Still waiting for Spring… Strawberry Peach Pie

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

So, it’s pouring down rain. By mid-afternoon the temperature had climbed all the way to a steamy 42 degrees. Sheesh…

Yesterday, we had the most beautiful warm sunny day. I planted plants. I weeded the garden. We dined on our deck. I did all the outside spring things that make a person fully feel like Spring.

Today’s weather drove me back inside. Still having the spring cleaning bug, I decided to clean our freezers. As in true Alaska style, we have multiple freezers. So, it’s a process. Empty and defrost one freezer. Clean it. Fill it back up with contents from the next freezer. Repeat. The best thing about the freezer cleaning project is seeing all the delicious treasures we have not used up yet from last summer. In addition to those treasures, we just purchased a used freezer that came with its contents. I felt like I was on one of those storage wars TV shows where you bid on a storage unit filled with stuff. Who knows, you might score big, right? Turns out there was lots of good stuff in the freezer we picked up. First up – a bag of frozen peaches and a bag of frozen strawberries.

What better to do on a wintery day than to make a strawberry peach pie. I recently acquired a super cute set of Beatrix Potter cookie cutters. A tiny butterfly cookie cutter made the perfect finishing touch for a darling pie top. Now, I have to wait patiently for the pie to cool. And wait patiently for Spring to come.

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Fingers Drumming… Marbled Matcha Ube Cookes

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

A long cold winter and a very wet spring make for reluctant wild plants. They, as am I, are not sure this warmish sunny day is a true call to sprout their little leaves and flowers. Last year at this time, we were harvesting our first greens – devil’s club buds, fireweed shoots, and spruce tips. The only brave plants of that trio this year are the beginnings of fireweed shoots. Fingers drumming…

What is a baker and forager to do? As I bide my time for the plants to wake up, I dig into my pantry for inspiration. Simulating the colors of my hopeful mood, I pulled out some bright purple ube and some intense matcha powders. I marbled the two hued sugar cookie doughs together to make a vibrant confection with the bold flavor of matcha.

Jack thought the look of this cookie was a bit monster-ish. What do you think?

Spruce Tip Toasted Pecan Biscotti – a work in progress

Posted on May 3, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

I went to a community gathering a bit ago, a evening of storytelling, poetry, and song. A cello player was there with his cello. With no apparent effort, he seamlessly joined with all the various musicians and singers. I believe musicians are magical.

This made me think of recipes and beautifully created culinary creations. Those, too, seem magical. Someone thought up the idea and made it happen, right? I don’t have any musical talent. But I do have talent in the kitchen. I know that this magic comes from many trials and tribulations with each recipe. You all get to see the magical result. But behind the scenes, there are often many iterations of each recipe before the magic is shared with the world.

Today’s cookie was the first iteration of what I hope will make the cut for our recipe book. I’ve been contemplating ideas using spruce tips. My imagined biscotti was supposed to be freckled with young spruce needles and flavored with the lemony spruce tip syrup evocative of the forest it comes from. The first try was tasty, but still needs a little work. At least it’s not all the way back to the drawing board.

Does this remind you of a recipe you’ve created or improved over time?

Test Batch – Wild Blueberry Scones with Frozen Berries

Posted on April 26, 2026 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

A minute ago, we flipped the calendar to April and now it’s almost time to turn the page to May! All this calendar flipping is amping up my foraging enthusiasm, which is already running at a steady hum. Fortunately, there is ample foraging material in my freezer as I patiently wait for Mother Nature to provide.

If you have been following along, you know that I am reluctant to add tools to my kitchen arsenal unless I have deemed them fantastically useful. No dust collectors allowed! After last summer’s kitchen experimentations (pie crusts, pestos, and other sauces), we decided it’s time to up our game and add a food processor to the mix.

Today’s assignment was testing out the new machine before burning the boxes they came in. After a quick forage in our freezer, frozen wild blueberries were the inspiration. Cutting in butter into a scone recipe sounded like a delicious trial for the new machine.

My previous strategy was using a grater to grate frozen butter to make those little pea-sized bits for a flaky pastry. It worked like a charm, but it did take some time. And mind your knuckles and fingertips! Using a food processor to make the scone dough was a revelation. I dropped the required chunks of butter into the dry ingredients. In 4 pulses, the butter was pea-sized and incorporated into the flour. I then added the remaining ingredients – 4 more pulses and my dough was done. Wow! I’m imagining all the recipes I can more quickly and easily prepare… pie crusts for wild berries and rhubarb, pestos with foraged greens, wild greens and mushroom fillings for ravioli…oh, and pasta dough… All right, Mother Nature, our calendars will align soon enough.

Pizza Margherita with Basil Microgreens

Posted on December 23, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Our long-standing tradition has been to keep a batch of par-baked pizza crusts ready in the freezer for a quick, easy, and delicious meal.

Recently we’ve been watching the Great Courses’ The Everyday Gourmet: The Joy of Mediterranean Cooking. Chef Bill Briwa delivered excellent instruction on how to make Neapolitan Pizza in a home oven. Why were the directions excellent? Just look at the photo. The pizza came as close to a pizza baked in a wood-fired oven as possible in a home kitchen. Nice crispy crust with gorgeous charred bubbles full of flavor. The addition of basil microgreens from our hydroponic garden gave a delicious and lovely finishing touch.

We are definitely converts. More freshly-baked crusts are on the menu!

Just a Taste – Pumpkin Pie Brûlée Bites

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

*These little custards were baked in two-ounce canning jars and are awaiting the finishing touch of a caramelized top. They are the perfect size for a dessert bite at a potluck*.

Tis the season for pumpkin pie. Ten years ago (wow, 10 years!!), we posted a recipe after making a fall pumpkin pie and found ourselves with leftover filling. You know the problem, not enough filling to make a whole second pie, but the idea of tossing the extra unthinkable. We decided to bain-marie the remainder. When the little custards came out of the hot water bath, they seemed to want a bit of crunch. Out came the kitchen torch and a little sugar for a satisfying brûlée finish. And so, a new recipe for our repertoire was born.

Here is the link to the original recipe and post: https://cutterlight.com/2015/11/15/maple-pumpkin-pie-brulee-or-what-to-do-with-leftover-pie-filling/

The Alaskan Apple Experiment

Posted on October 12, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Our summer adventure of 2025 involved plants and rocks. We decided to redo what was already a good start of our modest terraced rock garden. Our inspiration for this redo was to celebrate culinary plants and also feature native plants. We moved hundreds of pounds of rock, we sifted dirt, and we removed overcrowding and non-native plants in order to create new planting beds.

Cordova isn’t as far flung as Chignik Lake. But it does take planning and effort to brings things here – especially live plants. So when our local Ace Hardware had a pop-up plant sale early in the summer, it made sense to go shop what was already in town. We had intended to find some flowers to plant in hanging baskets. As a happy surprise, we noticed the pop-up had apple trees. And not just any apple trees. They were grown in Fairbanks and hybridized to withstand extreme cold temperatures. Those little trees seemed like a perfect fit for a couple of our new planting beds.

At the time of planting, we noticed that both trees had fertilized flowers on them. We were advised to pluck most of the flowers off so that the trees could put their energies into root and tree growth. We were curious to see how the little apples would grow. So, we left a few blooms on each tree. By September, we had seven little apples.

Armed with some leftover puff pastry, I chopped the little apples and tossed them with a bit of sugar and cinnamon. This mixture was piled atop the puff pastry and baked for 20 minutes. Drizzled with caramel topping and they were ready for serving. What a lovely way to honor this first crop.

Here’s to you, my little Alaskan apple trees. May you have many years of bearing beautiful little red fruit.

#alaskanapples #alaskangardening #apples #wildalaska #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

Wild Caught Mushrooms

Posted on September 28, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

Our subarctic rainforest hides a treasure trove of wild mushrooms. End of season “catches” include yellow foot chanterelles, hedgehogs, and angel wings. After several experiments, we’ve determined that our catch keeps best individually quality frozen (IQF) and then loosely kept frozen in jars until needed in the kitchen.

Late summer and early fall are bustling times for us as we head out to forage remaining berries and mushrooms. Our fly rods are pressed into action as Silver Salmon pour into local rivers in the thousands, and many of our friends are out hunting deer, moose, ducks and geese, a few pounds of which often make it our way. With many hours dedicating to processing these wild foods, we often are in the mood for a quick, minimal-effort dinner. With two grocery stores in town, it’s easy to find something to prepare that fits the bill. Our latest guilty pleasure has been Marie Calendar’s pot pies.

Although those store bought pies are quite tasty, it occurred to us that creating our own featuring recently foraged mushrooms would be even better. We took on the work team-Donachy style. Jack made a filling featuring chanterelle and hedgehog mushrooms, root vegetables and charcoal-grilled New York strip steak. I made a crust and then assembled 6-inch pies which I froze and then vacuum packed so that they are ready to be popped into the oven for a delicious low-effort dinner.

#wildmushrooms #mushroom foraging #wild gourmet mushrooms #wildalaska #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

One more for the book: Wildberry Custard Tart

Posted on July 26, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

We are having quite a berry season. It was easy to gather premium wild blueberries and wild salmonberries for this tart. Look at the size of those golden berries! There’s a lot of things you could do with freshly picked berries…but nothing says “fresh berries” like fresh berries.

#wildblueberries #wildsalmonberries #dessert #wildberrytart #tartrecipe #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

Now You See ‘Em, Now You Don’t

Posted on July 21, 2025 by Jack & Barbra Donachy

The deal is “you pick me 5 cups of berries and I’ll make you a pie.” We stumbled onto a blueberry bush Loaded with berries. In no time at all, we had 5 cups in the bag. Seems like all agreed, it turned out pretty fantastic.

#wildblueberries #Alaskablueberries #homemadepie #blueberrypie #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination