The Other Side of the Veil

Leaving Texas. One of my favorite Jerry Jeff and as a matter of fact one of my all time favorite songs.

The logistics of shutting down the little mobile food lab, tying up the loose ends and getting ourselves to Houston was pretty much a shoe in with the help of our family. Family of course, are all of you who've cheered us on and been loyal to our crazy alchemy. 

Our children who've always indulged our eccentric Hick-Finn lives (and who've consequently prospered in spite of it) as usual banded together and made sure we got to Houston. And beyond. 

Boarding an airplane and flying after so many years of not doing so was not as bad an experience as we had feared. We made all of our connections and our massive pile of luggage, including a guitar made it safely and without issue.

Arriving at Anchorage was a surreal experience. It was a bit overcast and cool. We looked out the big windows at the Chugach Mountains and for me, I felt a single tear. 38 years had separated me from this sight. I often wondered if I would ever see it again. 

We waited for our shuttle to the hotel out in front of the terminal. The smells here are absolutely intoxicating and although weary to the bone, we were ready to explore, After we checked in and stowed a few things it was about 1030 local time (1;30 Texas). We hadn't eaten much all day, so we walked in the broad daylight to find something. Most every restaurant was closed, so we found a Tesoro convenience store and bought a six pack of Alaskan beer and a couple of microwave Philly cheesesteak sandwiches and strolled back. Pure ambrosia. It wasn't several minutes and we were dead asleep......

Yesterday, after we rose from the dead, we headed to the Anchorage People Mover, the mass transit system. I've always remembered it as a premier system, and was ecstatic to find it remains so. The drivers and the passengers are all beyond friendly and it feels like living in an old episode of Northern Exposure. We caught a bus eastbound toward the Chugach, and the driver told us about the Anchorage botanical garden, saying we could ride with him, he'd be returning to downtown (where we wanted to go) in an hour, or explore the gardens and catch him on the return for a direct ride. It was an excellent suggestion and we spent the next 45 minutes in the woods. 

Downtown Anchorage is a wonderful experience. Anchorage is a town of 400,000, but the small town feel remains. It is clean and friendly and we spent the next several hours wandering around, visiting with people. Alaska may be cold, but the people are quite the opposite.

We stopped for lunch at a small outdoor eatery, made of converted shipping containers outside downtown  called Ak Alchemist  (https://www.facebook.com/pg/alaskaalchemist) advertising Halibut Tacos and Salmon Quesadillas. I chose the tacos and Dee had a reindeer burger. We both quaffed giant flagons  of Bear Tooth IPA, another Alaskan product. The sun came out for awhile as we chatted with the locals. 

The food was outstanding.

After the late lunch we found the bus again and boarded it back to the hotel (with an intermediate stop to get some groceries). We're still adjusting to the time change and jetlag. 

Today we're off to bicycle the city park trails and back for a bit of rest before being picked up for Sterling tomorrow morning. Then the fun begins.

I apologize for the rambling, imperfect prose here but I wanted to fill y'all in on the last several days. we'll have a better update this afternoon.

Que lo vaya bien mis amigos y amigas.... 

Countdown T Minus 24 hours

In a little over 24 hours we will be uprooting ourselves here on the ranch and beginning our journey. Staying with old surfing friends near Houston, on Friday morning we will negotiate the madness that air travel has become, boarding our three legged flight to Anchorage. Neither of us have flown much since 9-11, so it should be an interesting trip. We're essentially finished packing with just a few other last minute details to go.

Yesterday we surfed at Fish Pass. It was a bit messy and dumpy, but uncrowded giving us time to absorb and reflect.

We are water people.  I savored every second of the morning, a kaleidoscope of storm clouds, warm sand and water. Nervous with anticipation the time it appears, is almost upon us. The wave has crested and we are staring at the shoreline ready to take the ride.

One Week

Well.
Here we sit down in a laundromat in Kingsville doing the laundry that we keep relegating to lower priority till it suddenly became, priority one when we had all but run out of clean clothes...

One week from today we will leave our simple country existence and its myriad of challenges for an equal challenge high above the 60th parallel. So, for the time being we are finally able to play a game of catch-up. We've shut down the Modern Alchemy Fusion Foods lab, are in the process of doing the same with our  tiny abode, and packing. The reality of the summer happening  is starting to kick in.

And of course everything is the news, on everyone's mind is the drama that our government is so far thoughtfully giving us. It seems as if collectively, we all feel a great apprehensive of what's on the close horizon. It adds to my sense of anticipation and uncertainty. And that's not good. I am however beyond thankful that our kids have such a tight network of loose family here. I am grateful that our kids are motivated hard workers and good citizens. They have succeeded despite my shortcomings as a parent. These things make it a little easier....

The Food Within

We were talking with a friend tonight in the food business. She's a true and a fine country food artist. Comfort stuff like barbecue meat, chicken salad, solid potato dishes, stuff like that.  Although she says that she's not a cook, let alone a chef and that she hates to cook, her food is pure art. She's a genuine Texas treasure, her recipes committed to mind and scraps of paper.

We've had many slightly drunk evenings discussing food. We all have a passion for food. For flavors, textures and colors. The subtleties of food. There is no pretense. It is a lifelong search for memories, for things almost to ephemeral to describe. Food has punctuated our lives. 

She currently is trying to help nurture a fledgling brick and mortar food business. She didn't want to but she has to because it's her food that's being showcased, it's her work, her art that's being represented. 

The owners have a different approach. It's about the money. The food is subordinate. 

Now don't get me wrong, I want, I need to make money at this stage of the game. But I've always been a firm believer that money will follow what you love to do if you let yourself do it. If you throw yourself and your passion into it. But, it's about the art, the ineffable, that which can't be easily described. Like the essence of beauty. If you do that the best you can, let the fire burn so to speak, the almighty dollar will follow.

This is the first time the owners have even worked in a brick and mortar type food business, let alone owning one. I've worked in a few over the past several years in my quest to learn. Over those years I've learned that the restaurant business is one of the hardest that I've ever seen. Long hours, small profit margins, and a very fickle audience. So to survive and prosper in it one must probably either a) have the tenacity to endure and the temerity to  push the envelope in the pursuit of the very essence of the art. Or, assuming that one's passion for food extends only to the extent that it is a vehicle to make money with, one that suits the individual (rather than one that torments the individual) than, b) It is better for that sort to own / manage a franchise or the sort of place that sanitizes the food for the masses. People like that make great owner / managers of chain restaurants like McDonald', Burger King and Bill Miller Barbecue. There is room, as well as call for businesses like those. 

So now the mistakes are beginning. 

The burnout, the lack of attention to kitchen needs., the hangers on and the poorly chosen staff are beginning to show in customer frustration. The early signs of fatal mistakes are in place. And the owner only sees the bump of newness, not planing, not caring about what happens when the newness of the place wears off. Because his soul, his heart are not in it. It's just the profits he sees.

Would be better if he owned a Whataburger.

I worry for our friend, and hope by some miracle the place succeeds. 

Prelude

T minus 29 days.

I have always been most comfortable in the outdoors. 

I do't sleep well inside. Give me a berth on a rolling sea, a tent high in the mountains or a perch on a windy beach and I am at home. 

When I was young I lived and worked in Alaska. I left there long ago and life happened, family and work separated me by a gulf far larger than any physical distance could. 

I always dreamed of going back. When one goes to Alaska, one never truly leaves. The spark had always been in my heart.

And then suddenly, the kids were grown and things weren't quite so imperative anymore. So Dee and I embarked on a great adventure almost a year ago. For those of you who know us, you know that Modern Alchemy was launched out of passion, and continues to be just that. We knew that it would never be something that would make us monetarily rich, but oh how rich we've become in the course of that year! 

What a journey it's already been.

We've moved from the coast of Texas, to the verdant inland of Victoria, where we took an enormous financial beating, but made some lifelong friends (as well as encountering some rather unsavory individuals as is always the case) then back to the open expanses of deep South Texas near where we grew up, where we now live adjacent to our oldest and dearest friends in a quiet ranch setting.

Throughout our 22 years of marriage Dee always told me about how she dreamed of going to Alaska, In the past several years she quantified this by saying: "I want to go to Alaska, but not just to visit....I want to stay and work for awhile". So last fall I began to search in earnest for somewhere that would see us for who we are, and what we do. 

The money was ancillary. 

I submitted our information, our bios and our passion for cooking and working together and we were noticed by a well established lodge on the Kenai Peninsula. After a bit of getting-to-know -you interviews we were hired. We'll be working from June first through the middle of September, then taking a circuitous route home to Texas via Kodiak and other destinations. There'll be lots of "firsts" First time ever we've been away from our families for any length of time, but we are excited and confident that things will be just fine. First travel via air since 9-11...

And, this is the first post of this amazing journey. We will update it to the Modern Alchemy Facebook page whenever we post (which will be often). Won't you join us?

Ratios and Realitivity

Cooking is akin to doing lab chemistry. It involves amounts, temperatures, chemicals (ingredients) and a sequence of events. Maybe that's one of the things I love so much about it., Back in the early 1990's I worked as the manager  in a mobile lab running high performance liquid chromatography and infrared spectraphotometry on environmental samples during the hayday of the Texas Superfund. Monitoring samples from contaminated wells on old gas stations in the Rio Grande Valley...but that's another story, and one far more boring.

So I approach cooking as an art in that manner. Like a chemistry process, start to finish. Oftentimes people will ask me "how do I make" such and such....and as I was instructed by my mentors, I always oblige, because recipes are really public property and after all.....that's how fusion occurs, when recipes pass hand to hand. But, my answers are always sort of nebulous, to the point of (I'm sure) maddening abstraction...

You see, I view any recipe as ratios of ingredients, rather than a set amount (i.e. 6 tablespoons of this, 2 teaspoons of that) a ratio of ingredients. It is far easier to scale any recipe that way. In other words I would try and see a recipe as the sum of the ingredients. For example 1 part ingredient X, 1/2 ingredient Y, 1/3 ingredient Z and so on. Doing this allows me to prepare any amount of any dish. Very useful for the home cook too. So I encourage you, see your recipes as ratios rather than amounts.

I've introduced y'all to atsarang dampalit, a Filipino pickled dish. The primary ingredient is Sesuvium portulacastrum (sea purslane). It's the tangy in our slaw that we dress out our Fusion Fish tacos with. Sersuvium grows all around you here on the shoreline margins of the coastal bend, and is easy to identify. You should make this dish and serve it with your other favorites. Here's how we make it:

Atsarang Dampalit

Ingredients

• i
• 3 cup dampalit (sesuvium) leaves
• 1 onion  thinly sliced
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 thumb-sized ginger thinly sliced
• 1 pc carrot, cut into flowerettes
• 1 pc red bell pepper sliced
• 1/2 cup sukang paombong (filipino palm vinegar. hard to find. Cane vinegar works well)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt

Instructions

1. How to make Atsarang Dampalit:
2. Wash dampalit leaves very well. Mash leaves thoroughly and squeeze juice.
3. Add onions, garlic, ginger, carrot and bell pepper. Mix very well.
4. Boil together vinegar, sugar and salt without stirring. Cool. Pour over the mixed vegetables.
5. Store in clean bottles. Serve after three days to allow pickling solution to be absorbed by the vegetables.

I Will Draw for Gumbo

I had gotten into a bit of trouble in Kodiak my last sub-year in the military. Nothing serious, just typical adolescent shit that would have been best left in high school. But then I've always been a little slow.

So I got to New Orleans in the Spring of 1977 all 350 pounds of my belongings, tail between the legs.

I worked at the 8th district office on Poydras street, high above the city in the Hale Boggs Federal building, processing flight orders. I really didn't have much interest in that, so I did what I did best at that time. I sat around and doodled. In Kodiak I hung out with a lot of wonderful counterculture people who lived far off grid. Nights would be filled with doing artwork and music. It was a magic time, and whatever smidgen of art that resided inside got honed to a pretty sharp edge. I loved doing pen and ink and pencil drawing.

Most of the employees in the 8th district Coast Guard office were civil service employees. There were only a few of us Coasties up there. It was a hushed and muted environment, with only the sounds of muzak and the ceaseless clicking of the electric typewriter keeping a lonely cadence. I lost myself in the surreal world of my own daydreams and the wandering of the pencil.

It wasn't long before my talent (read: 'sloth') was noticed by my boss, a kindly coonass cajun named Mr. Rodriguez. Rather than chastise me for neglecting the tedium of never ending paperwork, he immediately commissioned me to draw an eagle sitting on a limb for his office.

I attacked the job with abandon.

I assumed he liked the work because the day after I presented it to him it was proudly displayed on his office wall, there with the other photos of his life he enjoyed gazing on.  I was immediately elevated to a different status. That day he took me into the nearby French quarter for the first of many eye opening cajun meals, a roast beef Ferdies from Mothers. There were beignets from Tujages and Muffaletta's from the Central Grocery. There were mud bugs and oysters and Dixie Beer.

I learned the taste of food

And then other civil service folks starting asking if I would draw this or that for them. Shyly at first, then when they realized it was now my job to draw for the district office, my inbox became full of requests including one form the Admiral in charge of the entire district. The main man. So I drew happily, and they took care of me.

Mondays I would have red beans and rice,other days, jambalaya, etouffee and gumbo. I was invited to homes to eat with families and there were no cultural or racial divides. I hung out with matronly Quadroon ladies who taught me the secret of roux and fishermen who taught me the delicious mysteries of the marshes far out the bayous that define the birdfoot delta. There was magic in the boudin and the mud, magic in the humid air.

I learned to cook like they did, I found their juju.

I had no plans to re-enlist. I was a stupid kid. Another 16 years to retirement seemed like an eon. Damn. I would be 38. My life would be essentially over. Just another old man.

Just before my tenure expired, the Admiral called me into his office and invited me to sit down on the thick leather couch in his reception area. He sat across from me in his dress uniform, all decked out in gold and ribbons. He launched right into what he wanted to say to me. "I'm not going to bother giving you the re-enlistment talk because I already know your mind is made up" he began. "I don't know what in the hell those folks in Kodiak didn't like about you, we absolutely loved having you aboard". He continued; "as a very small token of my appreciation for all of the art you've done for all of us I wanted to personally give you these". And with that, he handed me 3 slate roof tiles dating from the 1600's taken from the French Quarter with scenes of the quarter decoupaged on them.

I was speechless. I mumbled my thanks and went back down to my floor to finish out my final time in New Orleans.

My life has been a journey and I always traveled light. I haven't ever really valued things. So there hasn't really been anything that's followed me around all these oceans other than those tiles. For some odd reason they seem to be attached to me with some sort of cosmic glue. That same glue connects me to the flavors that were seared into my heart there by the kindness of the folks in the Hale Biggs Federal Building in New Orleans.

And that's even more valuable.