Comfort Food & The Dark Go Hand In Hand

We're officially seven days into the new year, it's still winter in Alaska and the last thing I want to eat is a meal that is focused on something cold as the main event.  We're still deep in a comfort food zone up here.  However, with New Year's comes the making of resolutions and I think the most common of resolutions each year is "I want to lose X pounds this year."  With that resolution comes the many and varied blog posts about salads, wraps and the like, all low calorie.  While this is nice when you live in the states that are warm most of, or all of, the year; it is not all that inviting when it's still negative something outside.  

Picture this, it's 34 below zero, the wind is whistling and you've just come home in the dark at 3:30pm.  Do you really want to settle down to a nice salad for dinner?  Yeah, I didn't think you'd be too into that idea.  When the weather is like that all you want is a big helping of hot comfort food.  What's that?  Does it really get that cold up here?  Yes, well actually so far the coldest we've seen it has been -50 this winter.  Dark? at 3:30pm?  Yes, and that on the up swing, after the winter solstice.  On the 21st on December, the shortest day of the year the sun rose at about 10:30am and set somewhere around 2:45pm.  That gave us a little over 4 hours of daylight that day.  So again I ask, do ya really feel like a salad for dinner?  I think I'll stick with my comfort food, even if it means a smaller portion of it.    

Are ya hung up on the whole dark at 3:30pm?  Which part has ya hung up?  The part where it's gets dark that early or the part where we actually have day light in the winter, short as it is?  Not all of Alaska goes totally dark for the full winter.  We live in the part of Alaska they call the interior, which is the middle portion of the state.  Daylight hours get extremely short during the winter months, but we still get a short amount of daylight each day.  If we were to live in say, Nome, then we'd be completely dark this time of year.  It really does depend on what part of the state you live in.  We have friends that live in the Southcenteral Region, near the coast, and they have longer amounts of daylight in the winter than we do.  The farther North you go, the darker it will get during the winter months.

So, I'm off to eat some comfort food.  I'll go to work, stop by the gym and come home in the dark to enjoy a soul warming dinner.  Not everyone shares my opinion of the dark, nor the need for comfort food.  Maybe after a couple years up here I'll feel that way, but I really don't hold out hope for that concept to develop.  

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