the holidays, and last but not least because I was pretty bored and a little drunk. Here's what I did.

1. Once it was all hollowed out and the seeds were taken care of I drew a design on the face of it. I tried to use some of the features of the pumpkin in the placement. Like I used this dimple on the right for the eye of my sea monster. I wanted to try and get the whole thing on to one side but as The Deadliest Chef is kind of long it sort of wrapped around. The turkey was kind of an after thought. Just goes to show you how much I'd been procrastinating. Thanksgiving was only two and a half weeks away when I did this.

2. Using some rudimentary carving tools left over from the days when I was an art student I went to work on the hull and carved my design in full relief. This took some time and a lot of patience but luckily I had plenty of beer and loud music to keep me going. For starters I traced all the lines with a flat blade. Then I took the skinnier of the two lathes and went around all the designs. Once that was done I took the thicker one and shaved off all the excess skin.

This was my result. Unfortunately the whole design couldn't be photographed at once but I can assure you it's all there.

I want to close by adding a short follow up to my last piece on Better Homes and Gardens. I don't know if you noticed but they had a lot of suggestions on how to use pumpkins for your holiday decorations but very few suggestions on what to do with those pumpkins once they went south. I'd like to leave you with a few ideas. First of all you should compost your pumpkin. This is pretty easy. Throw it in the bin and whack it with a hoe a couple dozen times till it's good and chopped up. If you're feeling especially destructive you can liven up this composting process by dropping your pumpkin off your deck and watching it splat. It's kind of messy but you can easily shovel it from there into the compost bin. A sledge hammer is also a fun way of mashing it in preparation for composting. If you've ever watched Gallagher you know what I'm talking about. If you're sort of a pyro you can always blow up your pumpkin with an M-80 or some other illegal firework but I don't recommend this because it makes a hell of a mess and it leaves powder burns which could adversely effect your compost. Personally, I kind of toyed with the idea of shooting my pumpkin.

But I thought, what with the city ordinances and the possible damage to the deck, that it would be better just to drop it onto the pavement below. Maybe next year I'll take my pumpkin out into the woods and retire it properly.

Ok, I've just gotten word that the inlaws are coming round the mountain. I've gotta go. If I don't get anything up before Thanksgiving I'd like to wish you and yours the very best. Good Luck and have a safe trip.

Rag of the Month Club

Better Homes and Gardens, October 2009

Because of my fishing experience on the Bering Sea, the Pacific Coast and various other water’s around the Gulf of Alaska and North Pacific people tend to regard me as somewhat fearless. Whether or not I deserve this praise is something I often struggle with. Are these heedless advances into the frothy, frozen sea really the result of some inborn courage? Or are they simply the hold-over of some hillbilly gene I carry, the kind of inbred stupidity that makes a person want to hang upside down from power lines or visit the zoo so they can run buck naked through the gorilla habitat? Honestly I couldn’t tell you where my desire to go to sea comes from. A lot of people I think mistakenly feel that this urge is due to the possession of some sort of exceptional anatomy. For example my fishing exploits are most often attributed to the belief that I have a gigantic pair of testicles. Some have compared them with grape fruit, others have said they must be like bowling balls, but whatever their nature they were certainly very large and very heavy and very full of whatever stuff it is that makes you do seemingly crazy things without much second thought.

I must say I’m flattered by these estimations, but I’m also concerned that I will never be able to live up to their legend. I’m afraid that someone with balls as big as church bells wouldn’t fair to well on a fishing boat. First of all the head is way too small to be squeezing prodigious body parts into and secondly, besides possibly providing additional floatation - do balls float? I don’t take many baths so I wouldn’t know - they would more or less get in the way of everything you were expected to do.

So let me dispel the myth right now. My balls are not enormous. But having said that, I would also like to note that my balls are not at the point of vanishing either. Part of the reason I brought all this testicle talk up was to address some concerns that were recently brought to my attention. While telling an old fishing buddy of mine about my plans to critique and review a series of popular cooking and homemaking magazines for this web site he suggested that my immersion in such female oriented material might in some way threaten my manhood. I think his exacts words were, “You’d better be careful or you might just grow a vagina.”

I have to confess that this was not the first time a fellow colleague of mine had accused me of having a vagina or being on the point of growing one. My abilities as a cook and my penchant for nit-picking and nagging about little annoyances in the galley had earned me a reputation as kind of a bitch. This didn’t however extend to my performance on deck. I wasn’t seen as a “pussy” by virtue of deficiencies in my work habits or willingness to get things done under less than perfect conditions. It was simply a way of teasing me and breaking the monotony on deck by speculating about what time of the month it was or how many fingers I could fit inside myself. I even encouraged this crude joke by suggesting that growing a vagina wouldn’t be all that bad as long as it grew somewhere on my body where I could still fuck it.

This was too much for even my crew members to take. It was loud on deck and as a consequence most of them only heard the first part of my statement. All I can remember is the look on our Chief’s face as he ran past me at the sorting table. Horror, confusion, possibly faint sexual arousal. I tried to reiterate the fact that this growth would only be for my own pleasure, that by having a vagina on my elbow, say, I’d be able to stay out at sea forever.

It was no use though, the damage had been done. They all immediately began to speculate about the possible uses I’d put my new vagina to. Could I get myself pregnant? Would I let my wife have a go at me with a strap-on? Would I share this boon with the bait boys? It was terrible and sick, and I felt embarrassed and under attack, but ultimately I didn’t let it get to me. I realized it was all in good fun. I knew that no matter how shocking or twisted this vein of comedy and abuse became that it was at the very least taking our minds off of the slavery and pain of Opilio season.

I guess I don’t expect you to fully appreciate the currency of something like that. It’s hard to understand that I didn’t and still don’t begrudge the crew for using me as a punching bag. They knew I could take it and that I would be a good sport, that I wasn’t going to go crying to the skipper or lose my shit and slit their throats while they slept. Being part of a crew is difficult sometimes. It takes courage and patience. You discover things about people that you might not want to know. But if you’re tough, and if you can see through the bullshit, then you might just learn something.

So I guess what I’m saying is, try to look past your preconceptions. Can’t a fisherman read and discuss Better Homes and Garden, O magazine or Weight Watchers without being labeled some kind of transsexual? I know it’s gonna sounds sexist, but don’t you think we ought to know what their feeding the women in this country. Just from spending one afternoon pouring over Better Homes has really made me question my decision to return to domestic life. Believe me being at sea is a lot safer. And more sane.

Let’s just start with the ads. They are the reason this magazine is printed in the first place so we might as well pay some attention to them. More or less the whole rag is simply a vehicle for selling shit. It’s like a catalog without the stiff order form in the center. A visual tableaux of consumer suggestions. A blotter of criminal excess and gross opulence.

I bet you didn’t know that they made filet mignon flavored dog treats. Or that our cat’s can have tiny single serving appetizers before dinner, and that our freakish little dog Martians, the Labra-terri-colli-doodle that weighs like an ounce and is riddled with so many genetic defects it looks like a retarded rat, can be covered by a pet health insurance plan. In fact there are numerous advertisements directed at pet owners. Fancy foods and environmentally friendly kitty litter. It’s scary. Billions of people on this planet live on less than two dollars a day and yet we’re supposed to shit ourselves with pride every time our lap dog sneezes or makes a stinker. Or we’re supposed to believe that by using Yesterday’s News brand cat litter we’re somehow contributing to the greater good, that, get this, Purina will reward us for being a “do gooder” by planting a fucking tree in our honor.

What kind of horrible disconnect is going on here? Is Better Homes trying to tell us something by accepting these sponsors, by allowing this crass and insulting ad speak? 6000 years of civilization and we’re supposed to think the best we can do is Splenda or an air freshener that knows when we’re taking a dump and can dispense its perfume accordingly.



Yeah, I’ll say it again. You bastards that stay on land are the brave ones. Out at sea things are simple. Life is understandable. We’re not sitting around worrying how the hell we’re going to decorate for the holidays, or wondering if our kitchen makes the grade, or if our base boards match our wall paint. I did find the article on the color orange interesting. Better Homes is much ado about color, but on the subject of orange at least I’ll have to admit they’re right, it is pretty hip, and looks good with about everything. I’m a big fan of orange rain gear for example, and orange buoys, and for that matter orange life boats aren’t bad either. They recommended pairing your oranges with colors like hot pink and robin’s egg blue, but I think your best bet, in a survival situation, is to go with silver reflector tape. Or if you can afford it some sort of strobe or parachute flare. Whatever you do don’t shoot the flares in the house though. Not even as a joke. Not even if you’re sure it will add the final touches to sprucing up that fall makeover you’ve just completed in the living room.



I have to confess, I’m more of a food guy than a design guy. All that feng shui stuff has never really appealed to me that much so the bulk of Better Homes is kind of lost on me. Gardening’s not my forte either, least not when the aim is anything other than producing food. It’s funny because I was looking at the magazine the better part of Saturday morning and it kind of got me thinking about decorating for this big Thanksgiving feast we’re going to have this year. I was on the phone with my Mom trying to discourage her from bringing a whole bunch of crap to the party, she wanted to bring these ceramic jack-o-lanterns for centerpieces and some runners and candles and a bunch of other stuff, and my wife just cringed when she heard me telling her that we would probably just round up some leaves from the backyard and decorate that way. I’d seen a whole bunch of garbage like that in the Better Homes that morning and thought that it would be easy and cheap, and that when we were done with it all we could just fling it off the porch and wouldn’t have to worry about it piling up in the garage like so much of our other useless crap.



My wife had other ideas. She thought centerpieces were kind of stupid to begin with and that we were going to have so much god damn food already that we wouldn’t have enough room left on the table to be strewing around glass pumpkins or piles of compost. I tried to explain to her that I had it on good authority that this was in fact how sophisticated people decorated their houses for the holidays, but she countered by saying that “while we’re at it maybe we could track in some festive Fall mud and scatter around some downed branches from last week’s wind storm.”

I knew right then that this Better Homes and Gardens crap was going to my head. Who did these people think they were anyways? Did they really expect us to believe that they lived these immaculate, seasonally color-coded lives in a perpetual state of family bliss and gastronomical ecstasy? Their houses were like stage sets, their kitchens gleaming new like they’d just been broken out of a box. Everything was just so; stylized, explained, functional and trendy. No one lives like that. Least not people who aren’t afflicted with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder. And even then they’d have to be an entire family of obsessive compulsives because otherwise they’d continually be having shit fits when someone put the Dijon back where the stone ground mustard was supposed to go.

What Better Homes and Garden is really dealing in here isn’t reality at all but a kind of pornography. They aren’t necessarily trying to waken any sexual desires for the furniture or food in their magazine, or the pets for that matter, but are playing heavily on a kind of pornographic style of presentation. The photographs are what they are selling us. The cover shot, the designs, the food, the cute kids and adorable pets, all of it merely a means of seducing the “reader” into buying the magazine. I’ve already compared Better Homes to a catalogue and that’s what it is, but buying the things inside the magazine is really only secondary to the promise of the magazine itself. Realistically not many of us will try to recreate or even incorporate their design ideas into our everyday living. We may pluck a few items from their pages, but it will be a timid and uncertain exercise in “living better”. Mostly we’ll just sit around and leaf through the magazine, get our jollies off of pipe dreams and eye candy.

I suppose there are things to learn from Better Homes and Garden; how to plant mums and bulbs, how to organize your freezer (or upgrade to one with self-organizing features), how to decorate and entertain, but really there’s not much content. The subjects are shallow and the pages are crowded with pictures and editorial flourishes. Aside from the recipes in the back there isn’t much substance to this 278 page behemoth. I didn’t get an actual count but I would guess that at least half of it is ads. And the recipes don’t even start till the last quarter of the magazine. And then we’re only talking about maybe twenty pages in all.

I picked out a few things I’m going to try here at home and report back on. There were a couple of pumpkin recipes, a rice pudding and a black bean bake, and there was this kale and goat cheese frittata that looked pretty good. The other recipes seemed solid too but with thanksgiving coming up and the Marine Expo and the in-laws arriving this weekend I just don’t have the time to mess with them. Besides I don’t cook with recipes that often. Like I said before, recipes should be used as guidelines. Food, like language, like life, like the sea, like a lot of things is constantly transforming, it’s an expression, a mood, a living thing. Once a recipe is perfected it seems, to me at least, to lose some of its character.

It’s important not to stagnate, not to let ourselves be railroaded into false expressions and soulless recreations.


On a scale of one to ten, one being landfill and ten being something I'd save as a reference, I think I'd have to give Better Homes and Garden a three.

From Russia with Love

Pursuant to the treaty ratified on April 9, 1867 this check for 7.2 million dollars was delivered to Russian Tsar Alexander II thus closing the sale of the Alaskan Territory to the United States of America.

Despite popular support for this move many in the press criticized William H. Seward and Charles Sumner for bringing the deal about. Journalists like Horace Greeley viewed Alaska as a frozen wasteland, a place where civilization might never take hold, and where one couldn't reasonably foresee the aboriginal population ever becoming a governable body. Whether these concerns were ill founded or continue to be relevant I guess depends on your relationship to the state. I've lived in Alaska and I can attest to its extreme temperatures. Frozen wasteland, maybe not, but a warm spring day doesn't usually dawn on its population until well into June. As for Alaskan Civilization I'm not really ready to commit to the marriage of those two words. The American Heritage Dictionary defines civilization as an advanced stage of development in the arts and sciences accompanied by corresponding social, political, and cultural complexity. If you've ever been to Anchorage I think you'll understand my hesitation here. Civilization may be a bit of an overstatement when your line-up of cultural attractions includes the likes of Chilkoot Charlie's and the Great Alaskan Bush Company. And yes, the U.S government may have learned to govern the aborigines through specious methods of colonialization, i.e. malt liquor and corn syrup, but ask any Native with a skiff, a rifle and a Honda outboard who owns the land and the first words out of his mouth aren't likely to be Uncle Sam.

I think to a great extent Alaskans, both of European and Native descent, are probably about as likely as Hawaiians and Puerto Ricans to associate themselves with their so-called American heritage. It's only been fifty years since Alaska became a state after all, and there was and still is a lot of controversy and misgiving about the move among the people who live there. You can hear it in how they refer to the contiguous United States as the lower forty-eight. It's as if the rest of the country is somehow less than them by virtue of their southern latitude; corrupt and soft, lacking that Robert Service-like grit and high spirit that calls to only a few and that they or their ancestors had obviously answered long ago (Alaskans will always exaggerate the number of years they or their family have lived in the state. They're much like fishermen in this regard, who tend to exaggerate their experience fishing commercially). When put to some patriotic litmus test Alaskans may all evince a strong loyalty to the United States, but when it comes to anything other than National Security they're probably not going to be the first ones running to the defense of the "American Way of Life", that is if one is to understand that way of life outside the prism of state's rights and the second amendment. The truth is they view the United States as a gluttonous, godless bunch of tree-hugging fairies and would like nothing more than to distance themselves further from it than their mere geography presently allows.

That said, I think it is fair to say that in many respects Alaska is much closer to Russia than it is the United States. It's geographic proximity aside the Russian culture has left a much deeper and longer lasting impression on the state than most people would like to acknowledge. In fact when Sarah Palin made her infamous gaff about being able to see Russia out her front window it's very likely that she was just mistaking the country for the onion dome on the Orthodox church across the street. Russia is that close. Whether it's the meager distance between our two continents at the Bering Strait, the proliferation of babushka's in the streets of rural towns, the language being spoken over the VHF or the profusion of Orthodox churches from Juneau to Ninilchik to Unalaska, Russia and the Russian culture still has a significant presence there. I don't want to overstate their contribution to the make up of present day Alaska because there are places in this country where Russians have a much bigger stake in the overall demographics, but historically speaking Russia does play an important role in Alaska's identity.

In fact Alaskan fishermen were some of the first to significantly participate in Gorbachev's Perestroika movement in the late 1980's. As part of the US - Soviet Comprehensive Fisheries Agreement signed in 1988 some of the Alaskan fleet fished in Russian waters and even made calls in Russian ports. While they were there they shared harvesting techniques with their Russian counterparts and probably a good amount of Vodka too. Over the years this relationship has continued. The ICC (Intergovernmental Consultative Committee) meets once a year to discuss stock assessments in the Bering Sea, exchange scientific data and assist one another in enforcing boundaries and laws. Fishermen from the US also occasionally find work in several of the different Russian fisheries as crewmen, captains and advisers. As a result of this some fishermen have even returned to the states with a Russian bride.

A fishing buddy of mine, who'd been born in California but who'd lived in Alaska for "35 years", always joked about how cushy his life would be if he had a Native son and a Russian wife. Most people know that being an Alaskan resident entitles you to certain monetary perks known as the "permanent fund dividend". What is little known is that being a Native Alaskan (i.e. an Inuit or Tlingit or the like) gives you extended benefits like free college, special hunting and fishing rights and some land entitlements. It is a common belief that due to the treaty arrangements between the U.S. and the Tsar way back in 1867 that Russians receive some sort of special treatment too. I don't know if this is a fact or not. I couldn't find anything about it, but it's one of those myths that fishermen, especially no account fishermen like my buddy, nurture in the hopes of someday retiring and living entirely off the dole. They dream of being waited on by some eighteen year old Russian porn star, and imagine that by going hunting with their Indian son they'll no longer have to heed words like endangered species and bag limit.

Last I'd heard my buddy had only partly fulfilled his dream. He'd knocked up some Native prostitute in Anchorage and gained custody of the resulting son. He was married too and she was of Russian descent but not the kind that counted. Unfortunately for him her family had come to America by way of New Jersey and as a result she was lacking the requisite qualifications. She was lacking a lot of other things too as far as I was concerned. A soul for starters. I swear to god that woman was like a cross between Laura Schlesinger and Hermon Goebbels, lippy and self-righteous and aimed toward some sinister final solution. I felt sorry for my buddy. His boy was the son of a crack whore and his wife was a Russian banshee.

On the bright side my buddy's wife did have one redeeming characteristic. Even though in speech and manner she was one hundred percent Jersey skag she had retained one thing from her Russian ancestors and that was the ability to cook their ethnic food. I never had such amazing borscht, piroszhki or pelmeni. And I'd had my share. Like many people living in the Northwest I'd encountered Russian cuisine before and despite the consonant laden menu items and strange and flemmy looking dishes they described I really grew to like it. Russian food is pretty fantastic and though I wouldn't put it up there with Creole or Vietnamese it's got a certain charm to it and it'll certainly stick to your ribs. Borscht I've found to be particularly useful in my shipboard cooking career. It's one of those things that doesn't take too much preparation and that once you've got going doesn't have to be babied. Now I know what your thinking, soup on a fishing boat? Well, more properly it's stew, and yeah, you can cook anything on a boat, and in practically any weather too, if you have a tall enough pot and a way to keep it fastened to the stove. Actually, borscht is especially good for those first few days of stormy weather. It's palatable to queasy stomachs, hearty and can be left on the stove for those of us who's appetites don't always return at exactly meal time.

There are lots of variations on the recipe. Unfortunately I was never able to gather the banshee's version because we'd had a falling out over some contraband she'd discovered in their apartment after returning home from a trip back East. I knew that if my buddy was ever caught that I'd be the one taking the blame and I was OK with that. What are friends for anyway? The unfortunate part of the arrangement however was that it permanently cut me off from this unexpected, secret legacy of Russian cooking that had somehow found it's way into his wife's otherwise barren skill set. To this day I've yet to find anything quite as perfect as her blini (a kind of crepe) or borscht. And honestly I've stopped trying. I haven't written off Russian food, or borscht. In fact there's a rather good recipe in Betty Crocker's Cookbook. (If you don't have this tome I highly recommend picking it up. It's got all kinds of useful information in it and a lot of simple, tasty recipes. Whatever you do though try to resist the urge to remove the pages from the spiral binder. They never seem to make it back into the book in the right order, and a lot of times they end up torn or burnt or irreversibly damaged in other ways.)

Delicious Borscht

It's important to remember that cookbooks and recipes should only be viewed as a guideline. For example with Betty Crocker's borscht I don't always use the exact ingredients she has written down. Like the red wine vinegar for example, I just don't find myself using enough of it to keep it on hand, so instead I just substitute apple cider vinegar, or even white vinegar will work fine. As for the smoked pork hock called for in the recipe that's a meat product that doesn't usually find much traction in my household. My grandfather was a butcher and owned a smokehouse outside of Cleveland, Ohio so consequently I'm a big fan of those sorts of meats. My wife on the other hand looks at these types of weird dried pieces of pork flesh like something you might find among the flotsam on a California beach. She doesn't want to have anything to do with them and has only recently consented to eating borscht because I've omitted the ham hock and severely cut down on the beef.

As for the vegetables you needn't restrict yourself to just beets, cabbage, potatoes and onion. You can put a carrot in there too, or go completely wild and put in a cut up rutabaga. Whatever you do I just ask that you ignore the time saving tips Betty's provided at the bottom of her web recipe. These sorts of things are for lazy people. I promise you beets aren't that hard to prepare and your borscht will be so much better if you stay away from canned ingredients. The beef broth is OK, but you really don't need it and can easily substitute it with a bullion cube or two. As for the pre-shredded cabbage, give me a break! You're not going to bust your arm cutting up a little cabbage. Plus you'll be saving us a lot of trouble if you avoid shit that's over packaged. I don't even use those little bags when selecting stuff from the vegetable isle. Why bother, it just adds weight, and believe me if you were shopping in Dutch Harbor you'd be conscious of every ounce. I was lucky enough this year to have both garden grown beets and potatoes. For that I have to thank our neighbors for watering this summer while my wife and I were in Bristol Bay. Thanks guys. Maybe next year we can get you to take care of the pets too.

One last suggestion before I end this tiresome screed. If you happen to be counting calories you don't have to use sour cream as a topping when finishing your borscht . On a crab boat you want to maximize caloric intake so you might even fling in a stick of butter, but for most of us we don't need to consume that much fat to get by. Use plain yogurt instead, or use nothing at all. Borscht is good either way and the sour cream only serves to add to the tartness of the vinegar and to smooth out the broth. A little dill, a little sourdough bread, mmm-mm. That's all you really need.

Спасибо Russia. I love your soup.

The Russians Are Coming!

Don't be alarmed. I'm not talking about a horde of angry Cossacks here. Or a group of Communist hardliners. I'm talking about a different kind of Red invasion altogether. One that has been steadily increasing year after year for the better part of this decade. I'm talking about Russian Red King Crab. It's everywhere we look. At the Fred Meyer, in Wal-Mart, in the fish department at Safeway. It's nearly impossible to find Alaskan caught King Crab in stores these days. Sure you can ask around but supermarkets and groceries aren't obliged to tell us where their crab is coming from. They may all proudly label their selections Wild, as this is the watch word of the day in sustainable seafood, but Wild in this case guarantees nothing. Who caught this crab? Was it within their quota or in excess? Is the crab of legal size? All questions that can not be answered, or will not be answered at the point of sale.

So what the hell are we supposed to do? I love King Crab and I've grown accustomed to having it during the winter holidays. In years past I haven't had this problem because I was fishing on a crab boat and knew exactly where the crab was coming from and who had caught it. Since leaving that particular fishery though I find myself facing a moral dilemma. Who do I turn to for advice, who can I trust?

Well if I listened to Sig Hansen of the Northwestern he'd probably say, "Go ahead, buy yourself some Russian caught crab. By reducing the excess crab on the market it will drive up the price and benefit the industry as a whole, including the Alaskan fishermen." It's great PR, and seems like a reasonable argument, but most Alaskan fishermen I've talked to aren't buying it. Especially not after the ring leader of Global Fishing, Arkadi Gontmakher, the man responsible for bringing thousands of Wal-Mart customers Northwestern brand King Crab (caught in Russia - shhh), was jailed in Moscow for allegedly selling illegally harvested seafood in the United States. It's difficult to picture Commercial Fishermen being outraged by violations of conservation policy no matter what country brings them, but in this particular case they had a vested interest in smearing Global Fishing (one of the leading importers of King Crab at the time) and their specious supply chain. Who's watching these crafty Russians anyways? Isn't the whole industry mobbed up over there? So far it hasn't been a difficult sell and most Seafood Watch organizations are advising against the purchase of imported King Crab. http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/SeafoodWatch/web/sfw_factsheet.aspx?gid=8

I'm not entirely certain that this call to avoid these products is warranted though. I know there is a knee jerk reaction to buy American and that fishermen are especially prone to this reflex, but I can't help wondering how a country that imports 83% of the seafood it consumes (and 70% of its King Crab) can or would benefit from forcing arbitrary prohibitions on to certain products. There must be some legitimately caught Russian Crab. Marine Treasures Inc. supplies the King Crab to Fred Meyer here in Washington State. The crab sections they're offering are large and full of meat and look in all respects like their cousins in Alaska. Now is this South Korean company involved in some sort of shenanigans with the Russian fishing fleet? Are they landing Russian crab in Korean ports to obscure the quota allocation in the Sea of Okhotsk? I don't have the foggiest of ideas? You can make all the accusations you want but until there is proof, until these Seafood Watch organizations can provide evidence that these specific companies are involved in illegal fishing activities I just can't see limiting my choice based on some sweeping claim. Sure my decision may make some fractional difference in the price of crab caught here in the US, but then again it might not. It might hurt the stock in the Eastern Bering Sea, or it might help to eradicate the pesky Barent Sea Reds that were introduced there by Stalin and are decimating local fish populations. Weighing all of these alternatives gets to be a tricky and burdensome ordeal. I want to make good food choices. I want to reward people who deal in a high quality and sustainable product. But I've done the research. I've checked into Marine Treasures (you can get full details of their shipments to the US, their licenses and certifications at http://www.panjva.com/, it isn't free however) and I can't honestly say that they're more or less criminal than any other corporation on this planet. So I say, Fuck it, I'm buying Fred Meyer's King Crab for $7.99 a pound. It's a hell of a deal. And it's not like it's poisonous. I mean other than the fact that I have to agree with Sig Hansen. Russian Crab isn't going to kill the Alaskan King Crab Industry. And it's certainly not going to hurt the IFQ holders sitting on their asses in Seattle collecting 70% from their quota share. That's the real crime. You want to talk about hurting "Alaskan Fishermen", try taking a look into rationalization.

Anyway, enough. I've made my decision and I'm sticking to it. Take it as an endorsement, take it as hypocrisy, take it however you like, but I'm having King Crab this X-mas. And it's going to be Red.

Recipes to follow :)