The Best Kitchen Tool

I grew up on a property that had 4 MacIntosh apple trees.  Many late summers were spent raking apples into piles, going through the apples looking for good ones while dodging bees, and then spending time preparing them for pies and my favorite, Apple Crisp! Yumm!!  It was quite the reward for the big chore that it was.

My parents bought a tool that made this chore just a bit easier and quicker. It was an apple peeler/corer/slicer (shown to the right).  Yes, it does all those things at one time!  It made things so much better.  We would have milk crates FULL of little apples.  I can't imagine having to peel all those by hand and then slice and core them.  UGH!

The REALLY cool thing about this tool is that it would slice the apple into an amazing spiral.  These spirals were always fun to play with!  While at a Williams-Sonoma outlet in Leesburg, VA, I was able to purchase my own peeler/corer/slicer.  I just finally used it tonight for the first time at my own house on some big apples.  Peeled, cored, sliced, and packaged for freezing a dozen apples in about 10 minutes!! Can't wait to use those for some DELICIOUS apple crisp (using my mom's recipe, OF COURSE!)

The Dipnetting

So we were finally in Kenai, ready to do our fishing.  First we had to drive on to the beach, which was an adventure in itself because we didn't know how the car would do on sand. Thankfully my car rocks and made it just fine!

We got to an area where we decided to put in our net and begin fishing.  The first few hours were horrible. We caught maybe 3 fish between 8:30 am and 12:30.  We (and I mean Matt) started to really catch 'em as the tide went out at about 1 pm (3 hours after high tide).  We were up to 8 by 1:30 and the tide was out further.  It became a long walk back to the beach to drop fish off.  So Matt grabbed a tie-down from the car and headed back into the water.  When he caught one, he'd string on the tie-down and go right back to fishing.  He eventually came back an hour or so later with 12 more fish to end our count at 20 for the day and a full cooler.

Even though Matt had spent the time in the water, I was freezing.  I was also completely bored because I had nothing to do.  One net, one fisherman. We were ready to go home.  It was an uneventful (thankfully) trip back home. That night Matt finished cleaning the fish.

The next day Matt filleted the salmon and we pried out the pin bones.  The fillets were then vacuumed packed and put in the freezer for later consumption.  Some lucky family members may be receiving some of this DELICIOUS catch.

On the Road to Dipnetting

What is dipnetting?

What a dipnet looks like

It is an Alaskan salmon fishing technique.  A dipnet is a net attached to a large metal loop and the loop is attached to a long handle.  You hold on to the end of the handle, put the net in the water, and wait for the salmon to swim in. They will let you know they are there by splashing around and getting caught up in the net.  Depending on where you are, you can then drag the net up to shore and grab the fish or you can grab the fish and put it on a string and get right back to fishing.

This past weekend we went to Kenai (Kalifornsky Beach) to go dipnetting.  We had to drive 3 1/2 hours to get there.  However, it turned out to be a much longer trip than that.  To get to Kenai, you go on the Seward Highway from Anchorage (this highway dead ends in Seward).  There is an exit that takes on to the Sterling Highway, which goes to Soldotna, Kenai, and Homer.  As soon as we took this exit, we were stopped by TONS of traffic.  We thought maybe it was just the Kenai fishermen traffic, but later found out there were two separate, fatal car accidents (2 children from one accident and 2 adults from the other died).  We inched along for about an hour and then came to stand still traffic.  RV'ers and trucks towing boats and campers were all pulled off to the side waiting out the traffic.  By word of mouth we got news that the troopers would be closing the highway until 6 am the next morning (it was about 8 pm when we were stopped). So we sat back, popped a movie into the car DVD player and watched for a bit.  UNTIL... we noticed that some people were turning off to the left side of the road.  Matt went to check it out and said it was a dirt road.  I convinced him that a little adventure was in order.  It may lead to a campground where we can set up camp, or maybe it will take us to Kenai...

The long line of cars at the Sterling Highway Exit

So onward we went! It was a very bumpy back woods dirt road.  We weren't sure where we were going, but continued on.  Eventually we had to pull to the side to let about 7 other vehicles go by that were coming from the other direction.  We got word from them that they were coming from the other side of the accidents and the road we were on would take us to our final destination.  We eventually caught up with some other vehicles that had decided to take the same little adventure, so we felt a little relieved.

The dirt road took us around the first accident and back to the closed highway.  Eventually we came upon the next accident, blocked by a trooper and flares that led us into a campground and thankfully a sign that said "Skilak Lake Loop".  'Loop' meant we were getting back on the highway eventually!! The loop was super long though, AND it was another dirt road.  I was waiting for bears or moose to cross our path (especially since Matt was driving fast enough to not be able to stop properly), but thankfully it never happened.  The road finally met up with the highway again just north of Cooper Landing.

We made it to our campground site at 130 am and set up the tent (that took another 45 minutes since Matt would not listen to his wife).  We were up again at 8:30 am to pack up and go fishing.