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

Explore the Pacific Northwest via these adventures in foraging—and discover a regional stew of food, natural history, and oddball characters... 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.

LANGDON COOK was a senior book editor at Amazon.com until, in 2004, he left the corporate world to live in a cabin off the grid with his wife and son. Now a freelance writer and editor, Lang has written for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Outside, Gray's Sporting Journal, Fly Fisherman, the Stranger, Seattle Metropolitan, and Conservation Magazine. He was the recipient of the Joyce Waddell Writing Award at the University of Washington, received the Margery Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, and attended the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference on a grant. He lives in Seattle, Washington.