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...

So.  I was not in the best of spirits when I left the house this morning. There was way too much chaos left behind as I wasn’t able to finish cleaning and a bunch of chores that I meant to do just didn’t get done. Plus, I wasn’t happy with the sheer volume of stuff I had packed into the three bags I was going to check, plus all the stuff in my carry-on backpack. And I was running later than I had planned. Not good when you are catching a flight that your employers paid for. Eh. I got to the airport on time. Being later than I planned meant that I didn’t have long to wait to board my flight, and I had Pre-Check for the first time in ages, so I didn’t have my usual really bad experience with TSA. When I got to my seat I put my bag away, sat down, and automatically pulled the strap as far out as it could go, and mentally crossed my fingers that I could fasten the seat belt without effort. Since high school I’ve known I was fat. I’ve known I was fat my entire adult life. Even...

So.  After a lifetime of seriously not giving a shit about period clothing, I‘m a little weirded out about how delighted I am to book my second Edwardian-era gig in part because I know the clothing style and how striking it looks on stage.  Part of that is how you carry yourself in that garb. Your carriage. Your gait. How you sit down. Your clothes can help you with that, and the most important part - for Western women - is often the support garment, aka the corset. The modern bra (yay!) didn’t come into common use in the US until around 1920. Before then, you kept the girls up with a corset. It was not just used as a way to squeeze yourself into the latest trends, nor was its use solely determined by social class. So. I promise, pinky swear promise, that I will not whine about wearing a corset if required. Welp, not as much as in the past. And to not opt out of wearing one if given a choice this time. Actually ... Come to think of it, I thoug...