Seaweed Stinks!

Places like this are very slippery!

Today's focus for Sea Week was seaweed, something I knew very little about going into lesson planning.  I knew some of it was edible because I've eaten some in a soup once and enjoyed it very much, but apparently it's pretty much all edible.  Some is dried and crumbled to use as a seasoning, some is fried up, some can even be pickled like cucumbers.  Our kids went out on the reef this morning (I'll attach pictures to the post later) to gather all the different types of seaweed we could find and brought it all back into the classroom.  They then had to identify each type of kelp and get samples for slides to examine through the microscopes - tons of fun for a nerd like me!

Miss Ann gathered a large amount of a couple different types and cleaned them up with the 3-5 class to cook and share (they also cooked up some snails, but I did not sample).  I must admit the seaweed they sauted up in butter was quite tasty, but what isn't yummy when cooked in butter?  I learned something else - seaweed is also quite stinky!  I remember Misti Redus looking at a picture of the village and saying "I hope you get pregnant with triplets," and can't help but think this would be the worst place in the world to have an extreme sensitivity to odors.  The school is frequently filled with the smell of some sort of fish, seaweed, other tiny sea critters, or seal (a smell which almost makes me toss my cookies without any extra food sensitivities, I know everyone here loves it, but I can't get past the smell).  Then we'll take the kids to elder's tea where they always have lots of local tasty tidbits like muqtuq (if I spelled that correctly), also known as whale blubber, more seal or seal oil to pour over everything should the seal be absent from the party, and all other sorts of strong smelling sea sensations.  I'm sure the community potlock that will close out Sea Week will also be filled with many familiar smells as well.

Black Kelp

Sea Squirts - there's a picture of one of the kids squeezing
these appropriately named pieces of fun

So I forgot what these are called, but the ones that look like
this are pretty tasty, eventually the ends get bigger and
fill up with water

Ribbon Kelp

Sea Lettuce (the green stuff) - very pretty and very strong
flavor, they dry it and use it as a seasoning

A piece of the base of bull kelp - these are supposed to be
good pickled

Sea pen

New lesson learned: It can (and apparently will) snow in the village as late as May 9th.  Tonya and Anita may need to bring their snowshoes next week.