Muktuk Anyone?

I've got the pics hosted on the web. Rather than flood one posting with them, I've decided to stay on one topic per posting and keep my postings short. Not that my 'short' postings are short. They always end up being longer than what I imagine they will.

Bane once told me that 'bloviating is my strength' and while I still don't know if that was a compliment or criticism, I do believe that he is right.

Driving to and from the Barrow Airport, we passed a house shack with a nice aluminum boat in front. It was about 18' with a rag top over the cockpit and dual outboards. My coworker would always comment that he'd like to have it and I'd agree with him. Twice a day, coming and going, we'd perform this little ritual.

Sounds boring, but when you consider what there is to do in Barrow, it helped pass the time.

One evening, on the way to the trailer we were staying in, we say 4 or 5 native guys moving the boat. It didn't look like they were moving the boat for the winter, it looked like they were moving the boat to get it ready to go to sea. They had the rag top down and some were loading gear while others were backing up a truck to hitch the trailer.

I think that was the night we had homemade fajitas. My coworker had 2-3 calls to his Russian girlfriend (gorgeous, tiny waiste, blond with green eyes, and a heart of solid gold), I called home, ate, surfed cable tv that would suffer from 'lost mpeg' every 5-10 minutes, read, and then went to bed.

The following morning, on the way to the airport, every second or third shack had a pile of bloody blocks in front of it. One household was up and processing it:


Looks like they had harvested a whale the night before. So that is what they were getting the boat out for.

Muktuk is the native word for the food meal that they make out of whale blubber. Make may not be the best word since it implies some sort of process. All they do is cut it up and eat it. Unless you've eaten it since birth, I hear, that it is a difficult item to eat. Raw whale blubber, I don't know why.

On the topic of native foods, there is also Stinkfish which would be harder to eat than muktuk, I think.

Unlike muktuk, Stinkfish must be processed. The process consists of filleting and gutting the fish. Then you take the carcasses (carcii?) and bury them. Kind of like Kinchii, it needs to ferment in the ground for 3-4 months. So it's not cemented in the ground by the frost, you have to start this in the spring and remove it before the first freeze.

If ready to eat, the fish remains will be transparent and have the consistancy of jello since bacteria have digested the bones.

Now here's the kicker. There are more than one bacteria that will digest fish bones. One is aerobic and requires a container that 'breathes' to survive. The aerobic bacteria is the one that you want. The non-aerobic bacteria has a waste product that is very toxic to humans.

The non-aerobic bacteria will thrive in plastic bags where the aerobic bacteria will suffocate, more or less, but it smells the same. Small villages will get wiped out by a bad batch of Stinkfish.

Yea, but it smells the same. Rancid fish. Ymmmm.