Chef Ramsay Expert Salmon Filleter?
I have to admit, my one reality TV guilty pleasure is Kitchen Nightmares with Chef Ramsay. I think I’ve seen every episode at least once. I’m not sure what gets me in the show, but it’s addictive. So when I saw this video on YouTube, I immediately clicked it – Chef Ramsay and salmon… two of my favorite things. Since shamefully, I have never actually filleted a salmon, I’m not 100% sure how good he is. So Alaskans – can you do it better than this sometimes-rude British chef? *warning, I’m not certain if this is Alaskan salmon or not….
Blimps in the Last Frontier!
Thursday, I attended the Cargo Airships for Northern Operations Workshop . That’s right, the Blimp Convention! Earlier this year, I reported that a blimp was coming to Alaska this July for the first time since the 1920s. And not just any blimp – we’re talking the 200-foot long Skyship 600. Even though, to my disappointment, it was not coming up to give people rides, I had still planned on trying to blog the event and get some pictures if it came to Anchorage. Sadly, that never happened. But the dream is not dead, my friends. And there are many smart and motivated…
15 Things Northern Exposure Got Right
My wife Michelle was born in Anchorage, attending high school at Bartlett High. At about the time I was attending college, when the show “Northern Exposure” started to air, she was splitting her time between Anchorage in the summer and the school year in college in Austin. She doesn’t like “Northern Exposure,” maintaining adamantly that it was an inaccurate depiction of life in Alaska. Her chief complaint? Bagels. She found the notion that Alaskans would not know what a bagel is in 1990 (the year the show began) a bit preposterous. On a very technical level, I can agree with…
Why Your Well-Intended Comments Won’t Work
Editor’s Note: The deadline looms for submitting comments to the EPA about the proposed Pebble Mine. You may be thinking that you’ve already done that. But your comments may be off the mark. It’s not too late to save your opinion from the scrap heap. Here’s what you can do. And do it BEFORE SUNDAY! In the upcoming days, you will see a frantic flurry of e-blasts, Tweets and Facebook posts urging you to tell the EPA to stop the Pebble Mine, to “help save jobs” in the commercial fishing industry. But these calls for action are not what the…
Another One Bites the Dust
Well, there’s one less big, awesome, incredible animal in the world to worry about. Thanks, humans. Apparently the last time this magnificent creature was spotted in the wild, and not mounted on someone’s wall was in 2006. Africa’s western black rhino is now officially extinct according to the world’s largest conservation network – the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains a Red List of Threatened Species. There is both good and bad news for other animals under the watchful eye of the IUCN. Africa’s northern white rhino, and Asia’s Java rhino are teetering on the brink of extinction also. “In…
Pebble Mine – Got Plans?
What’s for dinner? “No plans.” Really? You sure have been looking at that menu a long time. “NO plans.” Um. Alright. “Stop asking me questions.” So no plans for dinner? “No. Absolutely not. But we’ll be feeding 2500 people dinner for five years. The tax and tip will be ballparked between $136 million and $180 million – and that would be on top of the $1.2 billion per year for groceries.” How do you know all the particulars with no plans for dinner? “Shut up. I said we don’t have a plan.” Really. That’s what the Pebble Partnership is telling…
When is Fishing a Crime?
“If I got the means to do it, I will do it,” Phillip said. “Even if you are breaking the law?” asked his lawyer, James Davis Jr. “Well, if it comes down to feeding my family, yes,” Phillip answered. A radio report from KYUK in Bethel made me pull over the Subaru this week. I was listening to the story of Bethel fishermen being prosecuted by the state of Alaska for subsistence fishing during a state-ordered closure. This was Les Misérables, Alaskanized. Last summer these Native fishermen defied a fishery closure to catch salmon to feed their families. The…
Family of Explorers
When a mutual friend notified me yesterday that Alaska adventurers Bretwood “Hig” Higman and Erin McKittrick might be looking for some transportation while visiting Anchorage, I jumped at the opportunity to meet them. Erin and Hig, as they are known, are the founders of the organization Ground Truth Trekking which provides a unique education on Alaska’s resource issues through hands-on exploration. Erin and Hig, along with the other organization members, combine their travels with exhaustive research, offering comprehensive, science-based coverage of issues like mining, climate change, Alaska fisheries management, energy options, etc…They frequently debunk myths on both sides of the…
UPDATED: Massive Landslide at Bingham Mine – Is this what Pebble will bring?
UPDATE: Quoted from Dow Jones 4/16/2013 RIO Tinto has asked employees to take vacation or unpaid leave after a massive landslide at its Bingham Canyon mine in Utah’s Salt Lake Valley, one of the world’s largest copper producing mines. Rio Tinto’s Kennecott Utah Copper unit said it has asked for workers to volunteer to take leave because the operation isn’t running at full capacity. “The slip has destroyed the main access decline into the pit, so a new decline will need to be constructed before mining can resume. We have no guidance from Rio on how long this will take, but…
The View from Juneau
An old saying goes something like this, “We hate in others what we hate in ourselves.” I don’t think I’ve seen a better example of that than this 28th legislative session. I flew to Juneau to watch the last days of the session for myself. Home in Anchorage, I spend a remarkable amount of time watching Gavel to Gavel – I even Tivo it. But the cameras don’t show what’s really going on in the Capitol, restaurants and bars; they don’t show the lobbyists following lawmakers into the bathroom or to the smoking porch. (I have to wonder whether the…