CINDY EMPTYING SHRIMP POTS
This weekend, my husband and I went out on our boat. We went out of Whittier, which is in Prince William Sound. It’s almost always rainy and windy there. Although we did have rain part of the time, we also had a little clear weather. It was windy Friday night when we were going out, but for the first time ever I’ve been out there, on Saturday and Sunday it wasn’t windy. Which made for an almost flat ocean. Which was a very good thing, considering we had engine problems, had to shut our engine off while going through a narrow opening into the cove where we were going to anchor for the evening. Of course, since I’m not the biggest water-lover, when the engine alarm began screeching, and upon lifting the engine cover and seeing lots of what I thought was smoke (I later learned it was steam from a radiator that was boiling over), I quickly got the fire extinguisher out, put together the paddles for the kayaks in case we had to abandon ship, and generally was scared to death. But luckily we had a backup kicker motor with us, and were able to motor to where we were going for the evening, and anchor up. We thought we would have to radio the coast guard and have them call in a tow boat for us, but luckily sometime that night or the next morning (I now don’t even remember when it was) my husband discovered what the problem was, and was able to repair it (or at least we were hoping it was repaired!) But since we were safely anchored for the evening, even though we had worries about the cost of a tow boat, we decided to go ahead and have a nice dinner of the shrimp we had just pulled, along with a nice glass of wine. And also some salmon we caught. A nice high protein dinner.

HUSBAND GETTING READY TO HAVE A SHRIMP DINNER
Shrimping is not easy. The pots are heavy, and they kill your back as you’re moving them around. In Alaska, you are allowed to put out 5 shrimp pots, which we do on 2 lines (about 800 feet of line each). So we put 3 pots on one line, and 2 pots on the other. On a good weekend, we’ll pull the pots 3 times. We’ll put them out Friday night, pull Saturday morning and put them right back out, pull Saturday night and put them back out, then pull a last time Sunday morning. We’ve been known to get 15 gallons of shrimp from 3 pulls. We weren’t as succesful this weekend, but we still had plenty for dinner on the boat Saturday night, a nice shrimp pasta dinner Sunday night, some to give my husband’s boss, and still more to freeze.
Another part of the shrimping that’s not so fun is when you have to pull their heads off. That will make you want to become a vegetarian. Here’s a photo of me pulling their heads off-notice the thick gloves I wear so I don’t feel their “twitching” as much.

On the way home, we stopped to take a photo of a glacier at Portage lake. This is accessible by car, and is just about an hour south of Anchorage. Notice the blue glow of the glaciers-this is because they absorb all of the light spectrum except for the blue (because of denseness of the ice).

Once home, I began thinking about what to cook for dinner. It needed to include shrimp, and I was craving pasta. I found a package of black squid ink pasta that I brought home from Italy.

I sauteed chopped onion and garlic in some butter and olive oil. I then added the shrimp, salt, pepper, and hot pepper flakes. A few splashes of white wine.

Then mixed that with the cooked pasta. A very tasty dinner.

After dinner, the sun came out for a short period of time, and I was able to do one of my favorite activities-sit outside in the sun, in my PJs, reading Bon Appetit, with a glass of wine!