There are several ways to get food to the table here in Shishmaref. One of the fastest involves going out and and converting an animal into a piece of meat with the assistance of a small piece of magic we call "a bullet."
Here are a couple boys with the leftover packaging, after they converted the caribou into steak.
Here is the meat. It's drying out. It can be re-hydrated later for use in soup.
There is also fishing.
These guys were probably caught in late August or early September, and were cleaned, split, and left to dry. They'll be eaten over the winter.
Another popular way of getting food
is to buy it at the store. While faster, it is more expensive to purchase one's food. It also requires one to make decisions not required while hunting. When hunting there is one choice: the animal in front of you, or hunger. At the store, there are more options. Food is brought to the store one of two ways, in airplanes all year, or on the barge.
We get two of these a year. The barge brings gasoline, furniture, and anything else too large to fit on the plane. If you'll notice, this one has a piece of construction equipment on it.
The Shishmaref Native Store has four isles, making it one of the larger stores in the area.
Always available are: Pop, bottled water, canned milk, and juice are available at the store for drinking. It also has a pretty good selection of frozen foods, considering the size.
Mostly always available are: Cereal, flour, canned goods, and dried pasta. Frozen hamburger, banquet chicken.
Pretty regularly available are: Cheese, eggs, and margarine. Potatoes, and onions. Frozen chicken parts. Bread.
Less frequently available: fresh fruits and vegetables. They had six heads of lettuce last time I went, and half a box of tomatoes. There was also half a box of oranges, so I got some oranges and tomatoes. The lettuce wasn't worth it. I saw bacon yesterday. Hamburger buns.
Very rarely, we'll get bananas or kiwi. Red peppers are unheard of, as are melons and bagged greens. Hot dog buns.
We don't get fresh milk, cottage cheese, or sour cream.
(Don't even get tricked into thinking that tomato is from our store.)
While you could live on the supplies in the store alone, it might get boring after a while. Luckily, there are other options. One of them is to fly to a store in Nome, and bring back supplies like fresh meat and produce. This gets pretty pricey pretty quick, and is bulky to try to hide in luggage.
A phone call can be placed to Wal-mart or Fred
Meyers, and they'll mail groceries in COD. Then one just has to go to the post office and pick it up.
Personally, I get most of my dry or canned goods (pasta, corn, flour, pineapple, etc) from Span Alaska sales in Everett, Washington. Then I get my fresh and frozen stuff from Nome when I pass through. Union training, and dentist visits have kept me in the meat. I also have an additional freezer so I can keep larger quantities of meat and tortillas than the average bear.
If you see me over the summer, and for some reason I just can't get excited over canned pineapple, this is part of the reason. Things that used to be a treat, like canned Mandarin oranges, which I can no longer stand, just aren't as magical as they used to be.
Another guy I go through, for unusual items, is Mike Werts, out of Anchorage. I fire him e-mails from the senior class, asking for 20 cans of nacho cheese, 15 boxes of chips, six boxes of peanut butter cups, 1000 Mr. Freeze, etc etc etc, and he just buys it, boxes it up, and mails it to me. He'll shop at Walmart, or Costco, or the grocery store. Really, he's just great. He gets a cut, but it's worth it, and his shipments get here in four to seven days, instead of 2-4 weeks, like items from the states take.
