The Fly Tapes: Episode 3

Recently I had the pleasure of talking with Jason Rolfe, a writer and fishing guide who uses fly-fishing as the put-in to navigate an ever-changing stream of words, art, and ideas through a variety of mediums. In addition to guiding and taking shifts at my local flyshop, Emerald Water Anglers in West Seattle, Jason operates the Syzygy Fly Fishing web site, runs a podcast called The Fly Tapes, and is the impresario behind Writers on the Fly, a traveling reading series that combines tales inspired by fly-fishing with visual art, music, conservation, and beer (not necessarily in that order).

In episode three of The Fly Tapes I talk to Jason about salmon culture, the recent release of my book Upstream: Searching for Wild Salmon, from River to Table, and the writing life, among many other  topics, in a wide-ranging conversation that might as well be taking place in a drift boat deep within a basalt slot canyon.

In related news, this week kicks off the second annual Cascadia Tour for Writers on the Fly, with readings/happenings in Bend (11/14) Portland (11/15), Seattle (11/16), Bellingham (11/17), and Vancouver, BC. (11/18) I'll be at the PDX gig this Wednesday with several other esteemed writers, artists, conservationists, and moon-howlers.

Voracious Tasting & Food Awards

UPDATE: We have a winner! Stinging Nettle Spanikopita. This is a recipe I've been meaning to try for a while and the author provided a detailed, if slightly improvised, recipe. I'll post it in the future. Lots of other great ideas, including Nettle Raita, Nettle Larb, and Korean-style Nettle Salad. Thanks everyone for playing!


The Seattle Weekly's 6th annual Voracious Tasting & Food Awards will be held on April 23 at the Paramount Theatre in downtown Seattle. I've been to a few of these in the past and can say without reservation it's a chowhound's night.

Presented by the Washington State Beef Commission, doors open at 7:30 p.m. (6 p.m. for VIP ticket holders) with bites and booze from scores of Seattle's favorite chefs and mixologists.

The nice folks at Voracious food blog have given me a pair of tickets to give away. Since this event has become a regular spring fling, let's celebrate the season. Comment below with your favorite recipe for stinging nettles. I'll choose a winner based on my own very subjective taste (bonus points for a nettles recipe I want to make myself).

Thinking Outside the (Recipe) Box

When friends from out of town come to visit, I often take them to Lark, John Sundstrom's Seattle restaurant, which is celebrating a decade of good food this year.

I've been eating at Lark since it opened in 2003. The launch party for my first book, Fat of the Land, was at Lark. John made a porcini crostini (photo here, at top) that night that continues to be one of my go-to apps for dinner parties: sliced baguette rubbed with garlic and topped with a mixture of ricotta cheese and roasted porcini mushrooms, with a sprinkling of sea salt. That simple dish in many ways encapsulates John's philosophy: a fresh ingredient foraged locally and allowed to shine.

John has now put this philosophy on paper (or your device screen, as the case may be) with his new book, Lark: Cooking Against the Grain. It's a big, beautifully photographed book, with many of John's signature recipes from the restaurant, such as his Farro and Wild Mushrooms and Geoduck Ceviche. The focus is unabashedly Pacific Northwest, with an emphasis on local producers and wild foods.

The book is organized around three "seasons," which John refers to as mist (November to March), evergreen (April to July), and bounty (August to October). During the mist season you might want to be acquainted with Scallops Choucroute with Ham Hock and Pickled Mustard Seeds. Evergreen brings forth Sunchoke Soup and a hearty dish of Rabbit with Morels, Favas and Emmer Pappardelle. And bounty is a colorful Sockeye Salmon with Corn, Bacon and Lobster Mushrooms followed by a Black Fig Tarte Tatin, among many other treats of the harvest season.

John admits in his introduction that some of the recipes included aren't dumbed-down versions, so he's also produced an inexpensive iPad app that includes color, step-by-step photos to go with each recipe.

This is food that celebrates a sense of place. If spot shrimp or spiced apple cake make you swoon, you'll want to dig into Lark: Cooking Against the Grain. As John says, the book is "about living the good life in the Pacific Northwest."

To learn more about chef John Sundstrom and his food, see his talk "Thinking Outside the (Recipe) Box" this Friday night at Seattle's Central Library, 7 p.m., presented in partnership with Elliott Bay Books.

The Hawk Lady

Dear readers, I'm pleased to share with you an essay of mine that was a finalist in Terrain.org's third annual writing contest. Terrain is an online lit journal that celebrates the intersection between nature and the human-mediated world. My submission, "The Hawk Lady," was published in issue 31, which debuted yesterday, January 15.

Those of you have read my book Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager will recognize the essay's setting—the Rogue River Canyon of southwestern Oregon, where I spent a year off the grid with my family, a sabbatical away from the city that inspired both the book and this essay. So while it's not about foraging, per se, this piece is very much a part of what I'm doing now and my interest in our relationship with the wild.

Dept. of Horn-tooting

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of introducing national NPR correspondent Martin Kaste to the woods—and all the possibilities for nourishment that await within. The segment was part of a week-long series devoted to "West Coast Innovators."Short radio interviews can be tricky, but I think Martin did an excellent job of capturing the many levels of awareness that go into foraging, from the sheer visceral pleasure of it to the culinary to the cautionary.

Listen to my NPR interview:



The following week, while in the Cascades hunting spring porcini, I took a break on the edge of cell range to speak with James Beard Award-winning food writer and personality Anthony Dias Blue. Listen to our conversation on "Blue Lifestyle" (starts around 18 minute mark):

Sustainable Eats May Challenge

Over at Sustainable Eats, where you can find the excellent new guide The Urban Farm Handbook, with advice and helpful tips on everything from backyard chickens to container gardens, May has been officially deemed the Foraging Challenge Month. Take the challenge to learn some useful new skills and give yourself a chance to win prizes.

Here's the deal. Make a meal in which all the main ingredients are wild and/or foraged. It's that simple. Then, at the end of the month, leave a comment on the Sustainable Eats blog about your experience to be included in a prize drawing. Even better, include a link to your own blog post about a wild and foraged meal.

Prizes include a copy of my book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager; Jennifer Hahn's book, Pacific Feast: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine; and Hank Shaw's book, Hunt, Gather, Cook: Finding the Forgotten Feast. Speaking of Hank, last week over at the Hunter Angler Gardener Cook blog, he offered his own foraging challenge: go find morels.

If you're new to foraging or always wanted to give it a try, this is a good month to get your feet wet. Across the continent, May is bursting with wild greens, spring mushrooms, and, depending on where you live, fish and shellfish. In my neck of the woods, we have the return of iconic runs of spring run chinook, known as springers, considered the tastiest of all salmon because of their high fat reserves. In addition, the Alaska salmon fisheries kick into gear with Copper River sockeye and chinook. May also marks the last razor clam dig of the winter/spring season in Washington as well as the first spot prawn opener. There's usually a tide low enough to dig for the wily geoduck. In the woods, meadows, and city lots, edible weeds are popping up everywhere, not to mention native greens such as fiddleheads and miner's lettuce. And let's not forget those wild spring delicacies, morels!

For my own challenge meal, I joined 14 high school students and two teachers last week to cook a wild feast after several days of foraging around Seattle and beyond. This is the second year I've been invited by the Bush School in Seattle to teach a week-long "experiential" class. Over the course of the week we visited a state forest to forage for native greens, picked weeds in an urban park, went clamming in South Puget Sound, and even hopped over the mountains to find a couple pounds of morels just as the mushroom season was kicking into gear.

On the last day we cooked up our harvest. Or rather, the kids processed and cooked the feast. Our meal is testimony to the varied and delicious menu that can be put together with a little knowledge of one's own habitat and some healthy tramping around in the outdoors. On our menu:

• Pickled Fiddleheads
• Dandy Bread and Muffins
• Clam Chowder
• Wild Green Salad (with miner's lettuce and wood-sorrel)
• Dandy Burgers
• Penne with Stinging Nettle Pesto 
• Beer-battered Lingcod (recipe in my book)
• Wood-fired Pizza with Nettle Pesto & Morels (at right)
• Dandelion Pancakes

Yours need not be so extensive. Just make sure the main ingredients on the plate are wild and/or foraged. Things to think about after you harvest (or purchase), cook, and eat your wild meal: How did it taste? Anything different? Was it worth your time and effort—and if so, why? Take the Foraging Challenge!

Comments, Money & Grumps

Dear Readers,

Recently it has come to my attention that the infernal spam bots have taken a liking to FOTL. They're sneaky—they attach their junk to older posts. I spent hours the other day weeding them off the site. Too bad they have no nutritional value like true weeds. As a result of this hassle, I've switched the comments from unmoderated to moderated. The upside is that I'll intercept the spam at the gate; the downside is that you might need to wait a few days to see your comment if I'm in the field or traveling.

While slashing down the spam, I noticed that there were quite a few comments I'd never seen before. Because this blog is seasonal, certain topics tend to come up year after year (e.g. dandelions in March). I'll try to address unanswered questions/concerns in future weeks.

I also came across a few rather grumpy comments about "commercial" aspects of this blog. Perhaps you've noticed that there's no advertising here, unlike many blogs in the 'sphere. This is by choice. (And by the way, I don't begrudge any blogger who tries to monetize their site in a relevant manner.) I've chosen to not take ads in order to reduce clutter and because, frankly, I don't think advertising would earn me enough income to justify the effort. I know other bloggers who make a tidy sum in advertising each month because of their excellent and popular blogs.

That said, I need to make a living and this blog is part of my work. Many of my readers are grateful to know about upcoming workshops and lectures; if you're not among them, I ask for your patience. It's my opinion that the occasional post about such events hardly constitutes a mercenary backslide into crass commercialism, but we all have our own definitions. One reader told me such posts only belonged on web sites, not blogs. This seems to me to be slicing it awfully thin. In any event, I plan to take that reader's advice at some point in the future and start a site. Until then, relevant info about upcoming trips, workshops, lectures, readings, and so on, will appear on this blog from time to time.

Thanks to my faithful readers for your interest and support.

—The Management

4 Courses

Literature is sustenance—we all know that—so why not pair writers with dinner? Join me on Wednesday, April 27, at the Richard Hugo House for an evening of food and words with myself and three other Seattle writers. Food will be provided by Tom Douglas, Taylor Shellfish, and High 5 Pie.

Four courses, four readings. I'll be shucking metaphorical oysters to accompany the real thing. The other courses include my wife, Martha Silano, who will read from her most recent poetry collections, Blue Positive and The Little Office of the Immaculate Conception; Kevin Craft, author of Solar Prominence and editor of Poetry Northwest; and Kate Lebo, poet and pie-maker extraordinaire.

Buy your ticket now for this tasty event.

Bay Area Mini Tour

Dear Bay Area Foragers, Cooks, Outdoors Enthusiasts & Readers:

I'm happy to announce I'll be visiting your lovely habitat (and my former stomping ground) April 19 thru 21 to read at local book stores and give a slide lecture at the Sonoma Mycological Society. Come by and say hello. You can find me:

• April 19, Omnivore Books, San Francisco, 6 p.m.

• April 20, Copperfield's Books, Sebastopol, 7 p.m.

• April 21, Sonoma Mycological Society, Santa Rosa, 7 p.m.

Beginner Shellfish Foraging & Cooking Classes

In association with Bainbridge Island Parks & Rec, I'll be teaching three shellfish foraging and cooking classes this spring. Two classes will focus on steamer clams and oysters, while the third will be in pursuit of the legendary geoduck, world's largest burrowing clam.

• May 1: Shellfish Foraging & Cooking. Bring your rubber boots and bucket. We'll learn how to dig for clams, shuck oysters, and cook our catch. Lunch will be littleneck clams steamed in white wine sauce at a nearby picnic area, with oysters on the half-shell as an appetizer.

• May 18: Same as above.

• June 15: Geoduck Dig. We'll learn the finer points of wrestling a giant geoduck clam from its lair, then repair to a nearby picnic area to make a delicious ceviche. Class size limited.

More information is available through Bainbridge Island Metro Park &  and Recreation District. To register, please call 206-842-2306 x115.

Environmental Writers Workshop

Seattle's Burke Museum is sponsoring its third annual Environmental Writers Workshop on Saturday, April  23, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Award-winning authors and journalists Carol Kaesuk Yoon (Naming Nature) and Bruce Barcott (The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw) will join me in leading both class-based and field-based sessions in this all-day workshop.  Enrollment is open to 40. We'll divide into three groups so that each enrollee has a chance to work with all three instructors. Sessions will include panel talks, writing exercises, and class discussion. Lunch is provided. The cost is $100.

To register, please email burked@uw.edu or call (206) 543-5591.

Photo by Catherine Anstett

New Foraging Classes

By popular demand, I've added a new roster of foraging classes. These are in addition to the classes being offered by Bainbridge Island Parks & Rec. We'll meet in the Cascade foothills east of Seattle for a narrated 3-hour walk through a variety of landscapes. The class will focus on the identification of numerous edible plants and fungi, their life-cycles, and habitats. We'll also discuss proper harvesting techniques and tools; processing; cooking and recipes; and storage. The cost for these classes is $45 and includes a copy of my book. Maximum 12 per class.

• Sunday, April 10, 10 a.m. FULL
• Wednesday, April 27, 10 a.m. FULL
• Tuesday, May 3, 10 a.m. FULL

To sign up, please email me at finspotcook AT gmail dot com. 

For those who missed my Stinging Nettles Class on Bainbridge Island, I'll be doing a second nettles class on April 13. Call 206-842-2306 for more information.

Additionally, I'm planning to offer a Nature Writing Workshop for a small group of writers and journalers this summer. If this interests you, let me know so I can add you to my mailing list.

Announcing Beginner PNW Foraging Classes

Sign-up is now open CLOSED for three beginner foraging classes this spring in the Cascade foothills near Seattle. ***Stay tuned for more classes offered in the future.*** Each class will be a three-hour trail walk (2 miles, easy terrain) with an emphasis on identification and food preparation. We'll examine dozens of wild plants and fungi that can be used in the kitchen. Trailside discussion will include notes on life cycle, habitat, season, harvesting techniques, processing, cooking, recipes, and putting up. Maximum 12 per class. The cost is $35, which includes a copy of my book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager.

The dates are:

• Friday, March 25, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. FULL

• Saturday, April 9, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. FULL

• Monday, May 2, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. FULL

To sign up or request more information, please email me at: finspotcook AT gmail dot com. Group dates possible.

Also, I'll be teaching shellfish and berry-picking workshops sponsored by Bainbridge Island Parks & Recreation. 

New in Paperback!

I'm pleased to announce that my book, Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, is now out in paperback. You can buy a copy at all the usual places: Amazon, Powell's, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore.

A few Quotes & Reviews: 

"Once in a while a book crosses my desk that gives me pause, and once in a very great while a book will resonate with me in such a way that it becomes part of my permanent collection. Fat of the Land, by Langdon Cook, is one of those. Part memoir, part cookbook, part field guide for the adventurous gourmand, Cook's book is simultaneously lyrical, practical and quixotic." —Greg Atkinson, Seattle Times

Smart, funny, and hugely knowledgeable, Langdon Cook is a walking field guide and a gifted storyteller. Fat of the Land is a welcome kick in the pants to get outside and start foraging for our suppers. —Molly Wizenberg, author of A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table

"With his beautifully-crafted prose, rare gift for storytelling, and good humor to spare, Langdon Cook serves up the best kind of nature writing: drawing readers along on his wild adventures, and leaving us with a deepened sense of daily sustenance in the natural world." —Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness

My New Column!

In their infinite wisdom—or maybe a moment of deadline and coffee-induced weakness—the editorial folks at Seattle Magazine have handed over a few column inches to this here foraging scribbler. It's called...drumroll..."Cook's Adventures." Every other issue I'll be taking readers on a jaunt to some of my favorite outdoor grocery stores to sample the wild foods therein.

For the inaugural column we stay close to home, just sticking a toe in the swirling currents of adventurous gastronomy. "Weed Eater" is a tour of my backyard—and probably yours too. Bottom line: Don't compost those dandelions. Eat them!

Yesterday on Seattle's King 5 TV, I spoke with Margaret Larson on New Day Northwest about the new column, taste-tested a few backyard weeds with the studio audience, and cooked up a batch of Stinging Nettle Soup. Coming in May: Morels!

Northern California: From Woods to Plate

Dear Bay Area Readers: Next week I'll be visiting your neck of the woods to give a couple talks on wild mushroom cookery. I'll be speaking (and showing slides) at the Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz on Wednesday, February 16,  and again the following night, Thursday, February 17, at the Bay Area Mycological Society in Berkeley. Come on by and say hello.

Field Trips and Workshops

In upcoming months I'll be teaching a variety of classes on foraging, cooking, and writing in the Puget Sound region. One day maybe I'll get organized enough to send out a newsletter to those of you interested in such classes. In the meantime, check back here on the blog periodically to see what's being offered. I'll post dates in the right column.

In an exciting new collaboration I'll be working with the Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District to offer several foraging and cooking classes in 2011. The first will be a stinging nettles class with instruction both in the field and in the kitchen. I'll also be teaching shellfish classes [dates TBD], including a geoduck dig!

Writing workshops are on tap as well. On April 23 I'll be teaching an all-day Environmental Writers Workshop in Seattle. This is sponsored by the Burke Museum and will be held at the Center for Urban Horticulture. In September I'll be at the North Cascades Institute for the three-day Thunder Arm Writing Retreat, and some time this fall I'll be teaching a writing workshop at 826 Seattle. Stay tuned for updates.

• Feb 3, Mid-Valley Willamette Writers Speakers Series, Tsunami Books, Eugene, OR. Craft lecture: "Creative Nonfiction: How to Tell the Truth Like a Bald-Faced Liar." 
• Feb 8, Possession Sound Reading Series, Everett Community College, Everett, WA.
• Mar 23, Stinging Nettles Workshop, in association with Bainbridge Island Metro Park & Recreation District, Bainbridge Island, WA.
• Apr 23, Environmental Writers Workshop, in association with the Burke Museum, Seattle, WA.
• Sep 8 - 11, North Cascades Institute's Thunder Arm Writing Retreat, North Cascades National Park, WA.

Note: If you would like to organize your own field trip, you can contact me at finspotcook AT gmail dot com. I've taken groups up to 25 in number on nature walks and wild food walks around the Seattle area and Tiger Mountain. This is a good introduction to foraging and plant identification.

Menu for Hope Results

Congratulations to Marie Schall who has won an afternoon of foraging with yours truly—and BIG thank yous to everyone who participated in the sixth Menu for Hope raffle. Food bloggers raised nearly $80,000 for the UN World Food Program. Click here to see a full list of raffle winners.

Speed Bump

Dear readers, after watching my last post develop a life of its own thanks to your thoughtful feedback and generous contributions, I feel it's only right to explain my absence from that extended conversation and let you in on some personal details that will impact the next chapter in my foraging career.

I took the above photo from my 4th floor hospital room the other night after awaking from a dense, dreamless swim through Dilaudid, Valium, Oxycontin, and Oxycodone. My mood was as somber as the skyline. Frankie calls these the wee hours, that lonely time in the pit of night when we feel our smallest and most insignificant. But I prefer Dylan's counsel on the matter—that it's darkest right before the dawn.

Remember the Amanita cocktail I mixed for my ailing lower back? It didn't do squat. So, after five years of chasing remedies to the degenerating disc at vertebra L5-S1—from acupuncture to Feledenkrais, from chiropractic to Pilates—I finally gave the thumb's up to the scariest and most invasive option of all: a spinal fusion.

I had the surgery last week. My lower spine where the lumbar meets the sacrum is now locked together with a couple titanium bars. A mulch of bone harvested from my iliac crest (pelvis) is housed in a cage where the disc used to be, hopefully fusing the spine as I type this. I'm back home and walking around some, though mostly I'm resting in a narcotic haze. Each day the pain recedes a little more. Yesterday I was able to stroll through my neighborhood for nearly an hour without any sciatica.

My timing was deliberate. January is the quietest month for both foragers and authors. I plan to lay low for most of the month and then gradually ramp up to my usual activities. This March you might catch me harvesting stinging nettles in a brace. If all goes according to plan, by the time the spring porcini start to push their rusty caps through North Cascades duff I'll be out of the brace and hoisting a heavy backpack once again—or maybe chasing a Squirrel Gumbo up a tree.

Fingers crossed.

Resolution

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions. Most of them don't take, and resolving to do better can be decided any day of the year.

But I'll go ahead and make one anyway. See that scrumptious meal above? That's Seared Duck over Squash and Sage Risotto. Easily one of my more memorable meals of 2009. Normally you wouldn't find it on this blog. You see, it doesn't contain a shred of foraged foods. Nada. The duck was farm-raised and I didn't resort to any trickery—for instance, ladling porcini-infused broth into the risotto—to post it here.

Instead, I reference this meal as a challenge to myself. I'm an omnivore and don't intend to change that. In other words, I eat meat, if only occasionally and mostly in small portions. Over the years I've made incursions into the Animal Kingdom with my foraging: free-diving for Dungeness crabs, digging razor clams, fly-fishing for salmon, spear-fishing lingcod. Always the animals have been of the fish or shellfish sort.

Mark 2010 as the year I get other kinds of meat, the furred and feathered kinds. It's time to up the irons on this foraging thing!

***

Big thank-yous to everyone who participated in Menu for Hope. The winners will be announced in January. Until then, Happy New Year to all!