BON APPETIT

I have to admit that my wife and are foodies.   We love good restaurants, and we eat out a lot.   

Food, right after sex, has always been my driving force.  I like well-prepared fine food; but I also like my own version of junk food.   I often eat mayonnaise sandwiches, or almost anything between two pieces of white bread slavered with mayonnaise.   I like spam and I like deviled ham.   Being from Kentucky I love pimento cheese sandwiches.   I also eat almost anything covered with gravy.

Long ago, as a Navy survival instructor, I got over any pickiness when it came to eating.   I have eaten rabbits, squirrels, porcupine, beaver, muskrat, grubs, maggots and I have drunk animal blood.   I have eaten deer, moose, sheep, bear, caribou, seal and most kinds of fish – the list could definitely go on if I took time to think about it. 

 Usually, when we eat out, I am looking for sea food.   A good seafood alfredo and a couple of glasses of good red wine and I am in food heaven.   I love fish and chips, raw oysters, steamed clams and mussels.  In Portugal my favorite dish was baccala – salt cod with potatoes.  Fish-and-brewis from Newfoundland: salt cod with hardtack that turns into dumplings when boiled together – cover it with scruncheons (fried salt pork) and you can’t get me away from the table. 

In southwest Alaska the Yup’ik kindergarten kids made Eskimo ice cream (akutak.)     In the far north the Natives mix whale oil, sugar and berries; but as the Yup’ik are inland Natives they mix Crisco, Wesson oil (since whale oil is not available), fresh fish, sugar and berries, all beaten together like cake icing.

My wife and Kalskag kindergarten children learning to make Eskimo Ice Cream

Preparing the fish

Adding the sugar and berries

  stir until fluffy

 and now for the feast

I know that foods are an acquired taste; but I really have no truck for picky eaters that refuse to try ‘different’ foods.

the Ol’Buzzard

Note: the southern Yup'ik don’t mind being called Eskimo but the Northern Natives don’t like it.   Many decades ago the Athabaskan Indians used the word Eskimo for the northern people to mean ‘eaters of meat’ – the connotation being cannibalism.