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?"

;)

Northern Groceries Part I

I've been intending to write about northern groceries for a while now and this post will be the first of (hopefully) many. ManNorth and I aren't vegetarians (although I was once for a few years) and occasionally include meat in our diet usually in the form of chicken or turkey, although we get most of our protein from eggs, legumes and TVP (textured vegetable protein). Northern Town occasionally offers unique opportunities to include other sources of protein in our diet.

Like these loveable animals:

(image blatantly taken from http://mercury.bio.uaf.edu/courses/wlf201/)

In February I was invited to lend a hand with a harvest from a Muskox herd that lives on Banks Island. I'm not sure just how I would have helped but I was certainly willing to volunteer in any capacity that I could in order to see the event. Harvest, in this case of course and as is commonly used in the north, refers generally to the managed killing and use (for meat and/or hides) of local wildlife. Aboriginal peoples have constitutionally guaranteed harvesting rights for certain species in areas to which they have land claim agreements, and this harvest of muskox is part of the management of this particular herd and provides and employment to the local community. I wasn't able to participate after all though, much to my disappointment, because of certain guidelines that dictated that only local people were to be employed for the harvest and I would have had to have been flown in (along with a few other approved participants from Northern Town).

The harvest has long since finished and the meat has been finding its way to other communities, including ours. We were fortunate to recently get about 6lbs of frozen ground meat for free from a friend and will be purchasing more while it is still available in local stores. Efforts are being made by DIAND (Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development) to market the meat and qiviut (muskox wool) in stores to the south. (Here's a suggestion for your local grocer!)

A local grocery store is selling it for $$3.25 per 2 lb bag, which is about one half to one third the price that (frozen) ground beef sells for here, and I believe, is even less than the cost of beef much farther south. The meat is extremely lean and when we fry it up, not a drop of fat needs to be drained from the pan and if anything, we need to watch it closely to ensure it doesn't dry out and over cook. The taste is just slightly gamey but isn't at all disagreeable. We've been told that if we let it thaw and drain in a collander before cooking, that the gamey taste goes away.

Interestingly, various aboriginal people in the area of Northern Town may view muskox meat quite differently than ManNorth and me. Some people (like those that have harvesting rights for the Banks Island herd) may consume muskox and regard the animals as a good source of meat, although caribou is much preferred. Others may regard muskox that they encounter on the mainland as invasive (they aren't) and distain muskox meat, except in emergencies. There is also often a shared concern about effects of competition by muskox on caribou in areas of overlapping range.

Muskox are endemic to this area but because of overhunting in the 1800s, numbers declined dramatically across Canada, causing local extinctions of particular herds by 1900. Declines were so serious that in 1917 the Canadian federal government restricted hunting of muskox, prohibited trading of their hides and put them under complete protection. Slowly, the herds have recovered in number and have again begun to occupy historic parts of their range. With the recovery of the various herds, hunting restrictions have been relaxed and quotas increased.

The population on Banks Island has recovered so well that the population size is approximately 60-70,000 animals. Although an annual quota of 10,000 animals exists, current harvest and subsistence use rates (ranging from only 200-2,000 animals annually) are not nearly high enough to slow the current rate of growth. There are concerns that the population may begin to suffer from effects of overcrowding. In spite of this and the large size of the herd, resource managers have elected not to cull the herd due not only to substantial financial costs and logistical difficulties of such an endeavor but primarily because of an unwillingness to waste the culled animals since processing the meat and hides from the number of animals necessary in this type of cull would be all but impossible.

Although the various populations are described as herds, muskoxen don't form large groups like caribou do and tend to associate in small groups of about 15 animals, led by a dominant bull or cow. Herd size and composition vary with season, range conditions and the number of bulls in the population. When harassed by wolves, the small herd usually runs to higher ground or an area of shallow snow, led by the dominant animal where they will stop and group together behind the dominant bull into a defensive circle formation with the calves protected in the centre and the adults facing out towards the threat. This defensive tactic works well against wolves, but makes herds vulnerable to human hunters with guns and easily herded for harvest elsewhere.

(Image also taken from the internet. I've lost the link to provide appropriate credit)

In the case of the Banks Island harvest, small herds are rounded up by people on snow mobiles and herded into a series of circular corrals, shaped rather like a snowman. New animals are herded into the base of the largest corral and as animals are selected for harvest, based on age and sex, are moved successively through increasingly smaller corrals until individual animals are examined. Wildlife biologists collect needed biological information about each animal as well as ensuring, along with other observers, that only healthy bulls in the age category targeted (2-3 years of age) are killed. Selected animals are dispatched with a single gunshot to the head. The carcasses are immediately processed in a facility on site and the ground meat is frozen and ready for shipping within hours of processing.

This may be distasteful to some of you, but for many local people, a muskox harvest is important to their economic well being, and may be of some benefit to a herd that may suffer from overcrowding... Your thoughts?

That stuff doesn't work up here

Guest Blogger: ManNorth

I must say that I enter into this “Blog” with a bit of trepidation, as when one begins to voice one’s opinions there often follows a host of counter opinions, and certainly I, over the last two score years and a bit, have made certain observations that have left me not only questioning the opinions of others but their sanity as well, particularly concerning the natural world, which is universal - although, that is just my opinion. But, as Darwin said, “Nature breeds awful doubt”, and I have doubted. So when seemingly reasonable people tell me, with an air of authority, things the like of which could not possibly be true I have to take a step back and question whether it is best to keep my fool mouth shut or wade into the thick of things, offering up my humble opinion for sacrifice. These days I prefer the former to the latter; we choose our battles after all, and nature in the end will win.

None the less, with the coaxing of my wonderful wife, who is perhaps a little tired of me coming home and bemoaning yet another offence to reason which I have encountered, here is my first blog entry.

There are two kinds of people: those who talk and those who know. Those who talk, talk and those who know… well you get the idea. It takes time to really get to know something and longer still before that something can stand up to scientific scrutiny. Some people, on the other hand, are rather impatient and seldom have the time or the inclination to bother with such things as facts, so they prefer to talk instead, and as any salesmen can tell you, it’s not so much what you say as how you say it that counts. People up north tend to be gifted talkers, but I myself can do with a little less talking. And herein begins my rant.

Upon landing a job in the far north one would think that the subject of the weather would eventually enter one’s mind, what with the north’s mythical cold and unendurable darkness, and that any new-comer would be overly concerned with how to deal with such meteorological problems. Indeed, as I write this, it is -30 C with a wind-chill of -43 C (more on this wind-chill stuff later). But then I rode my bike the 5km home from work on Friday, across the lake ice, through the bush and finally down the river, all while facing a stiff wind and still find myself capable of mashing the key pad into legible words. The weather, in fact, was the furthest thing from my mind, and there was no pre-requisite shopping spree at the local sporting goods store for the latest in cold weather haute couture. I have been north before and was well prepared to face what ever the weather threw our way. I don’t mean to sound flippant here; only to state fact: I have been on 6 major self-supported Arctic expeditions, 3 of which were on the sea ice and all were solo. I have covered thousands of km on foot and canoe without seeing another human being. This, I feel, gives me a rather unique set of qualifications, but still I’m no expert. Leave that to the talkers.

During the winter months my job demands that I patrol by snow machine the largest river delta in Canada, and before doing so, I was ordered to buy some “proper” winter gear. When I told my supervisors that I had indeed my own gear which I have been using for 25 years and therefore trusted, their rebuttal was to shake their heads and say “that stuff doesn’t work here”. Of course no one ever elaborated as to why it did not “work here” and I was left rather perplexed thinking that perhaps here the laws of physics were somehow different and that maybe everything I knew about thermodynamics was wrong. So, after lengthy deliberations with said supervisors, I broke down and purchased, (read was told to buy) among other things, a Canada Goose Parka (ask anyone who knows), and a Woods 5 Star sleeping bag (blue in photos below).

Now, Woods has been around for over a century and has made some half decent gear in the form of heavy canvas tents and packs designed for prospectors and other stalwarts of the old school. I even own some of their equipment myself. My Uncle used a 5 Star sleeping bag over 30 years ago. Back then it didn’t even have a zipper; instead it was festooned with snaps to close its rather cumbersome canvas fabric and wool blend blanket liner. Then, as now, it had no hood. When I was in Boy Scouts, the Scout Leaders all had 5 Star sleeping bags too, but like my Uncle their winter camping excursions were limited to heated cabins. In fact, the venerable 5 Star sleeping bag has followed me throughout my life and I will admit that there is a certain rustic charm at rolling out a 25 lb bag and crawling in; the same kind of impractical charm as a chuck wagon or a Commodore 64. So, although I have never owned one myself I have used them on various occasions.

The Woods 5 Star has a temperature rating of -40 C, which at first glance should mean something, but without a hood or drawstring this claim is highly suspect. My sleeping bag (red one in photos) also has a -40 C rating; the same one which I was told does not work here. It was made by The North Face 25 years ago and yet aside from some stains here and there, still retains its 12 inches of loft. It weighs roughly 5 lbs in total; 3.2 lbs of which is 700 fill goose down. I have used it on every one of my winter expeditions (outside, in the Arctic, not in a heated cabin), any one of which lasted 6 months or more with temperatures plummeting to -50 C and below. Therefore I trust it.

My new 5 Star, on the other hand, weighs about 20 lbs, has a reported 3.5 lbs of duck down (fill power conveniently unspecified). It has 5 inches of loft. Minus 40 C? I think not. The only caveat is that I did not have to pay for this with my own money and we wound up with a new quilt for the bed, which is all it seems to be good for. But, then that’s my opinion.




The North Face Inferno



Woods Arctic 5 Star


A final note: since the purchase of my first North Face sleeping bag reviewed here, the company has recently changed hands so many times that it no longer resembles its original incarnation. So, although I have high praise for my old North Face gear, I cannot say the same for the current brand as a whole.

I've got a what?

This weekend the Man and I took our truck, Big Red, out for a spin to do some errands and simply to run the truck as we don’t drive it often. It’s been COLD lately –dipping down into the -40’s (C) before windchill and generally staying in the high -30s and we’ve been impressed with Red’s ability to handle the cold. She needs a few minutes to warm up and is a bit sluggish for the first minute or so of driving, after which, she’s just fine. We do plug in the engine block heater and the battery warmer whenever she’s not in use, but not everything can be plugged in, of course. This is a picture of what she usually looks like while parked in our lot and in our parking space which is on an incline, as the apartment building is on a hill.
After we’d driven her for a few minutes and I’d wondered why the apparently smooth road felt so bumpy, I discovered something new that happens when the mercury drops to the chilly temperatures common in Northern Town in February.

Square Tires!

Yep. The tire pressure was on the low side and the truck had been parked on an incline, putting a fair bit of the truck’s weight on the back tires. As it was so ridiculously cold (-39C that morning and -41 overnight), the tires had frozen...and kept their frozen shape as I drove off, bouncing the truck every time the flat side of the tires rotated around. ManNorth explained the problem and the moniker as we spent some time trying to inflate the tires after the squareness had worn off, so to speak, during the drive. It’s a problem that will be hard to avoid. Correct tire pressure will help, but only warmer temperatures (or a heated garage) will really do the trick.

Should this bother me?

Our new government issue health cards finally arrived and we were both struck by something printed on the paper the cards were attached to. Read this exerpt and see if it doesn't raise an eyebrow or two:

So my question is this: Why is my government recording ethnicity in order to provide health care?

-And they aren't really doing so for me, as I'm only designated by the letter N, which encompasses thousands of possible ethnicities from around the globe excluding the other four listed.

So that rules out health issues related to specific ethnicities as an explanation and suggests that it is simply related in some other way to the most common aboriginal groups likely to be in our area. (But what about other aboriginal groups recognized by our government that don't fit one of these categories? What label do they get and why?)

Perhaps it simply relates to different treaty agreements that each of these four groups have with the government, for which I have one last question: We're all Canadians. Why would this result in differences in health care for any of these 5 groups. We SHOULD all get the same care..

Hmm. I'm not terribly bothered by this and there is likely a simple explanation but I find it vaguely unsettling somehow.