A Great Read for Locavores

As my research on leftovers continues with two books: M. F. K. Fisher's How to Cook a Wolf (1942, 1954) and Radical Homemakers (2010) by Shannon Hayes, I took a cool green detour to the Pacific Northwest. Recommended by a close friend who lives on Vashon Island (near Seattle), I ordered the book Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager (2009) by Seattle-area writer Langdon Cook while I was in the thick of foraging research. It's been sitting on my bed stand for months.

I picked it up one night and read a few pages. Then I read the rest over the course of the next week or so. Reading the book is like taking a year-long vacation with a friend -- the writer sounds like someone I've known for years. I spent six years in Seattle (1998 - 2004) and still consider it one of my favorite cities in one of the best regions anywhere. The book reminds me why I liked the place so much.

Fat of the Land is made up of fifteen stories about different indigenous foods one can catch or forage in the Northwest, along with a brief natural and cultural history. The stories are organized by season -- logically -- given the window for hunting or gathering these local treats is often very limited to a specific time of year. Each concludes with a recipe.

For me, this book ranks among the best on the topic of foraging. I've read a few of Euell Gibbons' books, including Stalking the Wild Asparagus (1962, his most popular, I believe). I'm attempting to read all publications on the subject, but most writing I've found isn't officially published. I've been getting bits and pieces from other blogs. A lot of foraging books are guides -- extremely useful for identification of species, but generally not books you'd read from cover to cover.

What makes Cook's Land so great? For one, he's a good writer and likable. He shares himself and his family with the reader. But what puts the book at the top of my list is the writer's ability to create a relationship with the reader -- one of a growing culture of thinking consumers. He's not preachy. He's a storyteller of a counterculture (?) now becoming more and more mainstream.

Anyone who would read the book has most likely been Michael Pollanated, and keen on alternatives to the industrial food complex. We're kin, priorities-wise. We have a similar education and work history and we're nearly the same age. That figures too. Cook was a senior editor at Amazon.com until 2004. He and his wife and son then moved into a cabin off the grid.

Although the book's primary subject is foraging in the Northwest, underlying this is a writer whose choices reflect an admirable ideal. Unlike "No Impact Man,"(Colin Beavan) also a writer who lives a sustainable ideal (and worth his own entry), Cook isn't trying to convert anyone. Having read so many books on food lately, and related documentaries on the subject, I'm really ready for post-beginner commentary and prose. Fat of the Land satisfies that craving, and makes me even more homesick for the city and region Cook continues to explore.

Here's Mr. Cook's blog: http://fat-of-the-land.blogspot.com/