The Boreal Feast: A Culinary Journey Through the North
By Michele Genest (Harbour Publishing, $28.95)
The blurb: From North America to Scandinavia, "The Boreal Feast" celebrates wild ingredients and northern traditions. From the author of "The Boreal Gourmet" comes another irresistible tribute to foods of the North, and this time she devotes special attention to feasts. The spreads cover the whole spectrum — for small groups or large, extensively planned or spontaneous, as elaborate as a 12-course tasting menu or as simple and satisfying as a pot of Labrador tea and a piece of bannock on a hillside during a berry-picking expedition.
Genest takes the reader on a journey to Norway, Finland and Sweden to discover what other northern peoples do with the same wild ingredients that live and grow in the North American boreal forest. Part travelogue, the book includes stories of hunting for cloudberries on the Dempster Highway through the Yukon and Northwest Territories, throwing a birthday party on the Kaskawulsh Glacier and harvesting trumpet chanterelles in the Nordland region of Norway. Featuring prized northern ingredients, like morel mushrooms, birch syrup, coho salmon, spruce tips and blueberries, "The Boreal Feast" is a celebration of boreal food. With creations like Solstice-Cured Lake Trout, Gravlad Lax and Birch Syrup Panna Cotta with Rhubarb Compote, northern and southern dwellers alike will be inspired.
Excerpt: A walk through the boreal forest is a walk through a living feast. Getting to know the plants, berries, flowers and trees in this most beautiful of biomes is a lifelong pleasure. When building a boreal pantry there are many stages along the way: learning about habitat, harvesting, cleaning, storing, preparing and finally (hooray!) eating and celebrating. It can be hard work, but every stage has its particular reward. You develop a different way of seeing. You learn to be patient. You learn not to take anything for granted, to share the bounty, to leave some for the birds and animals, and to be grateful for everything the forest gives you, whether it's a windy picnic with your girlfriend, soft moss under your knees among the spruce trees, or freezing fingers in the September dusk because you can't stop picking cranberries. Then, it's so satisfying to open the cupboard and survey jars full of the boreal foods you have gathered yourself and turned into syrups, jams, vinegars or liqueurs. Every jar and every bottle tells a story: the people you were with that day, the late August swim in the lake by the border, the outspoken raven in the spruce tree, the bear spied on the distant ridge. It's all there. You've brought it home with you, and you will again. When you eat the forest, you love the forest. And when you love the forest, you help to protect and preserve it.
A Rock Fell on the Moon: Dad and the Great Yukon Silver Ore Heist
By Alicia Priest (Harbour Publishing, $32.95)
The blurb: In its heyday of the 1950s and '60s, the town of Elsa, Yukon, was the site of the second richest silver mine in Canada. Gerry Priest, chief assayer for the mine, was a clever man who could as easily assume the role of refined gentleman as he could rustic cowboy. In June 1963, Gerry inexplicably uprooted his young family from their bucolic life in Elsa to a cramped basement suite in East Vancouver, British Columbia. Two months later, Gerry would be arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and charged with stealing $160,000 ($2.3 million today) worth of ore. He would never admit guilt, but his daughter, Alicia, a journalist for 25 years, investigated what happened to deliver this memoir.
Excerpt: One nightmare ends and another begins. Liberated at last, and home with his wife, daughters and dogs, Dad is different. Thin and pasty. His eyes are enormous, deep and piercing. When he furrows his brow and fixes his gaze, his face looks as intense and incontestable as a hawk's. Who is this man I love like no other? Who can roll a smoke while driving a car, sing all 16 verses of "Strawberry Roan" by heart, who smells soothingly of tobacco, coffee and car grease, whose long, strong arms still cradle me to bed. Who can play with a story, the truth and lie so skillfully, it's anyone's guess what is where. Dad is as much a part of me as my arms and legs. Not home a month, however, he is itching to be elsewhere. I've never seen him squirm so, as if after existing in a cage, he can't cope with freedom.
-- Compiled by Kathleen Macknicki, Alaska Dispatch News