el ártico bar and grill

Reaching back again into my memories for food I loved as a kid. My Dad would fry up potatoes and onions in a cast iron skillet in a way that I could never duplicate. I loved it but could never get it right. My landlady gave me some potatoes (Alaska grown, natch), I have red onions, and my version is just fine. Seemed like a good idea for 2nd meal. Mine turned out like Dad’s! I think, for once, I got all the techniques in place: large skillet so the potato slices were in a layer, well seasoned cast iron stored with a light layer of oil, solid Crisco, heat never above medium, cover skillet with foil to trap in steam, and use timer. This is not a texture for everyone, you have to add the onions last so they are more sautéed than fried, and the potatoes are the same. Best with dried herbs as there will be a lot of steam. Yum!

I’m leaning hard on what my parents taught me about making do in times of scarcity - like during the Pipeline period where there was no food in the stores for weeks at a time. At one point, what little meat in the stores was rotten - and Mom just turned to me, shrugged, and said “Looks like we’re going vegetarian for a while” and aside from the occasional cheese omelette, and lots of canned salmon out of Dillingham, we were. Growing up in Alaska back in the day was a lesson in making do. You had to. Doesn’t matter how much money you had if what you needed simply isn’t available. My parents both had high powered professional careers, but that didn’t matter the day 15 year old me had to square off with a full-grown man over the last 100 pound bag of dog food in town. Yes. You read that right. I had a big dog who inhaled his food. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The problem then was a broken supply chain that had collapsed under a massive population growth due to good paying j...