With a gift certificate in hand, I head out to peruse the designer racks at an Anchorage boutique. It’s the peak and prime of the fall season in the city. Taking a moment of time to stroll the downtown area beckoned me to appreciate the beauty of this particular Saturday from an urban perspective; I typically prefer to venture into the wild with a backpack, a bottle of wanderlust and basic survival gear. Back on the sidewalk, a crisp wind kisses my cheeks, nose and mitten-covered hands, stirs through my curly tresses and finally charges my spirit with a sense of New England nostalgia. Nostalgic but happy and content to be experiencing my most favorite season of all in a new state. As a co-worker recently wrote, not a month is as fat as September. Comfort foods start to make a common appearance at the dinner table as cold bouts of elongated nighttime skies roll around. However, this co-worker of mine, he was referring not to calories but to the abundance of food- both plants and animals- ready for harvest, the sustenance of life up here in the Great North. In the Last Frontier we know that hibernation during months of subzero temperatures and daylong darkness is just a phase of life; it comes every year. But yet we are still human and find ourselves craving color amidst the whiteness of frosted spruce tips and deep snow drifts. For me, this color is the presence of good, hearty, healthy, nourishing food.  With a creative mind and a few kitchen tools, I put together edible pieces of art, history and science that invite the attendance of all five senses and an encore of delicious applause. Although I miss the rolling hills of small organic farms in Massachusetts, farmers picking bushels of late legumes, orchards pressing cider from the fruits of their labor and a ground laden with purple, red and orange maple leaves, autumn in Alaska is also spectacular. The leaves still transform and paint a new landscape; one can still buy a pumpkin spice latte; the air still sneaks up on you, reminding that it’s chilly outside even when the sun is shining. A Saturday in the city during the best time of year turns out to be quite the joyous occasion.

Winter waves a brief hello and the hills wear a changing color.

I feel most like my true self when fall hits. The colors, the settling down, the coziness, all wrapping around your life like that perfectly comfortable wool sweater you excitedly anticipate pulling out of a winter-clothing box. I remember this as I look for a new pair of jeans, gift certificate still in hand. September began with berry picking and ended with berry processing. I headed out north into Alaska’s pristine wilderness up the Glenn Highway with family and friends over Labor Day weekend. Prepared to pick berries, or at least hoping to find a few here and there, I made sure a big bucket was stowed in the back of the vehicle in case I was to return to Anchorage with a ripe, tart bounty. The weekend was heart-wrenchingly glorious- beautiful, sunny, fresh, one for the books. On a mid-afternoon canoe trip I spotted two swans, warm bodies of immaculate white feathers roaming the lake in proud strokes, taking in their panoramic scenery. There were moose, bear and wolf tracks along the river bank and kids running around the cabin playing with rusted toy trucks. I sat in an old steam house and allowed the tension of the work week to leave my mind through beads of sweat.  With every splash of water on the fire-soaked stones came a calming sizzle that would take over any conversation being had. We paused to let the moist air warm our skin and open our lungs.

This old steam house is a treasure for relaxation after a day of berry picking.

Born and raised on the East Coast, moving to Alaska resembled the act of prepping vegetables. I shed insecurities, pretentiousness, conservative social habits- characters of life I never even realized existed in my liberal bubble of Western Massachusetts. Like peeling a carrot, an onion, an artichoke, a potato, (even a grape if you enjoy the appeal of slime), something so natural began to emerge from beneath the dirt, the shell, the protection. As the holidays approach and snow settles across the land, expressing my gratefulness and thankfulness for all that I have been through and all that I have learned is of sure importance. I am a food lover, from foreign spices to contemporary culinary crazes, from dense wormy soil to guilty sweet treats, and the winter season, although typically void of green growth, is a time when food is celebrated, cherished and shared.  Perhaps this is why I stumbled upon acres of berries. In every direction my eyes could take me there were cranberries, dark, bright, bursting with a readiness for their flavors to be enjoyed. Wild harvesting became my main activity, filling the bucket as quickly as fingers can manage. I took off on my own for a couple hours each day, plopped down on a soft piece of tundra and ended up with 5 gallons of ripe low-bush cranberries by Sunday morning. I pictured village members, ancestors, squatting to pick from the same plants years ago and realized that no one ever planted these cranberries. The earth takes care of them and no human intervention is required for their success. How strange, how refreshing, that in this populated, structured world some things just take care of themselves without us. I was immersed in natural bounty- the food of the earth, the animals and the people; for that immersion I am grateful; for that feeling of gratefulness I am thankful.

I encourage everyone to take a few moments this season to think about the abundance that is present in their lives, whatever it may be, about where they are and what they are doing when they feel most like their true self, and finally, to reflect on the idea that it is all connected. This week I will enjoy cooking up a batch of my frozen berries to share with family and friends for the holiday. Over Labor Day weekend, as I willingly wild harvested, my partner took off in a camouflage baseball hat with a rifle on his back. As quiet and in tune with his surroundings as he is, he came out of his first moose hunting adventure empty-handed. The animals seemed to be following him instead, a humor of the natural world that we gladly accepted in exchange for Thanksgiving cranberry sauce.

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Gift certificate still in hand, I mosey around the boutique, looking for a perfect pair of replacement jeans.  A weekend of cranberry picking left a few too many purple and red stains on the backside.

Happy Holidays, happy thinking and most of all, happy eating!

Local beef, garden potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, mulled mead and fall leaves.

Wild Alaskan Low-Bush Cranberry Sauce for the Holidays

What you need:

• ·         For a nice sized bowl of sauce, 4 cups of cranberries
• ·         A cup or so of water or juice so the berries don’t burn
• ·         A pot, stove and mixing utensil
• ·         Sweetener to taste and fun additional flavorings
• ·         Hungry tummy

Mix the cranberries and the water/juice in the pot and set over a medium heat. Stir frequently and make sure that the berries are not burning on the bottom of the pot. The longer the berries cook the more jam-like they will become. I like a good thick sauce and therefore let the cranberries cook for about half an hour, or until all the extra water has evaporated out. The berries will start to pop and mush together, a lovely swirl of autumn fragrance in the kitchen air. When the berries reach your desired consistency, the cooking is complete. Cranberry sauce is very easy to make, full of antioxidants and amazingly strong in taste. The berries are also an easy ingredient to be creative with; try adding some of the following flavor mixes into your sauce-

• ·         Honey and fresh rosemary (honey produces a runnier sauce because it is a dense sweetener and it does not gel the fruit as nicely as sugar does due to a difference in reaction with the natural pectin).
• ·         Brown sugar, 3 cloves, a few chunks of fresh ginger and an apple or pear chopped into small pieces (sugar will make sauce more jam-like).
• ·         Maple syrup and a whole orange, peel included, chopped into small pieces, a dash of cinnamon.
• ·         A substantial amount of ground cardamom, nutmeg, cinnamon and clove (plus brown sugar as the sweetener) results in a subtle but distinct chai-flavor. If you enjoy looking for needles in haystacks, throw whole cardamom pods and cloves into the sauce and fish them out when the cooking is suffice. Using whole nutmegs and a small grater also provides for better aromatic and taste bud properties.

Voila! Enjoy the sauce with local cheese, spread over artisan bread or as a glaze on your favorite dinner meat. To preserve the cranberry concoctions for the long haul, check out the canning directions and safety tips from University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extensive Services. The recipe above will last for a little while in the refrigerator, about a week; to ‘put up’ the sauce, or preserve it like the jam and jelly found in grocery stores, food products must be processed in a hot water bath or a pressure cooker to kill potential harmful bacteria.

http://www.uaf.edu/ces/preservingalaskasbounty/index.html