Today I want to talk about all the amazing reasons I love cooking on a sailing yacht in Southeast Alaska. Being in Alaska I am blessed with an immense amount of wild local edibles growing throughout the seasons. In the spring there is nothing better than walking through the forest picking wild devils club, fiddle head ferns, spruce tips, and beach asparagus. Devils club bud’s taste like endive. This is perfect for salads or sautéing with garlic and onions and using it to top your freshly grilled steaks. Fiddle head ferns are the baby fern shoots that pop up in the spring. It is important to pick them when there coiled tight before the leaves unfurl. I love sautéing these with garlic and butter and serving them as I would asparagus. Spruce tips are a fun item to gather. I like to pick a gallon zip lock bag of them and make spruce tip syrup. To do this I steep them in hot water as if I were making a tea or tincture. Once my tea is finished steeping I strain out the tips and add sugar. I then cook it till it thickens/ the sugar dissolves. Once its done it has a red color and tastes like strawberry’s. It makes a great syrup for pancakes, ice cream and other desserts. Beach asparagus starts showing up in the spring and are around to gather all summer. They are found on the beach and are quite fun to eat. I serve mine sautéed in olive oil with pancetta and red chilly flakes. The beach asparagus has a crisp texture not unlike a green bean, they are delightful and sometimes found at whole foods.
In the summer I love foraging for berries, crabbing, shrimping, and of coarse fishing. During the summer its not uncommon to be hiking and come across wild strawberries, nagoon berries, raspberries, salmon berries, blue berries and much more. There is nothing better than eating my way through a hike and bringing berries back to use in cobblers, make jams, or eat fresh with whip cream. I also love that every ware we stop we drop our crab and shrimp pots and have the opportunity to enjoy fresh shrimp and Dungeness crab. I will be the first to tell you there is nothing like eating Alaskan spot prawn that were caught an hour prior. One species of fish I truly love to catch and cook is Dolly Varden Arctic char. Dolly’s are a salmonid, they basically taste like a mix between a salmon and a trout. My favorite wat to prepare this delicate fish is stuffing it with breakfast sausage and cooking it whole on the barbeque.
In the fall I love hunting for wild mushrooms, wild cranberries, catching halibut, and stream fishing for salmon. The fall is the best time to hunt for hedgehog’s, yellow foot, chanterelles hen and chicken of the woods as well as jelly mushrooms. All these mushrooms are delicious but the most interesting one the jelly mushroom is one I like to candy and serve as garnishes for desserts. Once fall hits the high bush cranberry’s start to ripen. There is nothing yummier then high bush cranberry sauce with your holiday meals. Halibut are great fishing all summer but as the weather warms up they come into shallower water and are easier to catch. I have so many favorite recipes for halibut I could never pick just one. And finally the salmon. Stream fishing for salmon changed my life. There is something enchanting being in the wilderness with wild bear and 
other animals around you sharing nature as you all fish in the streams for salmon together. I respect there space and in turn they allow me to share in the bounty the rivers have to offer. I will never forget the feeling I had watching the salmon swimming up stream so thick you feel like you can walk on water, watching the Sycle of life take place right in front of my eyes. Alaska is in my veins now and I have to keep coming back to her year after year. I want to invite you all to Come experience it for your self!