Spruce Tip Toasted Pecan Biscotti – a work in progress

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?

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Test Batch – Wild Blueberry Scones with Frozen Berries

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.

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A Berry Wonderful Day or A Taste of Summer

A summer memory frozen in a bag. Today, I thawed it out and let that summer day return.

A sun-drenched summer day, the two of us out hunting for wild strawberries. 2025 was quite a summer for those sugary little beauties and we came upon the biggest ones we’ve ever found. In searching favorite places, we also kept coming across wineberries (aka nagoonberries) – Merlot-colored tart gems that are hard to pass up even when we already have “enough” of them. They are prized for having a unique flavor that evokes a mixture of raspberry, strawberry and something else – something bright and wild not found in cultivated fruit. After a morning of foraging, we stopped for a picnic lunch at an empty campground next to a large pond. Our only dining company was a curious beaver who gave the water a quick tail whack as he swam by. After lunch, we decided to see what was growing along the forested shore. Lo and behold, a bush laden with huge, ripe blueberries!

We put aside a gallon of wild strawberries, wineberries, and blueberries from this day, frozen for later processing into a jam of memories. Today as I worked in the kitchen, steady snowfall blanketed the quiet landscape.

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Pizza Margherita with Basil Microgreens

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!

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Oh So Wild Mushroom Quiche

Fall forest walks are full of fantastic foraging. At the end of a lovely walk, we came home with a basket of hedgehog and yellowfoot chanterelle mushrooms – perfect for a wild mushroom quiche. We added in a few sulphur shelf mushrooms from the freezer to make an extra wild recipe. The mushrooms were mixed with sautéed leeks and shallots, and the usual cream and eggs. The filling was baked in a smoked gouda pastry crust. It could be a perfect centerpiece to a champagne brunch, or a decadent dinner aside a wild foraged salad. Bon appetit!


#wildmushrooms #foraging #wildmushroomrecipe #foragingrecipe #wildalaska #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #baking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

In Search of a Title

Audrey Hepcat is ready for her lunch. Sorry kitty, this is my lunch.

What a sandwich! A Po’Boy is a fried oyster sandwich. A Peacemaker is a fried oyster and fried shrimp sandwich earning it’s name as it was used by repentant husbands as a peacemaking gift to their wives.

This sandwich kicks it up – and no one was in trouble! Fried oysters, fried shrimp, and fried yelloweye rockfish atop sunomono cucumbers served on a toasted tartar slathered bun. The combination of the fat of the fried food and the acid on the cucumber salad was perfection. What in the world shall we call this one? Ideas?

#poboy #poboysandwich #peacemaker #peacemaker sandwich #wildalaska #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

Yelloweye Rockfish

One of the many, many things we love about Cordova is receiving a notice that someone is selling freshly caught seafood down at the harbor. Yesterday’s “catch” were beautiful yelloweye rockfish. The meat is firm, white, and flakes beautifully. The collar, grilled, pan-fried or broiled, is reminiscent of lobster tail. What’s your favorite seafood?


#yelloweye #freshfish #Alaskafish #rockfish #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

Cordova Grand Slam: Wild Strawberries, Wild Blueberries & Wild Salmonberries

What are you playing with in your kitchen? We picked the Cordova Grand Slam this morning: wild strawberries, wild blueberries, wild salmonberries.


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

Steam Juicer – a Revelation

If you’ve been following along, you’ll know I avoid superfluous or single use kitchen gadgets. When friends suggested adding a steam juicer to our arsenal, I borrowed one to see what the fuss was about. I first tested it on rhubarb and high bush cranberries with good results, but when I steam juiced wineberries (aka nagoon berries) I was sold. This device simplifies the process of cleaning and sorting, and quickly produces pure, unadulterated juices ready for immediate use or for canning. Highly recommend!

#steamjuicer #kitchengadget #juicing #chefdonachy #alaskacooking #food #foodphotography #eatingwelloffthebeatenpath #alaskafood #alaskabush #fooddestination

One more for the book: Wildberry Custard Tart

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