It was a lovely spring evening, my friends and I had just finished a pleasant dinner and it was still light enough to permit an evening walk. Buoyed with the energy of increasing light, I suggested an evening spruce tip gathering expedition. We drove to my favorite open-grown spruce harvesting location. Bathed in the dueling songs of robins and juncos and the sweet fragrance of spruce, we moved quietly between the trees, picking off the lovely pale green new growth, taking care to distribute our gathering efforts between trees. After about two hours of picking we called it good, hands dotted w ..read more

As you may have gathered—I am emphatically not a city girl! Thus, living in Tokyo, one of the largest cities in the world, for two years was initially very challenging for me. I was saved by flowers. Spending time in Japanese gardens gives you a feeling that is similar to being in nature. My favorite garden was the Meiji Jingu, a simple but elegant garden with hundreds of types of iris and a little thousand-year-old tea house nestled in a cozy nook. In addition to the occasional escapes to gardens, I took weekly flower arranging (ikebana) classes with a kimono-garbed sensei (teacher) in an ele ..read more

I became interested in using elder flowers after reading one of Alexander McCall Smith’s books; it was his ‘Sunday Philosophy Club’ series about the stodgy Scottish amateur sleuth, Isabel Dalhousie. His description of her drinking elder flower cordial on a warm summer day was so appealing I set about to make it myself! This was a particularly satisfying project as we have TONS of red elderberry (Sambucus racemosa) bushes in Juneau and I have never known what to do with them. The process is slightly labor-intensive, as it is necessary to remove as much of the toxic stems as possible from the fl ..read more

It was gorgeous and sunny last week! On Wednesday I spent the morning sunning myself and going for the first swim of the year (refreshing but chilly!) Then in the afternoon a friend and I went hunting wild greens. First, we targeted twisted stalk (Streptopus species), fiddlehead ferns, and devils club (Oplopanax horridus) buds. Then we went to get a few dandelion greens (Teraxacum species) and some stinging nettle (Urtica species). I dutifully made sure we had gloves along but somehow neglected to notice that I was wearing shorts. Wow. A day later and my legs are still tingling!! I’m hoping fo ..read more

Cooking shows, blogs, and cook books these days love to expound upon the merits and cooking methods of ‘farmed’ versus ‘wild’ salmon. This totally neglects the fact that there are five species of wild Pacific salmon: Chinook (king, Oncorhynchus tschawytsha), Coho (silver, Oncorhynchus kisutch), Sockeye (red, Oncorhynchus nerka), Chum (dog, Oncorhynchus keta), and Pink (humpy, Oncorhynchus gorbuscha); and one Atlantic salmonid species (Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar—actually a trout) which is commercially extinct and has been adapted to salmon farming. One of the wonders, and vulnerabilities of w ..read more

Its spring and there are so many tasty plants to gather that people sometimes neglect some of the more beautiful ones—edible flowers! I first tried this on the occasion of my sister Justine’s wedding. It makes such a beautiful addition to a wedding cake that I’d highly recommend anyone with a friend or family member having a Summer wedding coming up try it. I’ve given the recipe here for violets and salmonberry flowers but there are lots of other edible flowers. Nasturtiums, pansies, rose petals, zucchini, lilac, geraniums, begonias, borage, and lavender; to name a few, are all also edible. Th ..read more

When I was a 10-year-old tomboy I had strong ideas about trees, I remember spending a tear-streaked afternoon with my arms wrapped around my favorite climbing tree, a red alder (Alnus rubrus), which my father was determined to fell (In his defense, light is at more of a premium than native trees in Southeast Alaska). In the end, I prevailed and that Alder, plus another some years later, survived. Their survival was because of both my stubbornness and my father’s love of native trees and shrubs. Over the years he transplanted many into our yard. He also loved other trees though and was an etern ..read more

I’ve been interested in alternative medicine since taking a microbiology class as an undergraduate and being harangued by the professor about the impending demise of antibiotics as useful remedies for all that ails us. I’ve spooned garlic-infused oil in the ear of my ailing toddler son (after reading about its use by the Germans as an antibiotic in the trenches of World War II), munched zinc tablets for a threatening cold, drunk chamomile tea for stomach ache, used a netti bottle for sinus problems, soaked infected feet in hot salt water, and plastered wounds with Manuka honey—all with various ..read more

The year’s first snow, wetly plopped into Eagle River, turning my head to seek in vain the submerging seal’s head. Slogging under gray skies through the wet stuff I could still see the two wide, flat, brown bread loaves staring malevolently, but smelling lovely, from the kitchen counter. Sourdough rye—-my first bread failure in more than a decade!  It seemed a metaphor for my recent life, good bread requires mindfulness, and strayed attention is immediately obvious in the crust, crumb, and flavor of the loaf. In this case the flavor is nice, a result of days of feeding the sourdough and s ..read more

I used to have one of these bumper stickers on my bulletin board at work. Eventually though, its meaninglessness led me to take it down. Honestly friends, the issue of Farmed vs. Wild salmon is not one to be resolved by plastering bumper stickers on our cars or sharing Facebook memes describing the nutritional deficits and chemical poisons in farmed salmon. To be straight, this is a battle we are currently losing. The salmon farmers are panting at our collective doors with their beady little eyes at our keyholes and unless we get serious about conservation of wild salmon we’ll be giving them o ..read more