Clown on me if you want, but I like a little pumpkin spice in my fall time world, even if it’s beyond cliche. But I don’t like that a lot of it tastes fake, kind of like a pumpkin spice candle smells, and has a weird aftertaste. A few smaller coffee shops in Anchorage already know this secret: the real pumpkin spice latte base you can make at home — using a handful of shelf-stable pantry ingredients — is cheaper and better than anything you’ll get through the Starbucks drive-thru. It’s fast and one batch will last you a week of spicy mornings.

This recipe uses just about equal parts canned sweetened condensed milk, pumpkin puree and a healthy dose of pumpkin pie spice. I included a recipe for pumpkin pie spice if you want to make your own. It makes a concentrated batter that you can froth up with milk — two tablespoons should be enough — for a latte, or stir it into your morning coffee and maybe add a splash of cream. You could easily experiment with making the recipe and combining it with cream to make a batch of coffee creamer as well. If I’m getting fancy, I like a fresh shave of nutmeg on top, too.

Scratch-made pumpkin spice latte syrup

Makes about 1 1/4 cups

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup (roughly half a can) of pumpkin puree

1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice

Nutmeg to garnish

Optional — For homemade pumpkin pie spice:

Three tablespoons cinnamon

2 teaspoons nutmeg

2 teaspoons powdered ginger

1 1/2 teaspoons cloves

1 1/2 teaspoons allspice

In a small bowl or large jar, mix condensed milk, pumpkin puree and pie spice until smooth and well-combined. To make a latte: add two tablespoons to milk before you froth it. To make creamer, put two tablespoons into the bottom of the cup before you add coffee, add a splash of cream, stir. Store in a sealed jar. Keeps in the fridge for a week.

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The hardest part of this recipe is the shopping/sourcing. The first thing you need to find is restaurant-style Thai tea mix. It’s basically a black tea and spice mixture with added annatto to give it a rich orange color. (You can also make your own Thai tea, if you like.) I like the Pantai brand tea mix, mainly because it is widely available at Asian markets around Anchorage. The next ingredient is a little trickier. You want to find instant boba or large pearl instant tapioca. The instant part is key. The pearls should be packed soft, and the cooking time should be in the 3- to 5-minute range. I’m partial to WaFuYuan brand, black sugar flavor, if you can find it. Boba can be found at Asian markets and some large grocery stores including, sometimes, Walmart. (You can also order it.)

Restaurant teas are often made with cream or evaporated or condensed milk, which is pretty indulgent for regular drinking. I’ve found that extra creamy oat milk is a great substitute — and vegan! — for when I’m drinking tea on the reg. This recipe calls for white sugar, which is traditional, but I substitute maple syrup and go a little less sweet than this recipe calls for. You could also try agave, stevia or brown sugar. Thai tea keeps well in the fridge, but boba don’t. You’ll need to use them within a couple hours of making them.

Thai tea with boba

Makes 4 to 6 servings

4 cups boiling water

1 cup Thai tea mix

¾ cup white sugar or other sweetener

1 cup instant boba

Brew the tea: Add tea mix and sweetener to a large pitcher. Pour in boiling water, stir and let steep for 12 minutes. Pour mixture through a fine mesh strainer into a second pitcher. (Alternatively, you can put tea in a large cloth or disposable tea sack and you won’t have to strain.) Refrigerate until very cold. In a saucepan, bring 6 cups of water to a boil and add instant boba pearls — some brands have different cooking times so consult the package to double-check. Simmer for 3 minutes or until the pearls are soft but still toothsome. Strain and rinse with cold water. Set aside.

Compose a glass of tea. Add about ¼ cup soft boba pearls to the bottom of a 16-ounce glass. Add a large handful of ice, filling the glass about two thirds full. Fill roughly half the glass with whole milk, half-and-half or alternative milk. Add tea. Stir. Wide boba straws are recommended for sipping.

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Shrub can be made cold, by macerating rhubarb for a couple of days with sugar in the fridge, straining it and then adding vinegar. I do a hot version because it’s a little faster. Inspired by my shrub mentor, Kim Severson, I add some thyme to give it a little herbal complexity. It produces the most lovely magenta syrup. You’d also be crazy not to eat the solids, which make a delectable savory jam. This recipe is written small, to accommodate our new crop, but it doubles easily and makes a great gift. Good for shrubarb cocktails —Google it — and nice to have on hand as a fizzy water mixer for friends who don’t drink alcohol.

Rhubarb-thyme shrub

Makes about 1 cup shrub

1 pound (or roughly 2 cups) chopped rhubarb

½ cup white sugar

½ cup apple cider vinegar

½ teaspoon dried thyme or three sprigs fresh thyme

Unflavored sparkling water to serve.

Instructions: In a medium saucepan, combine rhubarb, sugar, thyme and apple cider vinegar. Simmer over medium heat until the rhubarb is completely broken down. Strain liquid into a resealable container. Serve about 2 tablespoons over ice with sparkling water, adding more to taste. Can also be added to champagne to make a festive cocktail or splashed into a gin and tonic. (Remove the thyme sprigs and reserve the rhubarb solids, which are basically a sweet-savory jam. Serve with roast meat, chicken or spread on buttered toast.)

This recipe originally appeared in the Anchorage Daily News.

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I have been on the morning protein smoothie train for a while, not because my sugar-free green smoothies are delicious, but because they are healthy and fast and keep me from being possessed by a wolf-like hunger that leads to eating office doughnuts. This coffee serves the same purpose and is more tasty. And I’ll tell you what: a warm, fatty, fragrant potion, sipped while driving through the icy darkness in the morning, feels pretty right.

The flavor, if you add cinnamon, is a little like Mexican hot chocolate, but not too sweet. It took me a week of experimenting to get my ratios right. Another bonus: something about adding the fat mellows out my caffeine jitters. (I totally drink a non-butter “appetizer coffee” while making the butter one. I’d only recommend that for serious coffee drinkers.) I put a scoop of collagen peptides powder, which is basically just flavorless protein, at the bottom of my travel mug, pour the coffee from the blender in, put the top on, and shake it up. If you lack a blender, you could probably just give the whole concoction a vigorous shake in a closed container like a mug or jar and it would work fine.

One last thing, because Costco just knows things: Just about all the ingredients for bulletproof coffee are at Costco in Anchorage right now, including cacao powder, Kerrygold butter, MCT oil, and collagen peptides powder.

Bulletproof coffee

8 ounces hot coffee (decaf is fine, but caf is better)

1 tablespoon good quality butter, like Kerrygold brand

1 teaspoon cacao powder

Optional:

1 tablespoon MCT oil

1 10 gram scoop collagen peptides powder

1/2 teaspoon ceylon cinnamon, or more, depending on your preference

½ teaspoon vanilla

Liquid Stevia, to taste

Put the hot coffee, butter, cacao, and, if desired, cinnamon, MCT oil, vanilla and/or stevia in a blender. Blend on high for 30 seconds until frothy. If desired, put a scoop of collagen peptides in the bottom of the mug before pouring in the coffee and stir to combine. Consume immediately.

(Adapted from “The Mexican Keto Cookbook”)

This recipe was originally pushed in the “Anchorage Daily News.”

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Here’s the thing about this cocktail: like baked Alaska, it is not representative of our cuisine. ( I want it to be a magic found-recipe from a 1930s-Alaska tent-city bar.) It is, instead, named for what it is our state represented in the cultural imagination at that time. The drink is stiff, complex, cold and golden as a prospector’s dreams.

The recipe first appeared in a 1913 book by the bartender Jacques Straub called “Straub’s Manual of Mixed Drinks.” It also appears in the classic Savoy Cocktail Book (an essential kitchen library item if you like cocktails.) It’s made with three ingredients: Old Tom gin (a sweeter, less juniper-forward gin), yellow chartreuse and orange bitters.

“So far as can be ascertained this delectable potion is NOT the staple diet of the Esquimaux (check THAT spelling!). It was probably first thought of in South Carolina hence its name,” Savoy says.

(Chartreuse, BTW, has its own mysterious cocktail story…. the short version is that it’s recipe involved 130 herbs. Only two monks, both sworn to secrecy, know what they are.)

BUT, here’s the thing, my dear Esquimauxs: I just made this cocktail with two of our very good local gins — one lovely sweet one from Amalga Distillery in Juneau made with devil’s club, labrador tea and iris root and another delicious crisp one from Port Chilkoot Distillery in Haines made with juniper, coriander, cinnamon and spruce tips — AND BOTH OF THEM ARE DAMN FANTASTIC. With the help of a willing group of backyard barbecue friends, I have developed two recipes, one drier, more traditional and one (my personal favorite) a little less traditional, sweeter, more golden and herbal.

Test them, will you, and tell me what you think? #ginresearch

Alaska Cocktail (Traditional version)

Makes 1 drink.

• 2 ¼ ounces 50 Fathoms gin 
• ¾ ounce yellow Chartreuse
• 1 dash Angostura orange bitters
•  Lemon twist

OR

Alaska Cocktail (O’Malley version)

• 2 ounces Amalga gin 
• 1 ounce yellow Chartreuse
• 2 dashes Angostura orange bitters
• Lemon twist

Combine gin, chartreuse and bitters in a shaker over ice. Strain into in a chilled glass. Serve with a lemon twist.

NOTE on ingredients: My motto for cocktail-drinking is “drink less, drink better,” as in I like to pay more for really good ingredients and not drink so much that I don’t notice how delicious they are.  This cocktail fits that ethos exactly. The ingredients for this cocktail aren’t cheap. Chartreuse, in particular, is an investment. I found all of my ingredients at La Bodega.

This and other historic Alaska recipes are also published in my book “The Whale and the Cupcake.”

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Last year I started a blog series called “Harvesting Anchorage” where I tried to gather and cook at least one wild Alaska food each month. From birch syrup to spruce tips, I gave it my all and to be honest, most of it was either too laborious or mediocre.

The exception was wild rose syrup. Frolic through the forest in June and collect a few jars of wild rose petals. Rinse, boil, strain and bottle. An added bonus is the natural perfume that fills your house as you’re simmering the syrup. It’s absolutely heavenly.

Make your rose syrup even more magical by using fancy bottles. I found some on sale at Michaels for $2 apiece and I searched Bishop’s Attic for an assortment of pretty, unusual jars.

Use your syrup in tea or baked goods. I love to recreate South Restaurant and Coffeehouse’s rose latte at home by adding a glug of it to my morning coffee.

My favorite way to enjoy this fairy-like nectar is with some gin and soda. See below for a Rose Collins recipe.

Wild rose syrup

Makes about a quart

Ingredients:

• 6 cups fresh wild rose petals
• 5 cups sugar
• 1 quart plus 1 cup of water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice

Directions:

Set out on a fine June day and pick your petals. Wear close-toed shoes and preferably long pants as there are bound to be spiders.

Fill the sink with cold water and pour in the petals. Stir them around and let the bugs and debris settle. Spin the petals dry in a salad spinner and place in a medium mixing bowl. Add 3/4 cup of sugar and muddle the petals with a potato masher.

Place the pulpy petals in a sealable container overnight. Before cleaning the mixing bowl, scoop out remaining sugar gloop and exfoliate your hands. It’s lovely.

The next day, bring the water to a boil. Add the remaining sugar till dissolved. Toss in the petals and any pulp, lemon juice and salt and simmer on low until the color has been extracted from the petals. There’s no science to this. I think I simmered mine for 30 minutes. The liquid should look bright pink.

Turn off the heat and let the syrup cool. Using a mesh strainer lined with a clean linen dishcloth, ladle the syrup into a pitcher, pressing on the petals and tossing them as you go.

Pour into sanitized jars or bottles. Keep refrigerated. Keeps for several months.

Rose collins

• 2 oz. gin
• 1.5 oz. rose syrup
• 2 oz. lemon juice
• Club soda

Fill a tall glass with ice. Pour in the gin, syrup and lemon juice. Stir and top off with club soda. Enjoy!

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My old friend Ivan Night is a man of many talents; he’s a musician, an educator, a sound technician, a beer brewer, but for the sake of this blog post we’ll stick to just one of his titles: an apiarist.

Ivan has been keeping bees for about eight years. His family has owned and operated Alaska Wild Teas for more than three decades, so honey is a natural side project. Check the bottom of this post for a homemade tea recipe.

Recently I visited Ivan’s home to see how he harvests honey from his busy little bees.

“Really it’s just a couple of wooden boxes and you just put some bees in there and they do their thing,” Ivan said as he poured me an obligatory King Street Brewing Company hefeweizen. He may make it sound simple, but it’s an investment of time and money.

The whole bee setup is about $300, Ivan said. And purchasing the bees themselves is $150. Add in the honey extractor, and that’s another $200. Ivan wasn’t eager to agree with me when I suggested the hobby pays for itself.

“Usually it takes about two years with a hive to get a good crop,” Ivan said.  He said it can take all season for the bees to fill up a honeycomb.

Ivan has 12 bee boxes. It’s mainly a female operation, he said. The males are strictly around to try and mate with the queen, at which point they die. The females do all the rest of the work, including the queen bees who can live up to 24 times longer than the rest of the hive due to their super rich diet of royal jelly.

Ivan’s bees collect nectar from all kinds of flowers, but mainly from fireweed blossoms. His little ladies travel quite a distance to collect nectar.

“They have a range of about four miles,” Ivan said. He estimates they buzz as far as Kincaid Park to find flowers.

Ivan said a honey’s flavor and color depends on the flowers the bees visit.

“Fireweed has this really light characteristic and that’s what Alaska [honey] is famous for,” Ivan said.

He can tell which of his bees collect fireweed nectar because they return to the hives with dark grey legs, whereas the other bees have orange legs.

I expected Ivan to suit up before opening up the bee boxes, but he had no qualms about going commando. He said he does get stung almost every time he opens the hives. I’m not a fan of bees in my bonnet, so for my sake he smoked the hives and lent me his bee suit.

Ivan carefully opened each box and checked the plastic-based frames on which the bees create their honeycomb to store their nectar. When the perfect little hexagons are filled with nectar, the bees cover them with wax and the nectar cures until enough moisture is evaporated to create honey.

When a frame is completely coated in wax, it’s time to extract the honey. Ivan used a super high-tech method to remove the bees from their beloved honeycombs. He shook them like an Etch-a-Sketch.

I was astounded by the weight of a full frame. It easily weighed 10 pounds, which Ivan said is enough for 10 jars of honey.

Ivan took three full frames and carried them to his garage to his honey extractor, which is a simple centrifuge that rapidly rotates the frames to separate the honey from the honeycombs.

He sliced the top layer of wax off of each side of the honeycomb. Ivan collects this wax and uses it for beauty products such as lip balm.

He let me stick my finger in the honeycomb to test the fresh honey. It was divine. It was much different from the store-bought clover stuff I’m used to. It was more fragrant and tasted a lot more like flowers.

He placed the frames into the centrifuge and used the manual crank to spin out the honey.

After the frames were fully drained he opened the spout at the bottom of the centrifuge and filled up a big jar with the unfiltered honey for me to keep. You can purchase a jar of his filtered honey here.

So what does Ivan do with his honey? Besides selling it, he said he incorporates it into his diet in myriad ways. One of his personal projects is mead making, but his favorite way to eat honey is on toast.

I took home my big jar and proudly showed it to my 3-year-old son, Jack. He immediately showed an interest. He loves honey. I opened the jar at the kitchen table and let him have at it.

“I want to drink this like a drink!” Jack said. Looks like I have a future mead lover on my hands.

I’m a traditionalist and I like my honey in tea. Here’s an Alaska tea recipe Ivan recommended that you need only step outside your door to create. But if you want the professional stuff, I highly recommend his family’s blueberry tea.

Wildflower Tea

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of fresh yarrow blossoms
• 2 cups of fresh fireweed blossoms and leaves
• 2 cups fresh wild chamomile

Rinse the flowers in a sink of cold water to remove any dirt or bugs. Run them through a salad spinner and place wildflowers into a food dehydrator. Dehydrate at 95 degrees for several hours until everything is very dry. Another option is to lay the flowers on a paper towel-lined baking sheet and set in front of a fan until dry.

Combine the wildflowers and store in a clean tin or jar. Brew a tablespoon of flowers per cup of tea. Flavor with fireweed honey.

This post originally appeared on Alaska Knit Nat.

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Here’s the thing, my friends, I am a total coffee snob, like almost to that point of snobbishness where you are just a nerd. I make my coffee by the cup, pour-over style, with water heated to 208 degrees and I like African single-origin beans. And I will pay for coffee. Like $14+ a pound. Even when I’m broke. And at the time I was in New York, I was pretty broke. But I bought that $5 shot of coffee anyway. And I drank it. And it was good. Sweet and smooth and all the things that make cold brew better than iced coffee. But $5 good? No. No it was not.

That might be because I knew that you can make a pretty great cup of cold brew coffee at home for pennies. I make it all the time. Maybe it isn’t fake ’80s bank good, but it’s good enough for my coffee nerd palate. And cheap. And easy. And super caffeinated. And plentiful. And refreshing. I ask you: what more do you REALLY need?

So, if you’re are interested in keeping your $5 in your pocket, follow my imprecise instructions:

1) Begin the night before you want to drink this coffee.

2) Get yourself some pretty decent beans. Not $14 special beans. Just decent beans. I use the Silverhook coffee from Costco. ( I have also used Pete’s Coffee. Even the ground stuff in a pinch. Other people swear by Cafe Bustelo.) You want to put in roughly 10 tablespoons ground coffee. Drip grind is fine. French press grind may help you not have as much sludge at the bottom of your cup.

And, get yourself a great big 8-cup French press. This is key. I use this bad boy:

Now, I’m making about an 8-cup pot. So for that I am going to fill my grinder all the way up to the top at least once and grind the beans just a tad bit less than I do for my regular coffee in the morning (this is my version of a French press grind. If you have a fancy grinder then you can be more exact). Here is my weird hand holding said grinder:Now I dump that grinder into the pot and fill the pot up with cold, artisan Anchorage tap water.

Then I give it a stir and put it in the fridge. Behold, my fridge:

Here it is in the morning, top view:

I stir it one more time, put the plunger in the top, push it down, and then pour myself a glass over ice. If I’m feeling festive, I add a splash of milk, a titch bit of vanilla extract and a tiny drizzle of maple syrup. Some people make ice cubes out of the coffee so the ice won’t dilute it. Anyway, look:

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