The Girl With No Box?

At some point, it was obvious that I was going to have to explain the choice of a title for this blog.  Aside from implying that if I were to become homeless, I’d be at a disadvantage, there is a reason this statement fits.

My grandmother, Arlene, used to say (unfortunately sans humor), “You weren’t raised: You just grew up….Sprouted!  Like a weed.” 

Perhaps now is where I should mention that though I am still twisted up about the relationship with my grandmother, I can at very least see that “hurt people hurt people” as my very good friend Brad reminds me often.  I will someday expound on what happened to her that twisted her heart in the way that it was twisted, and perhaps learn to really forgive her in that process.  She was a phenomenal woman in so many, many respects, and in her defense, it was the most wicked of circumstances (i.e. losing a child) that ultimately brought her to that point.  The truth is, I was the most like her.  The mirror I held to her face was more than she could bear.

I know that what she said was partly true.  The irony lies in the fact that any pruning I experienced as a child, came directly from her...so for her to make this statement acknowledges that A) she didn’t exactly finish the job, and B) that she forgets that she could have but instead made a choice to not in her implied accusation to the parties actually responsible for me…and perhaps, to stay on track with the metaphor, she could have chosen to also look into the idea building a garden fence and gate.

So, I was born to a couple that ultimately didn’t have the structure necessary to raise a healthy child.  Not to say that they were not productive humans….but remember…hurt people, hurt people.  My mother was always trying to out run, Hitler (i.e. “Mother”) and social expectations. My father was always trying to prove he could do anything despite certain handicaps he would have preferred to keep secret.  At some point, I will also explain a whole lot more about them in this process of using the world to purge me of my issues. Thanks y’all…btw!  J

My father was killed when I was 1 ½.  My mother had a rough time holding it together under the circumstances.  I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was small and “cute”….like a dolly with amazing table manners (remind me to post the story about my choosing as a pre-teen to purposely fail to execute said table manners)…or a trained monkey in heals.  As I got older and my mother claimed some of her decisions back from “Mother” again, I saw less and less of my grandmother.  No one really ever took an initiative powerful enough to ensure I had a proper mental box to exist within past my Grandmother, and I left her box pretty fast when given the opportunity.  I was allowed to come to my own conclusions…and when they didn’t jive with the plans of our Matriarch, her punishment was further isolation….and her neglect became my ally.

Once I could think for myself, and teenage angst came into full fruition, it was a constant power struggle to be near family gatherings.  My new ideas were not welcome.  Any suggestion at a new way of doing things evoked the immediate response of “that is not the way things were done by decent people”…without so much as a consideration of my evidence to the contrary.  She was outraged by the people that I wound up making friends with, calling them poor white trash…but then absolutely refused to purchase me the clothing that would have made me appealing to the pretty little rich girls that the unaccepted “geek” girls called “The Snob Squad”. I was in a weird position of having no proper family structure, but also being blessed enough to excel in academics despite, and making friends with some very smart girls that I still know a select few of to this very day.  My grandmother was full of strange contradictions in her struggle to encompass the social issues of my 1980’s grade-school situation.  If she only knew that all those little girls with the silver spoons wound up just as messed up, if not more so than I, by the end of the 1990’s.

Every cruel twist of the knife my grandmother would time with precision became the force I used as rebellion fuel.  I clung to anything and everything she hated…at first I think unconsciously, and maybe with a little help from my equally rebellious mom, it grew into a full-fledged burden and I became aware of it.  After all, the result of my exile from her favor was being alone in the jungle.  Mom was not around.  I was the little girl smarter parents either forbade their children from playing with or just insisted that I come to their house instead of their kid staying the night at mine, with only one exception being my best friend whose mom partied with mine…go figure.  We reflect today in awe that we made it out of there…that whole neighborhood/childhood thing.  We, quite literally, grew up without parental supervision of any real consequence…and she had 2 little brothers that we were watching!

I could go on and on about “what happened then???”  Unfortunately, I have already pinpointed what it was that led to my having no box, so it would just be a bunch of stuff about my grandmother (which I fully intend to explore later) or about all the dumb stuff that happened subsequently (again, future posts a plenty), and not so much really pertaining to the catalyst leading to my realizations that A) there are many different boxes in which one could be trapped, and B) that because I knew this, I would be able to choose precisely which one I wanted, and furthermore, C) that I could choose not to live in a box AT ALL!

I can tell you this: I went through a lot of different boxes at first!  I was entirely too afraid to stare at myself in the mirror unboxed…at first.  One must condition themselves for the exposure.  But, I find that no matter which box you choose to hide in, made of whatever you want to make it out of (like every living thing on Earth is carbon based, it is important to note that boxes are ignorance based), time and wear will always find a way to wear holes in those silly boxes.  And it really is like living in the dark, because when that light of knowledge breaks through those holes, “it burns us, precious, it burns us!”

So, I finally went boxless after my separation from my ex.  The one I had been hiding in with him finally fell apart.  After scrambling to clean up the mess, I went on a long walkabout to think about if I want another box or not.  I have still not decided on my new box…or if I really want one.  I admit, new boxes are so comfortable.  I just don’t have the luxury of a box that I can fit all of THIS into anymore.  I guess I have just become too big for my own boxes. J

I could not have shed my box without my friends, especially one in particular who helped lead with his eyes when mine were swollen shut.  I will never forget what they did for me and I will always be grateful. That I still have people who will claim to know me has kept me going for quite some time!  It is they who love me that have made this endeavor of mine possible.  Thank you!

Lingonberry Love

A favorite of the North, lingonberries (Vaccinium Vitis-idaea) are Alaska’s version of the Thanksgiving cranberry (Vaccinium Oxycoccus), which is best known for lending itself to the formulation of those horrid cans of gelatinous muck that scar the mind of many a socio-economically challenged child....or those with lazy moms.  Growing up with access to the woods, I quickly learned that the most beautiful qualities of any berry are never to be found in a can...but, let’s be fair... I feel that way about just about every food on Earth.

Now, I get that one does not have to hail from the great State of Alaska to be familiar with Our Mother’s annual berry phenomenon.  The North-Eastern US and Canada boast one heck of a crop of those Vaccinium Oxycoccus strains, and one of my favorite reasons to visit Oregon as a child was to enjoy a good portion of their most abundant members of the bramble family, their lovely blackberries.  

I will just admit now that as an Alaskan, I am blessed with a great diversity and quality of wild berries to choose from, and since I was small, it has been an annual tradition to crawl around on the tundra (or in some cases the jungle) on all-fours collecting all we could carry.  

Most berries of which people are familiar, such as the blueberry, currant, and high-bush varieties of cranberry, are also of the genus Vaccinium.  Raspberries, while a wildly popular berry, belong to that aforementioned bramble family along with blackberries, marionberries, black raspberries, golden raspberries, thimbleberries, salmonberries, and I am sure I am missing a few hybridized versions.  In all this berry-mania, the lingonberry is clearly just not spoken of much, despite being the dominant berry shrub in much of interior Alaska.

Specifically in regards to lingonberries, Wikipedia (which is only a credible source for SOME types of information....specifically nothing politically charged) states:

"The berries collected in the wilder are a popular fruit in northern, central and eastern Europe, notably in Nordic countries, the Baltic states, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine."

You can read the whole citation here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinium_vitis-idaea

So, with the exception of a recently realized industry for them in the Pacific Northwest, specifically in Oregon, this whole lingonberry thing seems to be a very European practice.  Those of you with Scandinavian heritage might not have realized that the cranberries (mostly of the Oxycoccus subtype) in all those old holiday recipes originated with lingonberries prior to your ancestors move to North America.  Well, I guess you could call Alaska the Scandinavia of North America then, eh?  (A shout out to our Lingonberry-loving neighbors...)

My favorite way to pick them is prior to the frost so that my fingers do not get frozen nor stained.  The berries, in my opinion, are best munched upon when still kind of tart and pulpy…as opposed to the squishy, feety option that dominates the frozen woods of the late fall.  The nice thing is that the lingonberries will wait the longest for you to get out there, so you can spend time on more cold-sensitive berries until later in the fall.  

Lingonberries love a reasonably sparse, moist, spruce-dominated forest with a scattering of birch trees.  When you notice a mossy type of forest floor, you are on the right track.  Look for waxy oval leaves on little vines about 4 – 9 inches tall with red berries in bunches of 3 to 6 berries to a bunch.  Each berry has an X where the flower fell off.  Sometimes the berries get so dark a burgundy (usually with a lot of sun) that they are almost black.  I have noted that they tend to like features in the woods that direct more water and let more sun reach them, like knolls, path sides, and overhangs.

Something to note when picking lingonberries is their similarity in description to that of the Bearberry (Arctostaphylos Urva Ursi).   They also have waxy leaves and red berries and grow in thick mats…often near lingonberry bushes!  The key to recognition of this non-poisonous, but none-the-less undesirable (unless you wish to use it as a medicinal herb...but, that’s another blog post) imposter, is noting the way that they creep together in thick, distinctly flatter mats, have a much lighter green color and teardrop shape to the leaves, and how the lighter red or pink berries appear singular instead of in bunches.  Once you make the connection visually, you will be able to spot them from a distance.

Recently, I was privileged to join friends up North at a mining camp as the official transport of a crew member.  As Alaska is a HUGE state, this meant I did a whole lot of driving.  On a drive up where I was alone, I stopped a few places along the highway in the interior.  Once you get an understanding of the terrain types in Alaska it becomes pretty easy to spot key locations prone to berries.  I found a few places with my keen berry sniffer that I was able to fill 4-quart containers with berries the size of marbles in less than an hour.  Needless to say, I finally reached camp late into the night…damp, dirty, twigs and fallen leaves stuck in my pony tail…looking much like a tornado victim.  But I had LOTS of berries!

When I returned home, I immediately realized the folly of berry picking that I conveniently forget every single year; which is that now someone has to stand around and clean all these things!  Fortunately for lingonberries, when harvested prior to that frost date, they are much easier to clean than blueberries.

My method for cleaning them up is pretty straight forward.  I lay a towel (I have actually designated a “berry towel” so that stains are not an issue) out on the largest work surface I have.  I then fill a giant steel baker’s mixing bowl with lukewarm water, dump in enough of the floating little berries until the level is almost at full, or there is no water left, which ever happens first.  

Once soaked, place the berries by the handful on the towel.  As the berries fall off of the hand on to the towel, much of the debris sticks to wet hands, so it is good to rinse the hands after dropping the berries prior to continuing.  You don't want to overload your towel, for fear that they might not fully dry and leave the debris.

As the berries dry off, the remaining debris sticks to the wet towel, making it easy to pick up handfuls, examine to find any remaining particles, and then stick them in the chosen freezing receptacle. For larger batches intended for a batch purpose, I like to vacuum seal into the sizes needed for the intended purpose.  Others I like to keep in resealable freezer bags for quick access to a handful for my fruit shakes or baking.

So, I will leave you with what I found myself thinking while processing a batch of berries once:

Like anything else we touch, we lend it a bit of us; our electrons, hence our energy.  It is evident in how they take some of the heat from our hands, which you can feel as you place them, clean and dried, in the bag.

Nothing is quiet like the flavor that is enhanced with a little bit of our divine heat…our blood, our sweat, and our tears.  Very much like the realization I came to when learning to create masterpiece meals from whole quality ingredients, in this process of cleaning and sorting these little jewels, I further developed the understanding of the tangible benefits we lose when separating ourselves from involvement in our food sources and its preparation.  Think about the lab rat and his daily ration vs the field mouse that can survive and evolve through some of the worst of nature’s wrath.

I often come up with some of the craziest crap when I am doing something mindless, like walking on a treadmill, or processing thousands and thousands of berries.  I guess the mind solves queries when given enough idle time.

Happy carpet-creeping!  

The Most Interesting Person He Knows????

Ok...ha ha! Someone I know said to me...."You are like the Dos Equis guy....except a chick" (nevermind his sensitivity issues)....which at first I took in jest. But then he went on and said, "No, no...all joking aside. You are really the most interesting person I know." 

Hmmmm... So. I guess we are going to find out right now. This will be my first blog post. As it turns out...I DO have a whole bunch to ramble about on a whole bunch of different topics. I have lived an extraordinary life, by most people's standards, and I guess that makes me obligated to put my thoughts out into the digital ether. God help us all.

You are welcome to refute my claim that I have something tangible to say...and you can arm yourself for said challenge by stalking my Facebook page:  My Profile  

But I promise you, it is really a waste of valuable time on Earth...just sayin'. So...I commit today...here and now, to trump this guy: 

  LOL!!! Talk soon people.