Kathy and I felt like shopping today. What luck! There was an arts and crafts festival at the local VFW. We arrived to find a plethora of native crafts- hats, gloves, slippers, qaspeqs (native dress-like coats)furs, ivory carvings, jewelry, food and much more. (They were even selling frozen McDonald's cheeseburgers. Locals were buying them by the bag full!)
We were able to taste the Yup'ik version of ice cream called Akutaq (berry ice cream). It is made from tundra berries, salmon berries, sugar, mashed potatoes and fat rendered from seal blubber. To modernize it, they now use "Crisco" to take the place of seal fat! Although it was tasty, I couldn't get past the fact that I was eating shortening. Sorry to say we do not have any photos of the frozen treat- Kathy intended to take one, but she got too distracted and ate it all!
The picture above shows a Yup'ik woman showing off her seal and beaver hats.
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