Is this thing on?

an introduction of sorts

My cooking style and greater culinary philosophy, if you will (and I’m going there), is easy: I want my meals interesting, I want my fruits and vegetables seasonal, and I can’t deny the cultural nostalgia & influence of cities, regions, and people in my life.

One might say my NY accent only breaks through when I’m making ‘sunday sauce’....on friday nights.

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Add in a still-growing collection of cookbooks, tapping through the mess of internet recipe archives, an instant pot, a spouse’s requests, and need for pasta. I can’t deny that last one either, as much as women-should-diet culture and entertaining gluten-free friends seeped into my twenties (I would say one way more than the other of those two, but then they both really make their case in my memories, oof).

I’m now closing out my thirties (!!) In rural Alaska and outside of the brief months of summer, it’s safe to say that I’m no longer going to the bi-weekly farmers markets in Portland, OR or harvesting from my own year-round garden. These days, I’m spending most of the year in a snowscape with the ‘normalcy’ of a mix of trucked-up produce from California and Mexico (and further south, yikes) and my own preserves, pickles, frozen bounty and dried bits.  Mmm, bits: by which I mean foraged & dehydrated mushrooms & berries & vegetables, sheesh.

We still go to every single farmers market and U-Pick in the region we realistically can while they’re happening, but I can count those visits on my hands, compared to my prior life. I would begin to explain that less becomes more. It does, but I shouldn’t say less when the midnight sun beckons forth absolutely (award-winning!) massive vegetables and what seems like endless fields of blueberries…..and potentially home to even bigger brown bears, of course. 

Come winter, it felt stranger to shop once a month-ish until covid hit. Suddenly, we weren’t so left out. My friends got it.

Now, we certainly don’t have at-home grocery deliveries up here, but I never did, so I don’t miss it. We even had our first CSA this past summer! Okay, it was postponed a few weeks due to late frost, but hey, Alaska + the realities of farming in the subarctic.

I do miss those year-round farmers markets and the access to fair trade avocados, but three winters in now, I am not for wanting – I’m all for projects. 

I’ve got a meal planning notebook and keep a surplus carrots, potatoes and carrots (all grown in Alaska, at that!) and there’s perpetually a bag of tots at the back of the freezer.

So here I am on substack after lackluster trials elsewhere (and in other notebooks) to capture what could be anecdotes from cooking every single day from a cabin – and over the occasional campfire – in the north. 

And still vegan, to boot.