Cook Your Life

Make your landscape a part of you

Slow food:

• In spring, hang yarrow from the garden out to dry. Plant potatoes in towers next to the house.
• In mid-summer, gather a substantial amount of oregon grape and salal berries. Make jelly (and sundries).

• In late summer, Collect the inflorescences from a huge stand of lamb’s quarters.

• Dehydrate the lamb’s quarters and pulverize them when dry.
• In autumn, harvest some potatoes. Process air-dried yarrow.
• Trim about 1 cup of shavings from a cured madrone log. Do the same with an alder.
• Smoke some sea salt using the madrone, alder, and one cup of the yarrow.
• Pulverize the sea salt. Mix one-to-one with the lamb’s quarters.

• Cut the potatoes into 1-inchish cubes. Add to a bowl with pearl onions, artichoke hearts, mushrooms, garlic (amounts are to taste). Toss with the salt/lamb’s quarter mixture.
• Mix 1 1/2 cups of the salal/oregon grape jelly with 1 cup of olive oil. Coat the potatoes, and toss again. Let sit for at least 2 hours.
• Cut some smaller branches from a Western Red Cedar. Gather 5–6 leaves from a Big Leaf Maple. Soak both in water to cover and one cup of apple cider vinegar for at least one hour.
• Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.
• In a baking dish, layer the cedar branches on the bottom, then a layer of maple leaves. Pour in the potatoes and the liquid they’ve been resting in. Cover again with maple leaves.
• Place in the oven:

• Bake for 1–1 1/2 hours or until fork-tender. Spoon directly from the bed of leaves into a bowl.
• Enjoy the amazing flavors of a full growing season in the Pacific Northwest.