Comments (57) Best Local-Foods Blog - 2009
Fat of the Land
"In another lifetime I might have been a treasure seeker," Langdon Cook recently wrote on his blog, Fat of the Land, in a post about pineapple weeds—scraggly little flowers that he picked from a patch of gravel and with which he concocted a chamomile-like iced tea. In a region habitated by mushroom hunters, public-park fruit scavengers, and clam diggers, Cook is a forager's forager. He sees not only salmonberries and wild mussels but the tiny field greens (aka weeds) and lesser fungi all around us. He dropped out of the corporate world a few years ago to write—beautifully—about wild foods for publications like Gray's Sporting Journal and Outside. Each of his weekly blog posts is devoted to some local ingredient that he researches, locates, photographs, and cooks with, finding unexpected uses for unexpected foods. More than a few of the weeds get turned into pestos, for instance, but some end up in chocolate sauce or tempura-fried. Until his book, Fat of the Land, comes out in early fall, the blog is a book of days for Seattle, encouraging us to look down when we walk, sniff the air a little more thoughtfully, and pluck the occasional sprout out of a sidewalk crack just to see what it tastes like.—Jonathan Kauffman
