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Book Cover for: Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, Langdon Cook

Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager

Langdon Cook

* Quirky, engaging book about the hot topic of sustainable foods
* Combines adventure with locavorism
* Delves into iconic Northwest staples, such as huckleberries, Dungeness crab, and morels

Foraging is not just a throwback to our hunter-gatherer past; it's a way to reconnect with the landscape. And Langdon Cook is not just your typical grocery cart-toting dad. For him, gourmet delicacies abound, free for the taking if we just open our eyes. As a result, he finds himself free-diving in icy Puget Sound in hopes of spearing a snaggletooth lingcod, armed with nothing more than a "Hawaiian sling." He tempts fate by eating mushrooms that may or may not be poisonous. He strings up a fly rod to chase after sea-run trout. He even pulls on the gardening gloves to collect stinging nettles. In wry, detailed prose, he traces his journey from wrangler of pre-packaged calories to connoisseur of coveted wild edibles. Structured around the seasons of the year, each chapter focuses on a specific food type and concludes with a recipe featuring the author's hard-won bounty, a savory stop to each adventure-filled morsel.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Skipstone Press
  • Publish Date: Aug 7th, 2009
  • Pages: 224
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.90in - 5.90in - 0.80in - 0.85lb
  • EAN: 9781594850073
  • Categories: Essays & Narratives

About the Author

Cook, Langdon: - Langdon Cook is a writer, instructor, and lecturer on wild foods and the outdoors. His books include Upstream: Searching for Wild Salmon, from River to Table, a finalist for the Washington State Book Award, The Mushroom Hunters: On the Trail of an Underground America, winner of the 2014 Pacific Northwest Book Award, and Fat of the Land: Adventures of a 21st Century Forager, which The Seattle Times called "lyrical, practical and quixotic." Cook's work has been nominated for two James Beard Awards (2016 and 2019), a Society for Environmental Journalists award, and a Pushcart Prize. He has been profiled in Bon Appetit, WSJ magazine, Whole Living, and Salon.com, and his writing appears in numerous magazines, newspapers, and online journals, including National Geographic Travel, Outside, Eating Well, Gray's Sporting Journal, and Seattle Magazine, where he was a regular columnist for a decade. On-screen credits include the PBS TV series "Food Forward," the Travel Channel, and "The Perennial Plate." Cook lives in Seattle.

Praise for this book

Beautifully written-- "Seattle Weekly"
The intrepid (Langdon) Cook makes it his mission to root out and harvest all manner of edibles, from razor clams to weeds.-- "Bon Appetit"
Check out Langdon Cook's blog, Fat of the Land.-- "The Wall Street Journal"
The author details his chronological development as a foodie -- both generally and specifically as a forager -- in a way that rouses the reader to head for the hills in search of our dinner, or at least, to consider doing so. Through humorous anecdotes of his coutrship and marriage, this book is a refreshing and entertaining read about the author's "food awakening" as a complete lifestyle change-- "WeAreNeverFull.com"
Cook is a born storyteller who celebrates the food of the land and sea with poetic prose tinged with humor. This book is not only a field guide that depicts the pleasures of foraging, but one that shares the hunt, the recipes, and the colorful stories behind the author's foraging.-- "Washington Reads, Washington State Library"