From Veganism To Reindeer Steak

Within two days, I've spanned pretty much the entire culinary spectrum on AOL News.

First, of course, was my report on Wynn Resorts' new vegan gambit, which I also covered on this blog last week.

Then, today, Rudolph is on the menu! My trip to Alaska was a failure as far as dealing effectively with the private family drama that drew me there, but I did, as usual, find myself a story to share with the Lower 48.

I caught a piece by Jeff Richardson of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner about a study by the University of Alaska at Fairbanks' Reindeer Research Program to determine whether consumers will buy reindeer as steak and at what prices. (See, Ms. Neff, there are many values to reading a printed newspaper that have nothing to do with who's up and down in an election.)


Important stuff? Probably not. But it did give me the unique opportunity to open my story with this:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (Aug. 25) -- Ever watch "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and think, "I wonder what that little guy would taste like on the grill?"

I admit I did taste a little reindeer. No, not the cute ones I photographed from the UAF farm. They're still alive and well ... for now.

No, I spotted an egg dish with "reindeer sausage" on the menu of the diner we ate at the night we arrived in Fairbanks. While it was tasty and spicy, UAF researcher George Aguilar told me that kick probably was thanks to spices and not Prancer as "reindeer sausage" tends to have less than 10 percent reindeer meat. The rest of pork and beef, he said. He does, however, wax rhapsodic about the taste of a good Blitzen burger:

"It's a high-protein, low-fat, super-tender, high-mineral meat. As far as quality, it's tender, really tender. It's one of the most tender meats in the world. All the fat is on the outside of the animal, so you don't get marbling. It has a sweet taste. It doesn't have a gamey taste."

Mmmm. That and the fava bean puree at Alex sounds like a winner.

This story also took me inside the intriguing world of the reindeer-for-Christmas-events industry, which I suspect is a topic for The Petcast soon. They're apparently really nice pets for folks with a little property and Kyle Wilson of Rocky Hill Reindeer Leasing in Knoxville, Tenn., says he gets $3,000 each providing them for church groups or Christmas tree farms from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Wilson doesn't see a big reindeer steak market anytime soon:

"More than anything else, it's not politically correct to eat Rudolph. We who have them, rent them or show them, we get the warm-and-fuzzy thing going on, and the furthest thing from your mind is eating one of them. In the Lower 48, we have it for Christmas, but we don't eat it for Christmas."

The driven snow

I am a lousy driver. Terrible. I don't even try to pretend otherwise. We make a (half)-joke about it around our house; Miles would probably insist on driving us instead of me even if his feet were gnawed off by lynxes. I'm not really sure why I'm so bad other than, as my father told me my entire teenage life, my head is always in the clouds. It's why I can't listen to books on tape - a funny-looking person will walk across the street and I'll spend the next 15 minutes thinking about him and next thing I know, I have no idea what the author is talking about. I'm the one who drove my dad's Mercedes through a fence around the corner of our house eight days after I got my license. That was the start of a brilliant career.

So imagine everyone's surprise when it turns out that I could really handle a Ski-doo snowmachine through the tundra! It was rocky for all of us at first, inching along at 15 or 20 mph for a while, but by the time Miles, our friend/innkeeper Karen and I were through with our 65-mile roundtrip jaunt, I was booking at 50+ mph in some spots and even FLYING over bumps just for effect. (Random Vegas connection: Ski-doos are manufactured by Bombardier, the same folks who built the parts-shedding Las Vegas Monorail. Nothing fell off on our trip.)

It wasn't just exhilarating -- and, for some reason, body-tiring -- but sensationally beautiful. In the winter, the massive rivers north of Anchorage are like wide open, white highways of thick ice. It was mind-bending to imagine that in a couple of months, the rivers will be back. I did have a close call with a wooden post, but otherwise we came through it all intact. We drove out 30 miles to a little cabin where a family out of Deliverance lives and served us up a delicious little meal of burgers, though we're not real sure what sort of meat it was. The house could only be reached by boat, snowmobile or small planes that land on the frozen river. The family out there even had a foster son, a teenager. I'm trying to imagine how the caseworker even got to this place for the home visit. No threat of the kid going bad out here, tho.

Sadly, we've worn out our camera battery and didn't bring the charger. So the Nikon did not cooperate when we saw two majestic bald eagles perched on a branch along the route. Our guide, Craig, from Alaska Backcountry Adventure Tours, told Miles to take the battery out of the camera and put it somewhere warm -- a pant pocket or something -- and it would get a little charge back. He was right, so we got just these couple of shots shown here.

The other bad news is that despite nearly a week in Alaska, somehow the ubiquitous moose have eluded us. We've seen loads of moose tracks -- or at least that's what they tell us they are -- but no moose. Another thing we haven't -- and won't -- see... igloos! Except in today's newspaper, where this appeared, appropriately:


Today's a quiet day after Thurs and Fri were big-adventure days. Sunday, we fly to Juneau so I can see the state capitol, one of my obsessions. Hopefully we can put that battery somewhere, uh, warm, so we can get enough juice to snap my image there. Yes, I'm a dork.

Signs of Spring in Alaska

So it's about 25 degrees for a high here in Anchorage and looks very much like this picture, which I ripped from somewhere else, of course. This is apparently a signal to every Walmart and Sears in town to dump the winter gear and explain to us that it's almost spring, dumbasses. We arrived as prepared as two fellows from the desert could be - we even had long johns, and I cannot recall why on earth we would have ever bought or worn them before - but we assumed we'd find some ear muffs and maybe a nice sweater or two up here. No dice. Will have to borrow some from the innkeeper at the Garden Gate B&B in Palmer, where we're staying.

Oh, did I mention that the innkeeper is an old, old friend, Karen Harris, who gave up a journalism career in Minneapolis to open a B&B in Alaska, a lifelong dream. I can't wait to see how that worked out for her.

We're now chilling at the Dark Horse Coffee Shop in Anchorage. It's cute, although Miles complains that his mocha-machiatto-whatever is a little too heavy on the whipped cream, light on the juice. Oh well. My hot chocolate looked sumptuous, but isn't really. Oh well again.

We had lunch at terrific trendy eatery called the Snow City Cafe that a college-campus feel to it. I had the "crabby omlette." Yum. And we're likely to go to some brew pub for dinner where Karen has advised they have the best salmon chowder in, uh, history or something.

I am forbidden on this trip from working, which is difficult when there are a few good stories up here I could so easily string for the Times. In the center of the state, the mayor is following a middle school social studies class' advice to repopulate and giving away 26 large land plots. The results have been fascinating. Plus, there's a dog-beating scandal in the Iditarod, which is wrapping up now.

OH! And one last thing I did today. I made Miles stop and let me browse a tourist trap called the Ulu Factory. Why? Because for years now I've been using the word "ulu" in Scrabble and I've never known what it meant. I just thought it was a clever way to dump unwanted vowels.