Food diary #1 is here and food diary #2 is here
Wednesday
I can’t believe it’s Wednesday already. The weeks are just flying by. I really love my job(s). I have so many tasks to do, I never run out of tasks. I like that feeling a lot. Last night I couldn’t fall asleep because I was imagining myself doing stand up comedy, and I thought up the whole routine. It was really good!
Some friends and I are planning an Ethiopian dinner later this month, and yesterday I stopped by an international grocery to pick up some teff flour for the injera. While I was there I bought a package of frozen dosas, and for breakfast I heat up two of these dosas, sprinkle them with fake cheese, and add some leftover ground moose sauteed with mushrooms that I had in the fridge. I add hot sauce and it’s really good, although I did destroy the dosas while reheating them so aesthetically it’s a mess. After eating I mix the teff with some water in a glass bowl to start the fermentation process. I made injera over a decade ago and I remember it being tricky but not impossible and even when they didn’t come out perfect they still tasted good, so. This recipe calls for distilled water because “chlorine interferes with fermentation” but I don’t have any distilled water so I just use tap water. I didn’t use distilled water when I made them before, but then again maybe that’s why the results were so inconsistent. I cover the bowl and set it on the counter. In four days we’ll check on it and see if it’s ready. Apparently if the surface becomes covered in “natural yeast” that’s ok but “actual mold” means I need to throw it out. I don’t know if I could tell the difference between the two. Here’s a picture of “natural yeast” (the one on the right) from the website to terrify you.
After breakfast I sit on the couch in a nest of blankets with my dogs and scroll while drinking my tea and waiting for the sun to come up. The rule is that once my tea is gone, I have to start working. Sunrise is 9 am right now so it’s light by the time I’m working but soon I’ll start working in the dark. Spiritually, I love the winter here. On a cellular level I remind myself that I should take my vitamin D.
I’ve been having zoom calls with my hiking clients every day, helping them build their gear lists and figure out their footwear and such, and I love it. I know there’s no ethical consumption under crabitalism but it’s really fun recommending gear for people to buy, especially when the black Friday sales are happening. While on my work zoom calls I eat dark chocolate, which is maybe unprofessional but I don’t care.
For lunch I make a bowl of sardines, kimchi and rice that I’ve added siracha and mayonnaise to, and eat it with seaweed snacks. Then I meet a friend for a dog walk and we punch our way down the trail through the spruce forest while the dogs poke around, looking for human feces. It’s weirdly warm, like 32 degrees, and the snow feels sticky. It’s supposed to be warm again tomorrow, and then drop down to zero. Winter is so interesting! It’s different every minute.
I feel cranky after I get home, and sort of dehydrated. Winter makes me really thirsty! I work for some more hours and then eat a Costco meat stick and dried figs and drive to the gym to do my treadmill thing while watching TV on my phone. I realize that the two Sex and the City movies aren’t on HBO max, which is the only streaming service I have, so I decide to skip ahead to the new show, As You Like It (I know it’s not really called that). Within ten minutes I am so shocked I almost end my workout. I had heard the show was cringe, but this level of cringe?! It is off the charts. I start scream-texting my friend about it. WE HAVE TO WATCH BIG MASTURBATE?! (vomiting emojis). Lower your expectations, she texts back. It’s really bad. I stick with it for the plot but it is… a lot. This same friend is coming over for dinner and she brings a Tupperware of kitcheree she made. I’d thawed some moose tenderloin and I sear this in a skillet. We also have a salad (baby greens from a tub) with the kalamata mustard dressing I always make and we pile the kitcheree with two kinds of kraut- beet kraut she brought and the dill-heavy kraut I made. I decide to rent the first SATC movie for us to watch online because it feels important to ease into the cringe that is post-2003 SATC, to boil myself alive slowly in a pot of water as opposed to jumping into the boiling water all at once. While watching I realize I remember parts of this movie- I saw it in theaters in 2008 with the woman I was dating at the time. SATC was really important to her, which is something I didn’t then understand, and I just went to the movie to humor her. Of course now I understand the appeal of those original six seasons. It’s funny what time and perspective will do.
Thursday
For breakfast I bake a salmon fillet that I brought back from Bristol bay- our vacuum sealer did a sub-par job and this one is a little freezer burnt, sigh- and eat the fish with brown rice and sauteed Costco frozen broccoli and fake feta on top. It’s actually really good? I had bad dreams about poorly navigating complex social situations and woke up in a funk but this buoys my mood. Then, during my tea-drinking and scrolling time in the nest of blankets on the couch with my dogs, tiktok starts showing me videos about perimenopause, of which I am terrified, and my mood crashes again. Why am I just now learning about this horrifying but very normal life event? It happens to half the people in the world but we don’t even talk about it? The comments sections on these videos are full of women saying that perimenopause completely ruined their lives. One video tells me that in Britain, the most common age for women to commit suicide is between 44 and 48, and maybe that’s because of perimenopause. The commenters complain that doctors don’t listen to them, that they’re prescribed antidepressants instead of hormone replacement therapy and this just makes their symptoms worse. I don’t want these women to suffer but also, selfishly, I don’t want to suffer. When will perimenopause happen to me? How bad will my symptoms be? Will I skate through this period relatively unscathed, or will it be full of horrors beyond my comprehension? Good god, embodiment is just one thing after another, amirite?
Once my tea is done I start working, and that makes me feel better, even though it’s raining outside?! And that’s melting some of the beautiful new snow. I eat dark chocolate while I work. For lunch I mix some of the baked salmon with pickles, veganaise and mustard for salmon salad and eat it on frozen dosas. It’s pretty good. The gross rain has stopped so I walk the dogs and the snow on the trail isn’t as bad as I thought it would be- it’s actually pretty nice outside and the sun even comes out for a bit. I work some more and then drive to the vet to pick up NikNik’s next round of antibiotics. She’s been two weeks on/two weeks off, and this is her third round. She’s been doing really well while on them, and then there’s an immediate difference when they end- she gets much sleepier/more lethargic/isn’t as excited to cuddle or go on walks. I talked to the vet on the phone today and asked “So will she just be on and off these forever?” and the vet said “No, eventually they’ll stop working.” And I didn’t know what to say to that or what the right next question to ask was so I didn’t say anything.
I stop by the grocery store and then eat a meat stick and some fake cheese and these weird fake caramels in the car on the way to the climbing gym. I’m starting to get my climbing strength back after taking some months off, and that feels good. Returning to climbing is exacerbating an injury in the base of my thumb though- I tore something there while downhill skiing last winter (I was holding my poles too tight out of fear, ha ha) and as far as I can tell from my googling, the injury isn’t going to heal on its own, I need physical therapy etc etc. I’m trying to sign up for a marketplace plan right now but healthcare.gov wants to first know that I’m not eligible for Medicaid, and for that to happen the state of Alaska would have to actually process my application and deny it- but there’s a wild backlog of Medicaid applications in Alaska right now (they stopped processing them and are blaming the labor shortage for it) and so I don’t know when they’ll actually get around to rejecting me so that I can buy a freaking marketplace plan. As an example of how bad it is, I went through this same process last November and they just…never got back to me. Every time I checked on my application online it said “wait for the state to contact you with more info” but that info never arrived, so I haven’t had health insurance for a year. There’s no way to talk to someone on the phone about it, but a friend of mine said there was an office somewhere you could go to and wait in line to talk to a real person. I dug around on the state website to try and find information about this office and there was a page with two numbers to call for the address- the first number was out of service, and the second number required navigating a complex labyrinth of menu choices (I failed this test four times before finally making it through the labyrinth) and then it told me an address so fast I wasn’t able to write it down it time and then it hung up on me and I had to call back and make my way through the labyrinth again. I finally got the address and I went there and the security guard in the lobby of the building saw me looking confused and asked if he could help- I told him I was looking for the Medicaid office and he said
“Oh they moved a while ago. People come in here all the time looking for it though.” And then he gave me the actual address. So I went there and there was a really long line and just one clerk and with how slow the line was moving I knew I wasn’t going to make it to the front before they closed.
“You have to come right at eight when they open,” said the woman in front of me. “That’s the trick.”
And I just haven’t done that yet so. My hand. It hurts after I climb.
(I’m not exaggerating about any of this and it’s actually really fucked up- Medicaid is federal money and for the state to just not distribute it via not processing people’s applications is actually wrong in such an intense way that it fills me with violent, impotent rage.)
After climbing I drive home and heat up the leftover kitcheree from when my friend was over and eat a frozen Costco salmon burger on it for dinner. Yes I eat both salmon I caught and Costco salmon burgers. I don’t know, it kind of tricks me into feeling like there’s more variety in my diet. Like how processed food in the US is all made out of corn, but it can be a spicy blue taki or a gummi peach ring. I’ve been learning to wear makeup for the first time in my life so I put on eyeliner and mascara, which is fun. I don’t think I’ll ever be a full-face girlie but this and the botox I get around my eyes gives me a sense of control as my earthly vessel deteriorates at an alarming rate.
A friend is having a collaging workshop at a space downtown so I meet some other friends there and it is extremely wholesome and cute and I have a very good time. Look at this nice art I made!
Afterwards my friends want to go to karaoke but not just yet so I go with one of my friends to her house and lay on the laundry pile on her bed and eat her leftover Halloween candy while she packs for a cabin trip. Finally it’s karaoke time and I pat myself on the back for going out past 10pm as a sober person who is also old and eepy. There’s a good crowd at the bar and I talk to my friend who is a professional singing coach about the fact that I cannot sing karaoke, but Kinnikinnick can. There’s not a single song I can sing but NikNik can sing Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On quite confidently. I then notice a sign saying that dogs are allowed as long as they’re under ten lbs and I realize I can bring her sometime, and she can sing, so.
Before moving back to Anchorage, my home base as an adult was always in cities large enough that if you had drama with someone or if you just didn’t like them you could avoid them for the rest of your life and it would be like they died. This is my first time making a home somewhere small enough that there’s no way to get away from people you’ve had conflict with, and it’s been a really interesting learning curve for me. Instead of everyone just dropping each other as soon as they’re hurt/betrayed/go through a breakup/have a falling out we’re all just here, in the same room together, watching some karaoke. At first this was really hard for me- my instinct is to try and avoid people who I know don’t like me, or who I don’t like, and people who don’t like my friends or who my friends don’t like. But that’s completely impossible in Alaska. In any room full of people in Anchorage there are half a dozen exes who get so stressed around each other they have to binge drink, a few failed housemates who blame each other for how things turned out, and a bunch of other people who disappointed each other by taking the wrong sides in these conflicts. And people are always crossing over into new conflicts with people peripheral to the last conflicts, until we’re all braided together into one really uncomfortable and very tight braid. Eventually you get so disoriented and turned around from that you can’t remember who’s mad at who right now or who you’re supposed to be nervous about running into and you just relax and enjoy the karaoke. That’s where I’m at, two and a half years in, and it feels really good. And I think I’ve said it before but my current theory is that this is what love is. Knowing people, like really knowing them- all our bullshit and contradictions and the ways we’re deeply disappointing- and tolerating each other. Wading around in the mess and not trying to escape it.
I get home late from the bar and feel wired and don’t fall asleep until 3 am.
Friday
I wake at 8 feeling like ass, even though I didn’t drink. I am bad at staying up late! For breakfast I sauté Costco broccoli and eat it with salmon and rice and fake feta, and drink rose black tea. Yesterday’s melty time is today’s frozen ice slick, and I remind myself to get some salt for the back steps so I don’t get a concussion trying to check the mail.
I work, eat lunch (a salad with a salmon burger, brown rice, fake feta and my kalamata dressing on it), walk the dogs, work more, eat a meat stick and dried figs and then head to the gym for treadmill time. On the treadmill I watch more of the Sex and the City movie. Ok things aren’t cringe yet- this movie is actually pretty good, although I don’t know if I would feel that way if I hadn’t just watched all six of the original seasons over the course of this year. I feel such intense attachment to the characters- they’re like real people who I know. I tear up when Charlotte screams at Big after Big abandons Carrie at the altar, and when Miranda and Steve reunite on the Brooklyn bridge. This movie actually does a very excellent job of undoing all the neat bows that the end of season six made, ripping open everyone’s recently healed wounds, allowing us to wallow in their misery with them for a bit and then gifting each character a poetic moment in which they can forgive each other (and themselves). At the end of the movie there are new bows, and everyone lives happily ever after. (Except I know that they don’t- death by cringe!!!)
Also, can I tell you how odd it is to watch something on my phone while on the treadmill, get completely immersed in it, even tear up, and then take out my headphones and stop the treadmill and realize that I’m in a gym with people all around me and loud music blaring and plates slamming as weight bars hit the ground. I always feel like an alien for a few minutes after that.
At home I open a jar of homemade moose bone broth and make soup from that, gluten-free ramen, moose meat and frozen peas. After eating I cuddle with the dogs on the couch for a few minutes, and apologize to them for not having taken them on a long adventure in a while. I think they need more enrichment in their enclosure, but I’m not sure what. We walk three miles a day but before it was snowy we would walk 4-6, and while I think three miles is plenty for Niknik these days, Quito seems lowkey bored. It’s so weird being responsible for a creature’s entire experience of embodiment. Like even though our three mile walk takes over an hour now that it’s snowy, the other 23 hrs of the day my dogs are just on the couch or in my bed, asleep, and I feel guilty for that. In summer I take them with me on car errands and that gives them more enrichment, but when it’s cold it feels cruel to leave them in the car in a parkinglot and I also worry about the higher risk of accidents with all the ice. I wish dogs could read books! I did get them bones the other day, and I feed them their breakfast in a puzzle game, but I’m not sure what else to do.
Every Friday in Anchorage there’s a contra dance that some friends of mine go to, and tonight I’m going. I’ve resisted going for a while because the dances are held at the middle school where I went as a child. “This is going to be cringe,” I tell myself as I get ready, imagining twirling with strangers under strong florescent lights in the gym where I flailed to Ginuwine’s Pony at a school dance at age twelve.
Sometimes something is so cringe it’s good, and this is that. I feel like all forms of white-people country dance come from the urge to take something inherently sensual (dancing) and make it as sexless as humanly possible. And in doing so, a kind of dance is created that is so shamelessly campy that it’s impossible to take seriously, and you can’t help but let your guard down and have a good time. At least for a while.
I get home at a reasonable hour, turn off the heat and climb into my cold bed-nest with my little dog hot water bottles, feeling happy.
Saturday
I really liked the soup I made for dinner last night so I make it again for breakfast. I drink rose black tea and eat dark chocolate and give myself extra scrolling time while the sun comes up, because it’s Saturday. While scrolling I look at too many comments sections on pro-Palestine instagram posts and become demoralized by all the zionest propaganda, but then I remind myself that the majority of people, especially young people, still have working brains and hearts in spite of everything, and that the world is overwhelmingly pro-Palestine and against genocide, and that when reading about this stuff online I should stop looking at the comments sections.
"If someone says it's raining, and another person says it's dry, it's not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true." -Sally Claire
I check on the bowl of fermenting teff on the counter and it’s doing really good- it’s puffed up and it smells sour. It seems much thicker than the recipe said it would be so I’m not sure what’s up with that. Tomorrow it’ll be ready for a test injera and I have this fear that between now and then it’ll bloom with mold and I’ll have to throw it out, but I guess I just have to let go and let goddess. It’s three whole degrees this morning so I decide not to walk the dogs- when it’s below ten degrees their feet get too cold, and they don’t like wearing booties.
I work on this newsletter for a bit and then midday I pick up a friend and we go to the climbing gym. I get home at 3:30 pm and haven’t eaten since breakfast and I feel wrecked from low blood sugar. I forgot to eat, which is wild- that’s really unlike me, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve “forgotten to eat” in my life. I love food and eating is one of my favorite things in the world, I think about it constantly and I never forget to do it. Is this… perimenopause? I think to myself, as I try to unlock the door to my house. I can’t though, the key won’t turn. I wonder if I’m losing my mind because my brain has low blood sugar but then the thought occurs to me that the lock might be frozen? I have a thermos of tea I didn’t drink at the climbing gym so I fish it from my bag and pour it over the lock, and then the key turns right away and I’m inside, thank god, because I need to eat or I’m going to pass out.
I mix the last of the baked salmon with pickles, mustard and mayo to make salmon salad and eat some of that on a couple of frozen dosas that I heat up in a skillet. I’m really into the texture of the dosas, even though I destroy them when I heat them up. They remind me a lot of injera. I feed the dogs dinner- NikNik gets a squirt of antibiotics on her kibs and her heart medication pill in a dollop of peanut butter- Quito finishes his food within seconds (per usual) and then looks on mournfully as NikNik takes her time, working the kibs around with her rotten teeth. I have ambitions to read my book but instead I lay on the couch and watch the last of the light fade on the Chugach mountains (I have a great view now that the leaves on the trees are gone) with both dogs on me until I drift off. My alarm goes off a half hour later and I drag myself up in the now pitch-black living room. My friends will be here soon to pick me up to go to a roller derby match and I have to get dressed. Winter in Alaska is insane. It gets full-on dark while there are so many hours left in the day.
My friends are hungry on the way to the roller derby match so we stop at a burger place called Wee B’s that looks inside like it hasn’t been remodeled in thirty years. That gets me thinking about what fast food places looked like when I was a child. I would love to step inside a 1992 taco bell again, just once. Someone should make an art installation like that. My friends are vegan so they just get a giant order of French fries and while we wait for the food I read the google reviews about this place- the burger buns are homemade and people like that, but the food takes too long to arrive and people don’t like that so much. Twenty minutes later the fries appear but they’re really good, like someone was back there cutting potatoes by hand and that’s why they took so long.
I’ve never been to a roller derby match. There’s a ton of people and while we’re looking for seats we pass a table full of gluten-free baked goods, by some miracle. I buy a giant chocolate cupcake and eat the whole thing while I watch the roller derby people skate around. The sport is really violent? But in an impressive way. And everyone is incredibly good at roller skating- they can run on their toe stops and leap over things! And the jammers are really nimble, faking out the people blocking and then darting around them and skating to freedom. I can’t imagine the bruises everyone has after playing, though.
When I get home I’m not really hungry but it feels disrespectful to my Earthly Vessel to just have a giant chocolate cupcake for dinner so I eat the rest of the salmon salad and look at my phone until it’s time for bed.
Sunday
It’s injera test day! I’m so excited I practically leap out of bed in the morning. It’s even colder today than yesterday, like one degree? There’s ice fog hanging over everything and making hoar frost on the trees. When I let the dogs out to potty the air glitters.
The bowl of teff smells quite sour in a good way, but there’s some discoloration on the surface. Is that mold? It’s not fuzzy, so I decide it’s not. I pour the batter into a hot skillet and predictably, it sticks. I need to borrow a nonstick pan from someone for this project. I manage to un-stick it but still, once done, the texture is off, and the flavor is a little weird. I do an internet deep dive and learn via the comments section of the original recipe (there are three hundred comments, most of them complaining about how hard it is to make injera the traditional way and how theirs, like mine, came out wrong) that a shortcut to fix the consistency is to add a little cornstarch and a sprinkle of baking soda. I do this for the next injera, even though it’s cheating, and this one bubbles up amazing, and it’s fluffy instead of gummy and wet. Success!
The flavor is still weird though. I keep reading the comments until I find one that’s a photo of someone’s batter- “Is this mold?” They ask the OP. The surface of their batter looks stained blue in places, the same way mine did. “Yep, it’s mold,” The OP replies.
Dangit!
Luckily, in another comment I learn that the way to prevent this is to always keep the batter under a layer of liquid, so the “dough” never touches the air. Apparently too much water evaporated out of mine while it was fermenting. The solution is to add water to the top as needed. I throw away the remaining batter and mix teff flour with water for a new batch, covering the top with a dish towel. In four days I’ll try again.
I wonder if eating mold makes you sick- I ate the first injera with my breakfast, ground moose and sauteed broccoli, with fake feta. Oh well. I guess I’ll find out.
I’m going to a friend’s for brunch this morning so I cook up some moose sausage patties to bring along. I like to pre-eat before potlucks because I never know if there’s going to be gluten free stuff, and I don’t like to impose my dietary restrictions on a crowd- taking away people’s pastries really harshes the mellow, you know? So if I eat beforehand it doesn’t matter if I can’t eat most things, I can just hang out and have a good time. When I get there my friend’s house is full of sunbeams and there’s an ambient fireplace video on the TV and it’s a really nice cozy scene. The theme of the brunch is “high tea”, except it’s coffee- my friend and his housemate are making espresso in this contraption I’ve never seen before- it’s like a long metal pipe? Something to do with pressure? And putting it over ice cream. They also have espresso ice cubes that you can mix with spiced egg nog, and there are a bunch of amazing looking baked goods. I find some gluten free crackers and hummus to eat, as well as macaroons, and I eat some of my sausage. There’s a giant novelty Costco pumpkin pie, which I’ve always wanted to try, so I cut a bit of the pie off the crust and it’s really good. There’s several people at the brunch I don’t know, which is fun- even though Anchorage isn’t very big I still meet new people often, which helps to make it seem bigger. I end up having a great conversation with someone about fecal transplants, which is one of my favorite things to talk about, so between that and getting to try the giant novelty Costco pumpkin pie my day is pretty much made.
After brunch I drive to Kinkaid park to meet a friend for skate skiing. It’s still really cold but the great thing about skate skiing is that it makes you VERY warm because it is VERY strenuous. The trail conditions are good, Anchorage may not plow its sidewalks or process its Medicaid applications or regulate its housing market but it grooms the shit out of its ski trails. Everything is white with hoarfrost and covered in glitter-rainbow sparkles and across the water the Alaska range is out against the blue sky.
I’m still slow on the ups and pizza-ing on the downs but I get it done, and by the time we finish I’m drenched in sweat and then once I’m back in the car the cold gets in, down into my bones. I drive home hunched forward over the heating vents, trying to warm back up. On the drive the Chugach mountains are bathed in alpenglow and everything is just so magical beyond the cracks of my windshield and I tear up a little bit.
A hot shower fixes me and for dinner I cook the last of the ground moose I thawed with a precious can of gigante beans in tomato sauce brought back from the Las Vegas trader joes and eat that with brown rice over a bed of greens. On top I sprinkle- guess what- fake feta.
I apologize to the dogs for the cold temps not suitable for walking, tell them that in a few days it’s supposed to warm up again. They stare at me with unblinking eyes, waiting for me to drop food on the ground and then the three of us retire to the couch, where I spend a few hours working on this newsletter (it’s becoming quite long!). Afterwards I cuddle the dogs and look at my phone until it’s time for bed.
Monday
It’s -6 Fahrenheit in the morning but “feels like” -18 according to the weather app on my phone. The hoar frost on the trees in the yard goes so hard and as the sun rises the sky is a perfect pastel pink. For breakfast I make double bergamot earl grey tea and a salmon burger patty that I eat with sauteed broccoli and brown rice (and fake feta). I’ve decided to dedicate this entire week, aside from zoom calls with hiking clients, to implementing the changes in my manuscript- we’ll see how far I get! I have a zoom call and work a bit and then for lunch I make my sardine bowl with sardines, rice mixed with veganaise and sriracha, kimchi and seaweed snacks to eat it all on. And that’s where I’ll end this food diary, a day early, because I don’t want to devote more hours to it this week. I hope you have enjoyed this rambling tale, and it’s made you feel hungry or made you laugh.
Until next time,
Carrot
Your newsletters are my favourite, I love your writing so much. Also, I am 41 and terrified about perimenopause too, so you’re not alone!
One great thing about menopause is that after it is done, and you are free from hormone intoxication, you will see relationships with new eyes. So much is based on sexual attraction, when that is mostly gone it is easier to sort out the asshole type people. You lose one thing but gain much discernment. I wouldn’t go back to hormonal blindness for anything. Sexual competition mostly drops away, and friendships become deeper.