Weekend traveling all over Alaska by plane or car brings excitement and pleasure to my wife Gosia and me.
Last weekend, we drove to the IGA Food Cache’s European section in Delta Juntion to stock up on the goodies Gosia enjoyed growing up in her native Warsaw.
We scored a nice salami long and heavy enough to use as a Little League baseball bat, blocks of soft, dense cheese perfect for cheesecake, a hunk of unsliced, imported German bologna, and a jar of grated horseradish that made me cry while removing the lid.
My grandmother taught me how to dig for horseradish in our garden, brushing away soil like an archeologist to take the plant without cutting off the spreading roots.
She taught me to I peel the “skin” and grate the root to mix with water, vinegar and salt for a batch. My grandfather killed a hog every year. The family loved slapping fresh horseradish on thick ham slices.
Gosia’s family (father from Lithuania and mother from Warsaw) dined on vittles my kin on the farm never knew. Last Sunday, for dinner, she made a delicious soup (zupa) called “Zurek” roughly translated as “sour.”
Gosia put it together with sourdough starter, a fermented (for days) base, and scented spices like marjoram and all spice. She simmered the soup for hours and added thin slices of kielbasa biala (white sausage) for flavor.
My Polish grandmother served kielbasa along with vegetable soup, and she slathered those sausages in the fresh horseradish we made.
Delta Junction was our second September road trip. For Labor Day weekend we flew to Dillingham, staying at a cabin outside the lovely Beaver Creek B & B.
We were the only tourists. The others (who all stayed in the lodge itself) were hunters and anglers.
Dillingham residents boast about the area’s beauty. Indeed, in early morning and late evening light, few places can beat majestic Nushagak Bay.
We drove our rental car north along the Wood River several times to enjoy the lake at Aleknagik.
On Labor Day, Gosia ambled through a field speckled with the season’s last wildflowers. Behind a clump of baneberry plants, she pulled up a preserved set of moose antlers.
This was a far better moose encounter than she and I had on a weekend trip last May coming back from our 15 wooded acres northwest of Tok.
At 7:23 p.m., on the Richardson Highway, a big bull moose stepped out of the woods right in front of the low-mileage Subaru Outback we bought just that week.
I swerved and braked, trying not to over-correct. We should have been home-free.
Unfortunately, instead of continuing to run i, the bull jumped, and his hindquarters landed on the passenger side of the hood. He slid into the windshield, covering it like a rug, before sliding off and bounding away.
“Two feet more left we would have been safe,” I said to Gosia.
She dialed 911.
“Two feet more right, we would have been dead,” she said. Hundreds of splinters of windshield glass covered Gosia chest to shoes.
Nonetheless, we were unhurt.
Despite that unfortunate close-up moose visit, Gosia thrilled to find the intact bull antlers at Aleknagik. After taking photos, she propped the antlers up for some local to find.
I swear there’s something magical about these gigantic castoff antlers with their bony tines and palms.
Yukon writer Robert Service thought so, too. After Service moved from Dawson City to Europe, he dedicated a poem to his old cabin “empty and black, with moose antlers nailed over your door.”
The sentimental soul ended the poem with a wish that his soul might return to that cabin after death.
In addition to splendid scenery, what Gosia and I most enjoy about these weekend trips, was the hospitality of folks.
Our Beaver Creek B & B hosts dropped us off at the Dillingham airport. Thirty minutes later, as Gosia and I awaited our turn to leave the terminal, an emissary from the B & B called our names.
As our mouths dropped in surprise, we accepted a heavy insulated bag with a gift of several fat red salmon fillets.
“Only in Alaska,” an impressed Gosia said to me. “Only in Alaska.”
Hank Nuwer is an Alaska writer and former managing editor of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. Gosia Nuwer loves to cook as a hobby. Her next challenge is “Ogurki soup,” made with dill pickles from our garden.