Ramadan Up North

Ramadan has special meaning to the world's Muslim community. It's exemplified in Anchorage, Alaska, with its' diversity  and growing Islamic culture. The many groups celebrate and with an Alaskan twist at times. 

Regular contributor and food reporter, Victoria Peterson wrote about this in yesterday's New York Times Food section. A native Alaskan, herself, Ms. Peterson explored the wide diversity in the state's largest city. It is also home to Alaska's only mosque.Surprisingly the city is also an immigrant city with one hundred languages being spoken within the city's school districts. The Islamic Community Center of Anchorage has members from between forty and fifty countries. Some are Muslim s from the US , like Maleika and Gregory Shuaib Jones from North Carolina but there are others from Bhutan and Somalia. They are all bonded together  unlike in other cities where mosques reflect the majority of the people attending them. The only problem they have is the short winter and long summer days. Fasting can be hard, especially during the warmer months when sunset begins at 11:30 PM. Many adopt to Mecca's time for prayer and breaking the fast.

Feasting happens afterwards with traditional halal foods. When graduate student Sajid Raza first arrived there in 2016, there was only a pizzeria and and Indian restaurant. Now, six years later there are three halal specialty shops along with restaurants with several halal dishes on the menu. Local Walmart, Safeway and Costco stores also stock halal certified options. There are also a few international markets springing up across the city too. Mr. Jones feels that it's a remarkable because halal is becoming more and more mainstream in America. Their neighbor even killed and prepared a caribou in the Islamic law and ritual. Families have no trouble in finding rice, lentil, flour and vegetables, staples in every Muslim home. They are even getting Medjool dates, those big gooey ones that are becoming easier to find during Ramadan. There are also pot luck dinners at the mosque which turn into s buffet thanks to the wide variety from s;; over the Muslim world.. Ms. Jones and her daughter Shumalaiah are making kebabs, roti and fruit with yogurt. There will also be samosas filled with potato and meat.

Ramadam anywhere in the world is special. In Anchorage it is very, with bonded community celebrating togehter. They will fast. They will eat They will be there for each other in the country's most northern city.

Salmon And Climate Change

Undoubtedly climate change has affected the way we eat. Droughts and flood have brought prices up on many fruit and vegetables . Now the disaster is spreading to our oceans. Not only will our seas be filled with algae blooms, certain species will be disappearing.

Julia O'Malley, a famed freelance writer who writes primarily about Alaska covered this in today's New York Times Food section. The red salmon is disappearing thanks to the waters heating up in one of the coldest rivers on the planet.It wasn't that long ago that fishermen would reel in seventy or eighty salmon during one fishing trip.Neighbors and friends would benefit from these, with fridges being filled with ZipLoc bags full of the fish. Grills worked overtime, with filet after filet being served at cookouts. Not anymore.Now hours pass before anyone catches even just one.The Copper River which yields the popular red salmon has had its' smallest salmon run in thirty-eight years according to Garrett Evridge, an economist  with McDowell Group. This Anchorage research and consulting group has been following  fishing trends. They also found that other rivers have had the same problem.State wildlife managers have closed rivers to sportsmen so enough salmon could reach their spawning grounds.

How has this affected the state's economy? Tremendously. In one rural Aleut fishing town, Chignik on the Aleutian Peninsula,the fishing fleet has sat idle as have locals who freeze and smoke the fish caught. Lack of fish means they'll have to buy super expensive groceries instead of eating the fish along with needing food aid during the colder months.Home cooks , such as Christine Taylor of Anchorage, will have to calculate the cost of buying ingredients and wonder if they can afford them, instead of relying on weekend fishing.Also most recipes center around the red salmon, a fish with raspberry colored flesh and a taste saltier than the regular kind. There's also the experience of catching them, and the whole process of unloading their four wheelers and setting up the fishing poles. Concerned scientists, like Bill Templin, the state's chief scientist for the state's  commercial salmon fisheries know that it comes from the ocean warming which creates a toxic algae. This can create starvation and  illness in not just salmon but other  species such as whales and shellfish.

Luckily locals are hopeful that the salmon will return. That depends on how we treat the oceans ans work furiously and non-stop to halt climate change. Then the rivers' bounties will be plentiful.