OTE

We have traveled onto Valdez from Palmer. Traveling in Alaska takes a long time. The distance we’ve traveled is like going from southern Arkansas to northern Louisiana. Every place is so far away and takes hours to drive there. So you have a lot of time to think.

As we’re traveling, Linda is thinking of all the OTE places we’ve been. OTE means “Out to Eat” and when Doug plans menus for trips he uses this to denote when we get to go to a restaurant for dinner.

In the different areas of the country we’ve visited, we have tried to sample regional foods. In Savannah it was grits, buttermilk biscuits, orange marmalade, and caramel/pecan crusted fried chicken . . . vein clogging food. In New Mexico and Arizona, you’ll see guacamole, avocados and salsa on every menu. Here in Alaska, we’ve seen halibut and salmon.

We thought it was interesting that at one restaurant we visited, some recipes could be purchased to help fund the town library. We didn’t purchase the recipes but did sample the food; red pepper vinaigrette dressing, Hungarian mushroom soup, and banana cream pecan pie.

A fine casual dining restaurant we visited treated us with gourmet food presented on fancy plates. It was an entertaining, expensive experience. The most notable entree was the Smoked Salmon Soup (Grandma’s recipe, no less). This was a creamy potato based soup flavored with bacon, green onions, roasted red peppers, and smoked salmon. It was served in a bowl shaped like a fish, white porcelain with blue oriental markings.

For dessert, Death by Chocolate Suicide Cake was ordered. It was a three layer cake. The first layer was a fudgy, nutty, crumbly chocolate torte, the second layer was a chocolate mousse, and the third layer was a dark chocolate cake. Each layer was separated by a thick chocolate gnash and the cake was frosted with more of the same. It was served on white porcelain, scalloped edge pedestal cake plate. The cake was encircled with whipped cream, mint leaf and a scull off the side. It was to die for.

The restaurant we still want to try is the “Plate Lick’ in Good” breakfast restaurant. Here we’ll find the famous Alaskan sourdough blueberry pancake.

Linda’s hungry now just writing about all this and she thinks we should go OTE tonight.