June 20: It's my birthday; welcome to summer

It was a beautiful day. I'm leading with this photo because as I sit here stuffed with the birthday dinner I'm about to describe and looking at the photos, this one makes me the happiest and most willing to consider eating again some time in the future. On a fashion note, I've happily adopted Chris' look: long johns with shorts over. It's perfect for days like this and protects everyone from the shock of seeing my white legs.

We started early fishing the morning ebb and got... one fish! I had already made the cake part of my birthday cake last night (here is the finished product), and put together the teriyaki marinade for the salmon. That left a lot to do today.
While the crew tackled the roof of the bunkhouse (they finished it by the afternoon!), I started finishing the desserts. I hadn't originally planned to make the milk chocolate orange mousse, but the chocolate chip orange cake required four egg yolks, and I didn't want to waste the four egg whites. So I weighed: egg white omelet vs. milk chocolate orange mousse. It was not a good day for prudence. At first I didn't think we'd be able to make a picture of chocolate mousse look good, but Makenzie, my beautiful, talented, intelligent, and determined niece managed. She was our food photographer tonight.

Rounding out the dessert portion of the evening were these warm chocolate pudding cakes - they are so rich, they require cream to cut the intensity of the chocolate. They are as yet unbaked in this photo. They are the very best right out of the oven. Mmmm.

The thing about desserts is a) if I run out of time to do all the planned cooking, I want to be sure dessert is not sacrificed; b) they often need to sit around for a while - the mousse needs to chill (in the tundra-ator), the orange curd that fills between the cake layers needs to cool; and c) they're a little more complicated so I want to be fresh. Plus, I get to spend the rest of the day working in a cabin that smells of orange and chocolate. So for many reasons, desserts are first.

After assembling the cake and cleaning the very small cabin so I could start on the rest of the projects, I went to town to pick up David (yippee!!) and the remaining ingredients for the other dinner components. It turned out that Harry, Makenzie, and Daniel could come, along with our friend Phil, his son Tom, and their deckhand, Patrick, and Roy also came by after work. It felt so good to have everyone here. Makenzie and I decided that we want to go dancing on Saturday if we're not fishing - after Harry conducts the annual Blessing of the Fleet - and we hope the rest of the gang will come along.

I had hoped to be able to set David's net as his plane was touching down, but his permit has been delayed. For the past few years, he hasn't held a permit because work or school obligations have meant a short season for him. This year, he is able to come for most of the season and his brother isn't, so Alex transferred his permit to David. However, unbeknownst to us, the Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission mailed Alex's permit to him at our home address in Seattle, but I am in Alaska and Alex is with his aunt in Micronesia, so we didn't know it had been mailed, let alone receive it. The CFEC can't issue the transferred permit unless they get the first one back, or have proof that it has been destroyed. So David found the permit, cut it up and took a photo it to send it in so David's permit should arrive in the next day or two. As it turned out, it probably wouldn't have affected our catch today.

On the way back from the airport, David and I looked for, but couldn't find Amanda's fish processing plant - where some of our salmon will be custom processed for David's customers... but we will try again tomorrow. We did manage to get oil for the heater in the Space Hut, and the remaining joiners for the wash down system, and some mangoes.


We decided that the crew would work the nets without me so I could cook. Here they are - maybe before, maybe between, maybe after the two fish they caught - which we ate tonight, along with the one from this morning, and two kings from yesterday. Here is the medium king from yesterday before we grilled it. The grilled photo is at the top of this page.


The rest of the menu: I want us to have beans at every meal because they have so many good qualities - very low glycemic index, high protein, high fiber, so as fuel, they keep us going for a long time. Maeve has been doing a great job of making that happen in our day to day cooking and I didn't want this day to be an exception. So here is the bean dish: It's roasted corn with black beans and mangoes (except one of the mangoes was brown inside, and the back up peaches were mealy, so we used one mango and one can of peaches). Another side dish that is really refreshing is this couscous with fresh vegetables and a vinaigrette dressing. David discovered this recipe when he was looking for something to serve with teriyaki salmon at the Strawberry Festival.



I wanted to wait for Harry's party to arrive before I started cooking the salmon and decided I had time to add this rice dish to the menu. It's a family favorite - rice with pistachios, dried currants, and scallions. Dang! I just realized that as usual, I forgot the parsley.






Finally, it was time for our guests to leave. The sun was getting ready to set. We all have to work tomorrow. It had been a great day - I love to cook for people and it's especially good when the people I cook for like to eat it. It wasn't a great day for fishing, but David got here and that was enough to make the day all by itself. And it was the solstice and it was beautiful and warm for the first time in days. When I went out to say goodbye as they were all leaving, I turned back to the cabins and got this view and then looking back toward the west, here is how my birthday ended.