First order of business, what do I typically eat? The same thing I always ate before really. Only more canned foods and less fresh and frozen things. For example, I had a tuna casserole for dinner tonight. It was just a normal tuna helper with canned tuna and some rice to go with it. For breakfast I had cereal and milk. Granted, my milk is shelf milk, and doesn't have to be refrigerated until after it's opened, but it's better than powdered! Fruits and veggies don't last long at all, even down in Anchorage, so it's canned everything for the most part. We refrigerate it too, to make it all last longer.
Lunch during the week is just whatever they're having at school that day. Which is fine, because we don't get a lot of nice sandwich loaf bread. We've got a bread maker, but the last time we used that it didn't all mix together, and the time before that my roommate forgot to add the yeast. Unleavened honey wheat bread, anyone? That was disgusting.
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| Our slightly non-mixed second attempt at bread. Still yummy! |
Everyone is super psyched about our upcoming Farmer's Market that will be held at the school. They're ordering fresh fruits and veggies from Sam's Club and having it sent up here. Which is a nice segue into my second topic of discussion: how do I get food?
There are several ways to get food here. The first is to order it from the AC store in Barrow. Barrow has a grocery store, and they will put together your order and send it out to you the next day on the plane. The only problem with this option is that sometimes (like three times in the month of July) the AC store loses its freezers and everything goes bad or sometimes the plane can't land or take off the next day. This second situation is not a huge deal because ERA will just keep your order frozen until the next plane can make it out. You just don't wait until the last second to order food in the bush.
Another option is to do a whole ton of shopping in Anchorage and have it shipped to yourself. This can be accomplished by using the bush order section of your neighborhood Fred Meyer or Sam's Club, who will package your food and ship to the bush for some extra money. Alternatively, this can be accomplished by filling Rubbermaid plastic bins with whatever food you want, drilling holes through the lid and rim, and using zip ties to hold the lit in place. This bin is then shipped through the mail using Alaska's awesome in-state subsidized mailing rate. (Thank you, Alaska!) These bins can be filled to 69.9 pounds (have to be UNDER 70 pounds. Just a fun fact). And you have to use Rubbermaid because the cheap ones will burst in the cold of winter because it's -60 here and apparently that's a little hard on plastic.
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| These non-Rubbermaid tubs are okay for summer. |
Option number three? Grow your own. Some people grow their own greens indoors, since they don't have much access to fresh fruits and veggies. My neighbor Mona, the counselor, grows a lot of greens with the use of grow lights in her spare bedroom. Here's a picture;
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| Mona is currently growing sunflower greens and some sort of beans or peas. |
And there's always the options of ordering things from Omaha Steaks. And an Amazon Prime membership is almost a must (Free shipping? To Alaska? Count me in.). The key here is to stock up every time you go into town (aka Anchorage). You ALWAYS bring something back. In fact, you bring an extra suitcase or duffle bag and fill that up with food. And if you're going to be overweight on your baggage, you might as well be enough overweight that your bag weights 100 pounds, because you'll pay for that amount of weight anyway. Or you bring your totes down all zip tied together to count as one piece of luggage and fill them to send back, keeping one back as your second piece of luggage. Some people even ship their clothes back (it's lighter, therefore cheaper) and then bring only food as their luggage. It's always a fun time in the Anchorage airport. They'll even chill things for you until it's time to load the plane, and a good freezer bag from Sam's Club will keep your frozen things frozen enough that they're safe to refreeze when you arrive in Atqasuk sometime the next afternoon. It's good for over 24 hours.
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| We have more food now. And we're still not as full as most of the other teachers. |
And finally, this brings me to the third section of important food questions; what new things have I eaten?
1. Akpic Pie- this delicious berry (also called the salmon berry) is what our village is known for. I just tried this today and it was absolutely delicious.
2. Tuttu- what you would call caribou or reindeer, tuttu are delicious. The meat is fairly lean. In fact, I know several people who have told me that after eating tuttu, I will not want to go back to beef. This is probably true since I prefer turkey or chicken to beef already. I've had tuttu sausage, tuttu stew, tuttu burgers, tuttu spaghetti, tuttu tacos, and tuttu steaks. Anything you can make with ground turkey, ground beef, or even regular steaks, you can make with tuttu.
3. Whale- I haven't had a chance to try whale yet, but I plan on it! I look forward to trying it, even though I've been told I won't like it. I always love trying new things.
So I haven't eaten a lot of new things, but I can't wait to try more. Hope this answered some of your questions about food on the North Slope!
