Thursday, September 23, 2010

Chuckanut Reader Featuring Jennifer Hahn

Reproduced from Chuckanut Reader, August 2010


             Foraging for mushrooms, huckleberries and wild greens helped Jennifer Hahn, lighten her backpack while hiking 1090 miles on the Pacific Crest trail. During her solo kayak trip from Alaska to Bellingham, Hahn, a Bellingham wilderness guide, writer and teacher, supplemented her pre-packaged dry grub with fresh wild foods.  Harvesting salmon, urchin, limpets, berries and sea vegetables--kept her kayak trim and manageable.
            The adventurous locavore was thrilled when Skipstone Press asked her to write a book about northwest wild food.PACIFIC FEAST: A Cook’s Guide to West Coast Foraging and Cuisine is Hahn’s second book. It’s a delicious blend of 65 northwest chef recipes, field notes, color photos, illustrations, and 20 essays describing foraging adventures along coastal rain forests, beaches, mountains and, even, her own back yard.
            “Today, there’s a renaissance in local-grown and wild-foraged food sweeping the country,” Hahn says. “When it comes to eating within your own foodshed, wild food is as local as it gets. It doesn’t get closer than, say, the distance of a salal berry bush to your mouth—or a clam to your bucket.”
            “This is the real thing--the unadulterated bite,” says Hahn. “Plus it offers earth-to-fork bold flavor and a nutritional powerhouse.”

Friday, September 17, 2010

Bullwhip Kelp: The Hula Dancer of the Deep (Part 2)

          Here’s a great recipe for Bullwhip Kelp Pickles. You use the stem or stipe. But please be kind to the kelp forests. In Washington you must not cut living kelp stipes, rather use the ones washed up on the beach. Look for solid, dark brown to golden stipes with no white mushy spots. Also, be sure you purchase a SEAWEED AND SHELLFISH HARVEST LICENSE IN WASHINGTON before you pick.


Horn Tootin' Kelp Pickles
Excerpted from PACIFIC FEAST (Skipstone Press, Seattle)
Copyright 2010, Jennifer Hahn, Bellingham, WA

Thursday, September 16, 2010

Bullwhip Kelp: The Hula Dancer of the Deep (Part 1)

Bullwhip Kelp in Action
            We coastal folk, from Alaska to California find bull kelp endearing, inspiring, frightening, sexy, mysterious, whimsical, and mythic. Not to mention, for those who have dared invite it into their kitchens delicious, nutritious and remarkably mucous. Hands down, bull kelp has more uses than any seaweed I —know.  Here are just a few:

            Before glass and plastic bottles, the First Nations used hollow kelp stipes for storing oolican fish oil or fresh water on canoe journeys. After European traders arrived, kelp “bottles” transported molasses from ship to shore.  The hose-like bottles were cured by many methods. Every coastal group had their secrets: smoking over a fire, soaking in fresh water then drying, rubbing with whale and dogfish oil, and so on. The bell-shaped kelp bulb, cut off at top and bottom, became a handy funnel for pouring oil into a cured tube. Full kelp bottles were corked and lashed shut, coiled like rope, and lay in a cedar storage box. Some were slung over the longhouse rafters ready for quick use. A cook could reach over, uncork the kelp bottle, and dribble fish oil into waiting feast dishes like you might some expensive salad dressing. 

Thursday, September 9, 2010

New Event: Hosted by The SeaDoc Society: Culture and Cuisine of Shoreline Edibles

About The SeaDoc Society (from The SeaDoc Society Website):

The SeaDoc Society works to ensure the health of marine ecosystems through research and education.  We focus primarily on the inland waters of the Pacific Northwest, known as the Salish Sea. The Salish Sea includes:
  • Puget Sound
  • The Northwest Straits
  • The Georgia Basin
We also have new regional initiatives focused on marine ecosystem health in California and in Baja California, including efforts to clean up derelict fishing gear. The problems in our ecosystem are well known: Pollution and habitat degradation are increasing; native populations are declining and disappearing.

The SeaDoc Society provides solutions to problems facing marine wildlife and ecosystems

NEW EVENT -- Culture and Cuisine of Shoreline Edibles

Thursday, September 2, 2010

NPR Sarah Waller interviewing Jennifer Hahn: "Kayaking In The Dark: Alone On The Inside Passage"

     In 1992, Jennifer Hahn pushed her kayak into the frigid waters of Ketchikan, Alaska. She pointed the bow south toward her home in Bellingham and started paddling. Her goal was to kayak the Inside Passage, a treacherous waterway stretching from Alaska to Puget Sound. She wanted to be one of the first women to do it alone. Jennifer tells KUOW's Sarah Waller how she turned to memories of her father when the journey stretched her physical and emotional limitations.

    Click play below or click here to listen to the interview, recorded May 8, 2010.