The Big Move: Homeward Bound!

For the past month I’ve been spending occasional Sundays regaling you with my tales of traveling woes as I traversed Canada to complete my move into Idaho. That was a couple of months now but I can still remember crossing that border. It wasn’t eventful… but I was really ready to get out of Canada. Here’s my top memories of the last day and a half we spent driving to our destination.

1. The Border. After going 50+ miles into Canada before seeing the shack for the border crossing, the American border into Montana was ridiculously large and over bearing.  And you have to slalom your car through barricades to exit, exactly like leaving a military base actually. What happens when you actually see the border guard? Not a damn thing. I think we said ‘hello’ and he looked at my dogs certificate and then waved us through. A lot of pomp and circumstance. Oh what he asked if we had any Canadian food… but since we were just about starving at this point that was an easy answer.
2. Montana. Maybe it was because we had just driving 2 days through the most boring terrain imaginable by the time we reached it. I don’t really care, Montana was gorgeous. They mountains are so beautiful it was hard for me to focus on the fact my car-mates were close to heaving every second we wound through them. Oh yeah… that never changed.
3. Thank god for gas by the gallon. You know that feeling when you haven’t seen your bank account in a week and you’ve been charging unimaginably expensive gas twice a day the whole time? I do… it’s not fun.
4. Cell service! Sort of. So my boyfriend (with an Idaho phone) got full service in Montana while my sister and I did not. The minute we crossed into Idaho we got our service and his took a nose dive. Either way, I won’t complain. We celebrated by calling everyone and their mother at our last campsite. I even checked my instagram. It nice to have no connection to the outside world for a while… but it’s nicer to have it back when you really get tired of your travel buddies.
5. What new hell is this HEAT!? That’s right, I’m an Alaskan. I don’t do heat. Do you know what happens in Alaska when it’s 70 degrees? Everybody starts complaining and standing in front of their freezers sweating their butts off because we don’t even own air conditioning units.  So you know what happens when I drive across my new home state’s border into 100 degree weather in a Jeep with no air conditioning unit and neoprene seats?! My boyfriend is lucky he survived those last few hours. What water we had left went to my dog every break we took, which became hourly it seemed. I drove 80 mph down the interstate with all my windows down and laying on my steering wheel. If you don’t know, neoprene doesn’t breath… and 100 degrees makes me sweat too much to evaporate fast enough.

So that’s the final chronicle in my summer expedition move through Canada. There’s nothing that compares to dying of heat, worrying about your poor quickly dehydrating dog, while hauling ass the last hour of your 6.5 day trip. I needed a shower, a real meal and a good nights rest so bad it hurt. We did the only thing we could think to do under the conditions… we unpacked, showered, dressed up and went to The Melting Pot!

The Big Move: Part Two

Welcome back to my posts summarizing my moving/camping trip through Canada. Not everyone cares to specifically travel through Canada but you learn things every time you travel and they can be applicable to future trips.

The trucks abandoned by the Army Corp of Engineers from the original highway construction are pretty interesting.

Last time I went over an over-view of the entire week-long camping trip. This time I want to go over the first two days… which we spent getting from south-central Alaska through to the Southern edge of the Yukon. All told we traveled about 900 miles in those two days. It took about 16 hours of actual drive time. If you’ve been through the Yukon you may know a thing or two about travel speeds, and yes we were not necessarily doing the speed limits. So here we go… what did I learn in the first two days:

1. Snacks… bring more snacks than you think you need. If you think “Oh one box of cheez-its, some fruit snacks and york peppermint patties should do” you, my friend, are mistaken. First of all this was a 6.5 day trip in which our meal plans were to split a 2 serving bag of dehydrated food between 3 people. What the hell was I think? I do not know. I went over last time how the food is expensive, but in the Yukon it can also be hard to find.
   

   Maybe you can pick more healthy options… but you get the idea.

2. Gas up EVERY 200+ miles. My sister (bless her heart) made a strategic itinerary plan for us to follow that involved gas stop locations every 200 or so miles, which adds up to two a day. The first day we elected to skip our second gas up. Undoubtedly we were tired and wanted to gun it to the campground… also we thought we knew better. But the next day we headed out and who almost doesn’t make it through the mountains? Me… because my Jeep cannot do 400+ miles going up and down mountain passes apparently. To skip the drama let me just tell you simply that I almost had a panic-attack and we held to that itinerary like it was the goddamn bible the rest of the trip.
3. Bring walkie-talkies. For one, they are fun and can really liven up a road trip. You can keep them plugged into the car and running the whole time and you won’t have to fumble with your phones. I am a proponent of never speaking on a cellphone while driving so that was a bonus for me. Also, particularly when driving through a foreign country you may not have cellphone service. We actually did but reserved it as a right for sending out distress calls. Best not to waste roaming minutes when you can just walkie-talkie the other vehicle.
4. Keep your camera ready! My Jeep, being the lead car, was charged by a moose just after we passed the Canadian border. I would attach that photo now but neither one of our vehicles had a camera handy! Now to be fair two of the cars were driven by people who clearly had other priorities… such as not getting rammed. I had a passenger though and he probably could have snapped a few photos between screeching “MOOSE!” into the walkie-talkie. This was a good example for having a walkie-talkie handy by the way…
   

   It looked pretty much like this…

5. Make sure you bring a spare tire. The highway through the Yukon turns into a gravel paved hell-hole about 50 miles from the border. And it just gets more intense the farther you go in. At one point we had to drive down and around a bridge covered by gravel mountain to get through. It was just a one lane wide path through some mud which my Jeep could handle fine. My sister had her Nissan car though and there were RVs headed our way. I’m still marveling that RVs make it up and down that thing every year.
   

   Prepare for a bumpy ride!

That’s my recap for what we did and how we could have done it better. We learned number 4 quick so we actually have wildlife photos for the rest of the trip. And I will probably never forget that moose… that could have made this post even more interesting should we have had a high-speed moose ramming.

The Big Move… Part One

Ok, I’m back and later than I had hoped to be. Turns out moving thousands of miles away and traveling through the second largest country in the world can REALLY affect your life. Who would have thought I wouldn’t have been able to stick to my game plan!?

So enough whining from me… I need to start into my new blog themed day… Story-Time Sunday. Mostly inspired by the fact that I have this whole week-long road-trip experience I need to share with the world.

If you’ve been following this blog (thank you very much for the dedication!) then you should have already known that I am from Alaska. And I recently moved… a trip that has literally been a year in the making.  Now, if you read all the other blog posts out there about moving out of Alaska the one thing that is repeated ad nauseam is that you should give yourself a couple of months. I said ‘eh let’s give it a year’ and for good reason. First off, Alaska has about 3 months of lovely summer weather, and around 9 months of not so fantastic weather. Traveling as far as I had to go in inclement weather is not the best idea. And we also chose to camp the entire way… so that cuts back your available travel window to those 3 summer months.  For the record the best month to camp along the Alcan Highway, in a tent, is apparently July… you can go in August if you are crazy… which I apparently am. Turns out the summers in Alaska are so amazing that after making it through the dark, depressing winters you really want to stay… and then you leave in late August.

Don’t let me forget to mention, the Alcan Highway is amazingly beautiful. It will take your breath away, especially in the Yukon.

I have a saying I like to live by… it’s “You make your bed so you have to lay in it”… and boy did this one bite me in the butt on our lovely camp trip.  To be perfectly honest, it wasn’t really as hard as I thought it would be. I have a food intolerant dog who travels almost worse than my boyfriend… both of which we in my car. And of the almost 500 miles a day we traveled only my dog threw-up on one of the days… twice but I will count that a major victory in chance.

That ridiculously bright turquoise striped bag back there was the “Quick Clean-Up Kit”… It’s now my favorite Thirty-One Bag.

We took 6.5 days to travel 2,941 miles. That’s the distance from my old hometown to the capital of Idaho… if you go through Montana. If you go through Washington you save yourself about 300 miles but only an hour of actual travel time. Because speed limits are all over the place along the way and Montana is the equivalent to the Autobahn when you finally reach it. Keeping track of what the hell is going on is probably your most important ally on the trip. My sister came along in her own car (creating a caravan) and she planned out everything for us and wrote up an itinerary. That might seem extreme for some. Having everything from where we were gassing up to where we were staying and things to see along the way was nice though. I spent most of my drive time focused on using the correct kilometers per hour, not making my passengers sick and not running out of gas.

In conclusion… of part one, the pre-trip.

1. Pick your move dates carefully.  Consider how you are traveling, what kind of weather to expect and what you will need.  I advise you to pick the easiest travel dates, which in the northern parts of the world are the summer months.
2. Expect the best, prepare for the worst.  Which simply means be excited and hopeful but prepare for the worst.  If you have a dog/child prone to carsickness, you better have a quick clean-up kit for your sanity.
3. Make yourself a clear travel plan, with whatever information included that you find important. Consider what you find important and fit that in. For us it was the amount of time it took to arrive and avoiding traffic if we could. We sacrificed 300 extra miles on our car for that. Not everyone would, and that’s your own choice.
4. Pack as much of your own food as possible. I didn’t ramble about this point above but in the coming posts I am sure I will mention it. Use every nook and cranny in your vehicle to shove water bottles and food into if you can, particularly driving through Canada. Why? Because 6.5 days of food is expensive in Canada… and why waste money on snacks you could have stocked up on from Costco back home?

It helps having amazing coworkers who give you amazing going-away gift baskets… I cannot say how much I appreciated this enough. The Mountain House and snacks were the best part of some of those days on the road!

Moose’s Tooth Pizza

Following my current trend in “food reviews” and “places I’m going to miss when I move” themed blog posts, I want to go over a true masterpiece: Moose’s Tooth Pizza.

As hip as this place may be, and as cram-packed at ever open hour any day of the week, I still continue to covet their pizza above all else. In the 15 or so years that I have been living in Alaska, I have only met one person who did not like Moose’s Tooth. And everyone thought they were strange. Moose’s Tooth can convert even the vegetarian/gluten-free crowd with their fantastic array of salads and vegetarian pizza’s, the creative likes of which are hard to find anywhere else within hundreds of miles.

Named after some peaks surrounding Denali in the Alaskan Range, Moose’s Tooth is often used to describe a group of sister companies, with very similar fare.  Moose’s Tooth is actually the lodge restaurant located near mid-town Anchorage, Alaska. They specialize in pizza, as they are a pizzeria.  Moose’s Tooth serves Broken Tooth beer, brewed locally and on tap at many locations throughout the state.  Bear’s Tooth is an old-fashioned eat-in theater, with a bottom floor bar. In which they serve select Moose’s Tooth pizza’s and the Broken Tooth beers. There is a small Bear Tooth Grill connected to the theater which serves more expensive bar foods, to be honest. This is the most over-hyped business in the conglomerate, but I forgive them since the rest is on-point.  Bear’s Tooth is also the location of the First Tap concerts that show-case new, limited-edition brews from Broken Tooth in a festive, drunk atmosphere. It’s a lot of fun if you enjoy beer… and music… a lot.

To be honest, every time there is a moment to commemorate or an event to celebrate, most often the food of choice will be Moose’s Tooth pizza. This is the most Alaskan restaurant institution, easily accessible at the heart of the biggest city in Alaska. Just about anyone you pass on the street can and will tell you how to get there. And you will have plenty of opportunity to meet and greet locals. Particularly at the bar while you try to entertain yourself during the 45 minute wait that is almost a tradition there. Or during the shoulder to shoulder communal style dining you will experience in the most crowded restaurant I’ve been to outside of a major metropolitan area. Nevertheless, it’s all worth the wait.

If you don’t much enjoy that kind of jovial, loud atmosphere… you can take it to go. Now that I’ve been to Moose’s Tooth more than I’ve gone to visit my father, I always take it to go. If I’m not watching a movie at Bear’s Tooth, I’d rather kick back at my house with a good movie and a good pizza. Oh yeah, the Broken Tooth beer can be to-go as well… just buy a beautiful growler and your meal is complete!

Salmon

Welcome to the most Alaskan blog post I’m likely to ever make. The one in which I instruct you to eat salmon, as it is a glorious food source almost unmatched in nutritional benefits. It’s almost perfect… unless you are a vegetarian or hate fish.

If you enjoy fishing, as I do, you have two options. Either you are a catch-and-release sports fisherman or you are going to be bringing home dinner.  I am the later, as I don’t personally ascribe to risking killing an animal I have no intention of eating. So, it’s of good fortune I happen to love fish.  Salmon is a hell of a fish to catch, very thrilling and satisfying when you land a big one. It is also among the ‘fishier’ fish, and cooking it is the difference between gagging and enjoying your meal.

It’s important for you to enjoy your food. For one, life is too short. On another level, salmon is a fantastic and healthy meal. A filet of salmon is power-packed with high quality protein, omega-3 fatty acids and a smorgasbord of vitamins and minerals. There are four major specifies of salmon in Alaska that we love to fish. High among them is the King Salmon, also known as the Chinook Salmon. It’s both a fun catch, averaging around 30 lbs, and has a delicious distribution of fat within the meat. The perfect fish for steaks. Which leads me to my most important point.

If you are going to eat salmon, and you definitely should, you really need to know how to prepare it. There are two variations I really enjoy, for different reasons.

1. The Filet.  The better the filet is cut, with minimal bones, the better it is to eat. A good filet means less work, more pay off.  It’s also important to eat these filets sooner rather than later. The longer the fish stays in the freezer, the fishier it will get. Keep that in mind if you want a light seafood dinner.  Place your filets on a baking sheet, set your oven to 400 degrees and season. I like to use either a salt rub of lemon slices. Bake for 15 minutes until the meat flakes easily.
2. The Steak. Steaking a salmon is to cut it into slices from head to tail with the spine in. Baking these is just as simple as the filet, it’s the bones that are the problem. These are also fantastic for grilling but I do not have the experience in that regard. Also grilled fish is drier, and personally I would rather eat a succulent meat.  So once you have the steaks arranged on a baking sheet, drizzle olive oil across the tops. This helps seal in the fats and oil, maintaining moisture.  Salmon steaks are best mildly seasoned. They need nothing more than a sprinkle of lemon pepper and they are good to go. Bake for 15 minutes and you are ready to eat.

Stay nutrition, keep your salmon delicious and have a good meal. Don’t forget the tartar sauce.

Summer Workouts You Don’t Even Notice

Here in Alaska, summer is the time to get out there and make the most of our wonderful natural resources and beauty in this state. Summer activities can range all over the place and I find most revolve around the outdoors. What we usually don’t notice, is just how much physical activity we get out of this season. We get to do what we love to do and get physical exercise in a pleasant way.  Even better, we cram as much of these activities in 3 months as humanly possible.  Because we only get three months of good weather truly.

If you’ve read any of my posts before you may have noticed I like to run. And I do. Strangely enough I’ve discovered I really don’t like to run in the summer. For one, winter time is so serene, cool, calm and peaceful that I enjoy my time suffering with frozen eyelashes.  In the summer time it’s humid, hot, crowded and generally I physically feel unpleasantly sweaty.  Sooo… I prefer different activities to in the summer outdoors… and some you don’t even noticing the workout.

Swimming. Okay… we all know this is a workout. The beauty is that we don’t do it only to be physically fit. So it’s enjoyable! And when this ridiculously hot Alaskan sun gets to beating down on our cars… after work all some of us want to do is jump in a lake. Lucky us there are so many lakes you can easily find one on your way home. You can jump on in that lake, cool off, get your aerobic exercise in and enjoy the weather again. I remember going to the lake in High School. It was a pretty good social gathering in which to check out the football jocks and take a dip.  I never once noticed or cared that I was working my abs, arms and legs vigorously swimming and flirting away in the sun.

I think I need to get down to the lake… but swimming isn’t the only thing you can do…

Fishing. Maybe this one took you by surprise… and if it did I’m guessing you don’t fish much. Any new or avid fisherman will know that a day casting that line will add up to one exhausted night. If you are fly fishing or using a lure, you are doing nothing but casting and reeling for hours. That’s if you don’t get a fish. Let’s say you’re in Alaska and get that lucky King Salmon. If that thing is over 30 pounds you’re in for a real workout. You’ll have to bring that thing in to the shore than wade out and net it in order to land it on the shore.  Caring a big 30+ pound fish that is thrashing is no easy chore. And then there is the processing involved. All told you get a lucky fish, you’re looking at almost an hour of laborious work to gut, clean, filet and package that thing. Even if you don’t get a fish you’ll be sore from casting and reeling in your line, wandering the shores, standing in the shallows, etc.

Just last week we got a King. I was sore for almost two days. That’s on par with how I am after a day at the gym.  There’s a bonus here though… I didn’t know I was working that hard AND I got to bring home dinner!

Mountain High Pizza Pie

Alaska. Talkeetna. Population 440. Rustic sign posted at town park on historic Main Street.

I don’t know if you are planning on (or ever will be) visiting Southcentral Alaska… but if you are I must tell you to see Talkeetna.  I go to Talkeetna at least once a year on average, because I just love the place. This is a very small kitschy town about 3 hours north of Anchorage. It’s also the inspiration for a classic show called NORTHERN EXPOSURE.  If you haven’t seen that, maybe you don’t care.  To put it succinctly… Talkeetna is where you will find the ‘authentic Alaska’ you are looking for.

Talkeetna is a sprawling area of cabins, primarily dry ones, in which a large portion of the population is made up of bachelors. Of various ages and attributes.  Which bring me to point one of ‘authentic Alaska’… as the saying goes “The odds are good, but the goods are very odd”. Yes, we say that about our men. Go to Talkeetna and you will see why. What you will find in the heart of Talkeetna is two main road (one of which is paved) and a rustic crossroads “Welcome to Talkeetna!” sign post.  Make sure to wander a bit and get a photo there. This is the THING to do.

Another thing to do is take in the food. Talkeetna has got to have the highest density of delicious eateries for their population of any Alaskan town. They are all locally owned, and some are historic landmarks. Take for instance the Talkeetna Roadhouse with their historic building and sourdough pancakes. They have a sourdough descended from the original mines who carried it through Canada!  And right across the street you will find one of the best places to get a pizza in this entire state.

Mountain High Pizza Pie.

Let me start by saying they have a macaroni and cheese pizza. Yes… with homemade macaroni and cheese baked on it.  I could end there actually.

Part of what makes this place special is that you can get a pizza to share or customize your own individual slice.  The pizza is made fresh right there in the back and they have a fantastic variety filled with local Alaskan flare.  You’ll find the locals in there even during tourist season… which is something because Talkeetnan’s are very reclusive by nature. You know it’s good if it can bring them down from their cabins during touring high times.

The decor is a rustic cabin with the buddhist prayer flags and Denali climbing memorabilia. Very typical for the town.  Talkeetna made it’s name as it is the launch point for submitting Denali.  You can see the memorabilia left behind by these adventurers at several places around town. The roadhouse has one of the most impressive collections on it’s walls as the climbers mostly stay there.  And they must then get their last meal Mountain High Pizza Pie from all their flare.

If you also want to walk in these adventures footsteps… I would suggest filling up with a delicious, reindeer-pizza at Mountain High Pizza Pie. Afterwards go and get yourself a trip with the Denali Zipline Tours just a few doors down. They offer a fantastic, fun way to see Denali and have your own adrenaline rush. Before heading out swing by the Talkeetna Roadhouse and grab a ruddy-in-a-parka for the road. It’s a reindeer sausage with cheddar cheese wrapped in a potato roll. It’s the Alaskan version of pigs-in-a-blanket. You’ll love it!

Camp Cooking

I love camping… it’s one of my favorite parts of the summer.  And I live in Alaska where if you are not camping, you are wasting your hard-earned summer time here. I love the quiet solitude, the simplicity of camp life… and the food.

Now when I think of camp food it’s more sophisticated than it used to be. When I was younger our meals during camping centered around the packed sandwiches and hot dogs roasting on a stick over the fire. These days I can invest in my own equipment and plan my own trip… and the food is my major focus to be honest.

If you like camping and want to experience really good, wholesome meals while doing it… let me suggest a few methods

1. The tinfoil packets on the coals method.  This method is perfect for budgeting campers or those who like to prep food in the comfort of their home kitchen. What you do is pretty simple. You take a large piece of tinfoil and lay it out. Load it up with your meal and wrap it closed in a pouch. Make a few, stick them in baggy and you have a quick cook meal ready to go when you get your coals ready.  I like to make a classic pot roast style meal in these pouches. Get a steak and toss in some chopped carrots, onion and potatoes.
   
2. The Dutch Oven or Cast-Iron Skillet method.  Here you would be using a very traditional version of campfire cooking. The skillet itself can rest on some coals, as well as the dutch oven. Or the dutch oven could be suspended over the open flames of the fire.  The dutch oven is a perfect way to make a stew or to back bread. Yes… you can bake fresh bread at a campsite! The cast iron skillet can also be used to make camp biscuits or a one pot entrée like a stir-fry or casserole.
   
3. The Campfire/Lumberjack Grill method. Here you have a standing grill grate made of heavy iron that you can set up quickly over the open flame of your campfire. This is perfect for your basic grilling needs, especially if you just had a successful day of fishing! You can also use it to set up a cast-iron skillet or dutch oven to make a side to go with your meat.
   
4. The Camp Stove method.  This is my new favorite go-to method for preparing meals. This is simply a scaled down version of a propane barbecue grill. I have this exact model, with the half-grill and half-stove design. I find it multi-purpose, reliable and easy to use. For these you need smaller, backpacker style pots as the dutch oven and cast iron skillet are just too heavy and large to work on this.  You can get the same results as the lumberjack grill from #3, but with less hassle and clean-up.  It will cost you about $100 more at the very least, so it’s up to you on whether it’s a worthy investment.
   

Well now you know the gamut of available camp ground cooking styles and equipment.  There is plenty of room to mix and match for your desirable trip.  Honestly, I will use the foil packets on the camp stove in a heart beat. I have a dutch oven and a cast iron skillet in my camp-kitchen bag for when the mood strikes me.  The only one I don’t have is the lumberjack grill… and only because I chose the stove instead.

It is worth noting, particularly since I am experiencing this first-hand here, that there are times when the weather forces a burn-ban. Bans vary in degrees, but the only one of my methods listed above that generally remains open for use is the camp stove. The enclosed, controlled fire with contained ignition sources are provided only reliably with the stove and so the stove is usually the cooking equipment to be banned.

Next Food Friday… we will cover just what to cook with these options…

Zorba’s Gyro’s

In case I haven’t mentioned it, I have decided to review/promote my favorite restaurant/eateries in Alaska this summer.  Two weeks ago I shared my favorite food truck that specializes in designer cupcakes, Kastle’s Kreations. This week I want to go into my favorite food truck for lunch… Zorba’s Gyro’s.

Zorba’s Gyro’s is no longer an actual food truck but that’s how I was originally introduced to it.  The truck is more of a trailer that is parked nearby, ready for set up at a fair or festival anywhere in the Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna Valley in Alaska.  The location you can find Zorba’s is on Blueberry Road in midtown Anchorage… and it’s now a converted trailer that functions as a drive-through. You can also walk-through, it’s very popular around noon with the local neighborhood and professionals from the midtown district.

Zorba’s, as you can probably guess, specializes in gyro’s. The business is run by a couple from the Mediterranean who feature falafel’s for lunch on Fridays.  This is has led to a sort of fun tradition at my work of Falafel Friday’s.  If you haven’t tried falafel, you really should. And if you find yourself hungry in Anchorage around noon on a Friday, you should try Zorba’s falafel’s.

If falafel’s are not your cup-of-tea, I hope gyro’s are. Zorba’s gyro’s are ready fresh and fast, cost around $7.00 each and come in a rather wide variety. I love the western style gyro… it’s a cross between a philly cheesesteak and a gyro. Maybe not the most authentic Mediterranean meal, but one hell of a satisfying one in my opinion!

Sourdough… OH Wonderful Sourdough

I want to share with you one of my favorite things about living in Alaska. It’s the sourdough. We don’t have the level of sourdough devotion given to San Francisco, instead we have a more home-pride sourdough love.

Alaskan sourdough, the traditional strain passed down and much-coveted, was originally San Francisco sourdough carried around gold miners necks as they came up for the Klondike Gold Rush.  The weather in Alaska, being rather frigid and unforgiving, make more modern bread processes unreliable. So Alaska was partially founded by gold miners, and therefore sourdough is part of this states history.  My sourdough is descended from one of these original starters brought up. I happened to have bought it from a local woman at the Anchorage Downtown Saturday Market. Best thing I’ve spent my money on at a tourist trap so far!

Sourdough is an ancient method of bread making, dating back to before yeast was domesticated. It is simply a bubbling, tan, porridge containing flour, water, yeast and lactobacillus. The lactobacillus creates lactic acid, which when cooked will make the bubbles we marvel at in the bread product.  The yeast makes the bread rise. Before people understood the chemical properties of the mixture they created, they at least appreciated the lighter bread option.

Traditional sourdough is a cultivated culture of ‘wild’, naturally occurring yeast in the air. You can start your own sourdough starter by leaving out a jar with a cup of flour mixed with a cup of water. Leave it out for a night, cover it in the morning and, if you are lucky, the next day you should find the mixture starting to bubble. That means you were a successful trapper and have now caught and can domesticate your very own family sourdough starter!

After starting a sourdough, or inheriting it, you just need to keep it alive. This is easier than some people make it out to be with the modern convenience of a refrigerator! To grow the starter, add a cup of water and a cup of flour each day and allow it time to ‘feed’. Once it grows to the size you want to keep, you can store the starter in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks at a time. Then remove it, allow it to warm up a bit, stir and use in your baking.  A healthy sourdough will develop what is called a ‘hooch’ on the top layer. The yeast concoction sinks to the bottom of the jar over time and creates a sediment and the byproduct of the fermentation rises to the top as the liquid portion. That is the hooch, and it is an interesting yellow shade.  Don’t be alarmed, it’s part of the process and adds to the leavening.

There are lots of things you can make with your sourdough. For one thing, you will not have to worry about messing up the powdered yeast… you will know this is alive! Also, since you need to cook it at least twice a month, that’s going to make you have fresh-baked bread twice a month! Who doesn’t love that?! And it doesn’t have to be a complicated recipe. I’ve tried making pumpkin bars, pancakes, muffins, scones, english muffins, brownies, breads, rolls… but my favorite is pop-overs.

Sourdough Pop-overs have become my go-to breakfast. They are ready in a jiffy, require only 5 ingredients, and I have yet to find someone who doesn’t like them! My boyfriend and mother request them regularly and I am more than happy to whip them up! I use the recipe by the King Arthur Flour. Customize them as you like. I have tried frying them up like french toast, drizzling with nutella, or just eating them with plain ol’butter.

Hope this helped expand your horizons and spike your interest. Happy Baking!