Northern Groceries Part II

Subtitled: Other foods that may gross you out but really are rather good (mostly).

A few weekends ago, ManNorth and I (or is it ManNorth and me? -Grammarphile, you're making me nervous!) checked out a spring carnival that was happening in Northern Town and was entirely located on the frozen river. Spring, of course, being essentially the same as winter here, only with carnivals and a wee bit more sunshine.

Check out the wooly fringe on the hood of the woman in mauve!
(I was hesitant to snap a photo of her from the front without her permission and was too shy to ask.)

I love the winter clothes for kids here in Northen Town.

A competitor in the log sawing competition. The man with the microphone broadcast the event to the onlookers (when he wasn't singing songs by Johnny Cash).

Sadly, we missed the sled dog races, which for some reason were held farther down the river. Bystanders who witnessed the races had to drive down the ice road to the race start and then follow along behind the dogs. I've no idea why they couldn't start and finish at the main event site as for all of the rest of us on foot, we couldn't see a thing that was going on and of course, found ourselves spending time until other events started by eating unusual foods.

We checked out some of the tents that were set up on the ice, replete with warm wood stoves, and found that some of them were selling more than just hot dogs and candy floss. How about eating some of these loveable (and edible) animals:
I've tried caribou soup before as it is served for free at a band office near my workplace every Wednesday. (It's wonderful!) I note that the advertisement is for reindeer soup, which may be legally sold as it is probably from farmed reindeer. Currently caribou hunting is tightly regulated and the meat cannot be sold. I've eaten moose and elk before; they were prepared in a fantastic marinade and then roasted medium rare. MMMMmmmm. (This, from me and I was once an ardent vegetarian!!) Until this carnival weekend however, I'd never had muktuk, nor expected that I'd ever willingly eat part of a beluga whale, especially the skin and some of the fat under it.

I drew the line at Eskimo ice cream, which is much different than Indian ice cream in the south.
Indian ice cream is made with sugared whipped buffalo berries (also known as soap berries or soupallilie) which whip up into an egg white like frothy mixture. With the addition of sugar, this is a nice treat, but without the sugar, is rather like eating whipped soap, replete with a soapy aftertase. Eskimo ice cream is whipped whale fat with berries added for colour and flavour. Somehow the idea of simply eating spoonfuls of lard, no matter how prettily coloured, just wasn't appealing to me. I did try the muktuk, which was boiled and not served raw as is traditional.
This was not so Mmmmmm as the caribou soup, but not disagreeable either. It was sort of fishy tasting, which I hadn't expected and it was okay salted. I had a few cubes from a container purchased by a friend. I think that fulfilled my calorie allotment for the entire week! I admit having some reservations about eating all these animal products and not because I'm squeamish. I'll try most kinds of food, but where I draw the line is eating animals whose populations or species are endangered. This isn't the direction I really wanted this blog post to go, so I'll leave off a discussion of the ethics of consuming wildlife or animals in general for another time.

For now, I'll just say to most of you, "Ew, you eat chickens?"

;)