Fundraiser Notecards

At the end of every Service Adventure term, the unit takes a year-end trip. This trip is a time to deepen our unit relationships, see a new part of the state that we maybe weren’t able to earlier, and have a fun time before ending our term and heading back home. This year, we are planning to explore the Kenai Peninsula, an area of land south of Anchorage and how to all sorts of interesting and beautiful places and events. To help raise funds for this trip, our unit is selling (limited edition) nature photography notecards. Each notecard set features 10 different images of local Alaskan beauty, made by myself or one of my unit mates, Marlene Allebach. Images are printed on high quality glossy cardstock and come with accompanying envelopes. The price is $20 per notecard set. If you live outside Anchorage, we are offering free shipping! You can order and pay with PayPal by following this link or email me at mrkreider@cox.net and send us a check in the mail (made out to Service Adventure) to 1310 W. 47th Ave, Anchorage, AK, 99503. I would also be happy to answer any questions you may have. Our unit thanks you for your support – through financial means, prayer, and all the other ways you help to make our experience possible. Thank you!

The front of the notecard set box

The back of the box, showing the 10 images featured.

Three of the Alaskan nature photography images featured.

Easter!

Happy Easter everyone! This morning the new dawn ushered in new life and light. Through Jesus’ resurrection, God has triumphed over death. Love has made a mockery of evil and we are given a new hope. I hope you have a joyful Easter season and enjoy these few photos of our window garden – a sign of the new life we see in Christ.

green onions

spinach

tomatoes

And finally, some of the eggs our unit dyed on Saturday - one of my favorite Easter activities!

A Glacial Glimpse

For many of you reading this, I would presume that winter is either partially or fully done with the process of ceding power over to spring. The same is happening here in Anchorage; sidewalks are mostly clear of snow, it is beginning to smell earthy and fresh, and one hears birds chirping in delight. However, before winter is reduced to only a memory, I would like to share one last adventure from the season. 

Several weeks ago, our unit drove down to Portage Glacier, one of the closest accessible glaciers to Anchorage. About 45 miles southeast of Anchorage, we have been meaning to check out the glacier for a while now, and finally took the opportunity. Like so many glaciers in the world today, Portage Glacier has retreated significantly over the past several decades (check out http://extremeicesurvey.org/, a project combining the art and science of photography to document the effects of climate change and other human activities on glaciers).  In 1986, a visitor center was built at one end of Portage Lake, across which the glacier lay. Today, the glacier has retreated around the flank of a mountain and can no longer be seen from the visitor center. In order to see it, folks are left with the options of hiking in, taking a short cruise, or through the use of a plane. In winter however, Portage Lake is frozen and so we were able to ski across the lake to see the face of the glacier. 

A graphic showing the retreat of Portage Glacier, around the corner and out of sight of the Visitor Center

Skiing across the lake to the glacier (which can't be seen in this image but is about a mile straight in, and then right)

A glacier is a thing of great beauty, and a clear blue sky served to heighten its appearance, allowing light to penetrate down into the blue recesses of the ice. Glaciers are otherworldly in their form and gigantic scale. Portage is a small glacier compared with many others in Alaska and elsewhere, but humans are still dwarfed by the huge face. I was drawn to the jagged forms of some of ice and the smooth, sculpted form of other parts. 

A glacier is also a thing of great power. Though one may initially think of glaciers as inert objects, they are in constant motion. As we watched the glacier, loud pops, cracks, and grating sounds could be heard from within. We witnessed several small ice calving events, the process whereby pieces of ice break away from the face of the glacier. The largest of these, upon falling from the face, produced a surface wave on the ice; much like what happens when something is dropped into water. It was slightly unsettling to see the ice sheet a quarter mile away rising and rippling towards us. Glancing sideways towards where the ice-covered lake met a rock cliff, one could see the entire ice sheet we were standing on moving slowly up and down perhaps a foot or more.  In fact, ice is very flexible and a small disturbance like this probably isn’t anything to worry about, provided you are a safe distance away from the calving face. But it does pay to take heed of the potential dangers associated with glaciers and respect the tremendous power that exists within them.

A chunk of ice calves off from the face of the glacier 

people probably standing too close to the glacier

two figures are dwarfed by the glacier

Naan, Basil, and more

For as long as I can remember, I have enjoyed food. I am glad to have been born into the family I was – for, among other things, the great culinary habits it brought with it. Healthy, hearty, delicious food, tasty ethnic dishes like curries, hummus, or African dishes, a strong gardening and growing ethic, and the list goes on. However, I have always been little more than a consumer of this delicious food. In Service Adventure, I am changing that and finding myself increasingly drawn to actually cooking food (though this has not lessened my enjoyment of the food with others!). I previously wrote a blog on cooking in the unit (here), and I thought I would share a slice of what has been going down recently in the Service Adventure kitchen.

My first order of business was at the grocery store. With a maximum budget of $65, it is always a lesson in compromise. My unit mates often call me out on the high percentage of the food budget that goes towards vegetables while I am cooking, but I stand steadfast in my decision. Should it come down to a decision between meat and vegetables, I’ll usually err on the side of the latter. Plus, we have a freezer downstairs full of salmon so we might as get items that aren’t readily available (or shouldn’t be at all in Alaska if you take a hardcore local stance!) like these vegetables. Of course, we already had some items like eggs, potatoes, flour, butter, etc. on hand which freed up space. In addition, much to the chagrin of my Pennsylvanian, dairy-farming fellow Service Adventurer, I decided to not buy any milk for my week as head chef in order to make room for other ingredients. It might be a few more weeks before we are friends again. Below is the grocery purchase for one week.

The grocery purchase, roughly left to right; celery, leeks, cauliflower, frozen mixed vegetables, pears, carrots, onions, sweet potatos, olive oil, yogurt, pine nuts, feta cheese, garlic, tomatoes, coconut, green curry sauce (they didn’t have the paste), and pepper jack cheese.

One question I wondered to myself was where on the spectrum of frugality and simplicity to extravagant and gourmet is the most responsible point to land. One of the things we are learning while in Service Adventure is how to live simply. How should that translate into the food we buy? It is an unavoidable fact that eating healthily and organically generally costs more. Of course, sometimes some items like rice and beans can be both less expensive and healthier than processed and packaged foods, but by and large, you get what you pay for. I would be interested in what you think, my dear reader. How does one avoid becoming some sort of privileged, affluent, elitist eater while at the same time cooking healthy, colorful, delicious, and interesting food?

Well here are a few of the meals or culinary projects I embarked upon. These are drawn from my two weeks of cooking recently (one of which was made with the grocery image above)

Chicken curry on basmati rice, naan, dahl, and tomato chutney

fresh baked naan - so delicious and really easy to make!

Tomato bisque with apple/strawberry/cranberry crisp

One day, my unit mate who works at a local soup kitchen brought home large amounts of both basil and rosemary. I’ve always been a huge fan of basil, so it was quite the exciting thing to see. It was in need of quick use, so after purchasing several specific ingredients, we whipped it up into pesto and froze it into ice cubes for later use.

basil and rosemary

making the pesto

the pesto ready to be frozen in cubes

One evening was pizza night!

my "sous-chef" assembling a pizza

a baked pizza, with all sorts of toppings - white sauce/pesto for the base, tomatoes, spinach, basil, onions, feta, pepper jack, kalamata olives, green onions, etc...

A week after the basil incident, my unit mate brought home more basil, this time enough to stock a large grocery store for several weeks. We then had basil incident number two, only on a much larger scale than the first.

basil, basil, and more basil...

We set out preparing to store it in several ways: pureeing it with olive oil, pureeing it with just water or canola oil, blanching the leaves and storing as is, or just pureeing the blanched leaves. The basil slurry was then frozen in ice cube tray. It will be interesting to see how well each method ends up working – and no matter what, we’ll have no dearth of basil for the rest of the unit.

At the end of my cooking stint, I was slightly ready to not cook for a while, but I was left with new ideas for meals and many things to improve upon.

Coconut milk and garlic that I received from my work leader at the BLM. The only stipulation? To bring what ever I made with in it to work. Any ideas?