November 29, 2005

• Aaaah, warm feet!

  My feet have hardly been warm for a week or so.  Two events
  coincided today to give me warm feet:  the temperature outdoors
  shot up from around minus twenty degrees to mere single digits below
  zero, and I had to go out so I put on my Canadian Army mukluks (thank
  you again, Ren).  
  Doug broke the handle on his axe yesterday.  I had planned to go
  north to Sunshine and pick up my refills at the clinic anyway, so I had
  him brush snow off my car, shovel the driveway, and plug in the engine
  block heater before he went to bed about the time I got up today.

  The big new hardware store at Sunshine, just off the Y on the Talkeetna Spur Road.
  
  The clinic didn’t have my refills ready, but I went anyway, to get the
  new axe handle and stop for milk.  The little local store was out
  of milk.  These things happen out here in Alaska… ah, hell,
  these things happen even in Anchorage.  I remember in the
  mid-1970s a barge went down in a storm on its way north from Seattle,
  and all the stores in Anchorage ran out of things like dog food and
  toilet paper.

  Except for the meds and the milk, which until the axe handle broke had
  been my reasons for going, I got what I went for and more.  Thanks
  to the mukluks and a combination of coats that Greyfox had found
  discarded at Felony Flats last summer, plus my trusty old hat and a
  pair of glove liners inside some neat polar fleece things that convert
  from mittens to fingerless gloves, I stayed warm on the trip. 
  Those coats, I can’t praise highly enough.  Over my sweater I wear
  a Duofold reversible polar fleece jacket, dark blue on one side (the
  side I show) and teal on the side I hide, with a layer of Gore-Tex
  between.  Over that, a hip-length lined shell of silky-feeling
  black, a simply elegant windbreaker and butt-warmer.

  The
  building next door, which used to be the hardware store, and had a
  karate dojo upstairs for a while, now is the State Trooper substation.

  When I got home, I didn’t bother changing my footwear.  I don’t
  usually wear mukluks in the house.  It’s hard enough even barefoot
  or in slippers or moccasins, to avoid stepping on cats, tripping over
  my own feet or hanging up while trying to step over the gate that keeps
  the dog from the cats’ apartment in the back of the house. 
  Outdoor footgear is for outdoors, I think.  Bare feet is my
  perennial preference, but I’ll make an exception if the weather is cold
  enough.

  It has been quite cold enough in here during that mini cold snap just
  past.  The water stored on the floor in the buckets we use to
  carry it from the spring had formed a layer of ice at top, bottom, and
  all around the sides.  The cat’s water froze in the hallway, and
  that in Koji’s feeding station out here, where they all drink (much to
  Koji’s dismay and occasional demonstrations of canine
  possessiveness).  The water dishes aren’t set directly on the
  floor, either.  They are elevated on four inches of styrofoam
  house insulation, because cold floors are a winter reality in here.

  I am definitely NOT
  complaining.  I will not complain about this dilapidated old
  trailer or any of its inconveniences or discomforts.  You get what
  you pay for, and this trailer, like our priceless Thanksgiving turkey*,
  was FREE.  The turkey was a premium for buying a lot at Fred
  Meyer, and the trailer was a gift out of the goodness of the heart of a
  man whom I seriously doubt has that emotional tenderness commonly
  called “heart”.   Who knows what motivated Mark to hand over
  the title to this place to me?  Hand it over he did, and I knew
  with a sinking sensation when he did it that I’d be saying goodbye to
  my old home at Elvenhurst.

  I still own that property that I named Elvenhurst the first summer I
  was there putting in gardens, seeing odd things out of the corner of my
  eye, hearing little voices on the wind, and finding strange stone rings
  and such.  A lot of my library and various sorts of junk are still
  there on that property, as well as the squalid dwelling that we called
  home before Mark left us here in his old place caring for his
  cats.  One reason I’m not complaining about this place is that
  it’s a definite step up from the old place.  It is roomier, and it
  is on the power grid. 

  We have electric fans now to move around the heat from the
  woodstove.  Our woodstove at Elvenhurst is bigger and more
  efficient than this little thing here (too big, heavy and unwieldy to
  move, darnit), but, as you may know, heat rises.  Without a way of
  stirring it up, in cold weather a thermocline forms, an observable
  interface between the cold air on the floor and the warm air
  above.  We used to be able to gauge the degree of cold by the
  height above the floor of the thermocline.  At minus thirty
  Fahrenheit, it would be chin high, and at forty below (C or F, forty
  below is forty below) it would be over my head.

  Charley built me a loft just big enough for a futon, about head high
  right beside the woodstove in the wannigan at Elvenhurst.  We
  called it my nest.  When Doug was small, I hung a hammock over one
  side of it for him.  He could burn off some of his hyperactivity
  swinging in it, or wrapping it around himself and spinning, rolling it
  over, giggling and squealing as I sat beside him reading or writing.

  All three of us practically lived on that nest in winter when Doug was
  a preschooler.  Venturing down from it for a trip to the kitchen
  required suiting up as someone from, say, Kansas, might suit up to go
  outdoors in winter.  Over there, we kept our water supply in a
  steel drum whose side touched the woodstove, and moved those items we
  now keep in the fridge here up or down depending on the temp, to
  whatever height would keep them cold without letting them freeze. 
  A few times, that meant hanging them from ceiling hooks.  The
  freezer was an ice chest in the great outdoors.

  So, of course I’m not going to complain about things on the floor
  freezing here, when at the last place I lived things on my kitchen
  table would freeze.  The time I spend under blankets in Couch
  Potato Heaven, facing the PS2 monitor with my back to the woodstove, is
  for comfort and fun, not for survival.  The futon that used to be
  on my nest is now on the floor in Doug’s room and he says that after he
  gets it warm at night it’s okay even in the coldest weather.  It
  would be foolishly ungrateful of me to complain of cold feet when I not only have such nifty mukluks to wear, but also have those memories of being cold all over every time I crawled down from the nest to stoke the fire.

  Remember:  I’m reporting, not complaining.

  *JadedFey
  asked about the quick-cooking turkey.  Directions on the package
  said cook at 325° for way too many hours and an hour longer than that
  if it was stuffed.  The way I’ve done it all my life, the method
  from The Joy of Cooking, is to preheat the oven to 450°
  to sear the surface, turning the heat down to 350 as soon as you put
  the bird in.  Their recommended cooking time was 20 minutes per
  pound unstuffed, 25 minutes per pound with stuffing, to a safe internal
  temperature of 190°F.

  I started out thinking I’d do it according to the package directions,
  then I realized how late we’d be eating and remembered that Greyfox
  wanted to get home before dark.  The bird had just gone into the
  325° oven when I had that thought, so I turned the electric oven up to
  “broil”, seared the bird and got it good and hot, then turned heat down
  to 350°, set the timer for way too little time for the turkey but just enough to conform with Greyfox’s plans.

  My plan was to check the temp when the time ran out, and maybe
  slice
  some of the more well-done parts off the outside and return the rest to
  the oven.  I  had a bowl of excess stuffing that I’d
  microwaved, so that was covered and everything else was done.
   That turkey should have taken about nine-and-a-half hours by the
  book.  It was less than half that much time when I took it out and
  checked its internal temp with the meat thermometer and found it
  miraculously done just to a perfect 190°.  Actually, even before I
  checked the temp, I felt it was done, because it just smelled right.
   

  It still tastes right, too, on the sixth day, fifth day of leftovers,
  and there are still some gravy and stuffing to go with the meat.
   In a few more days I’ll be down to sandwich slices, and when
  that’s all gone, there’s a bag in the fridge with legs and wings to
  boil for soup.  Mmm mmm….

  

  • 8:49 pm
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