Scott Plagerman says he likes the challenge of going it alone.

“And the reward, if it works,” he says. “Sometimes it doesn’t.”

Read more.

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Hey! I’m headed to Juneau on June 21 to speak at the International Food Blogger Conference. I’m also going to teach a half-day food writing workshop with 49 Writers AND collab on dinner at In Bocca Al Lupo. Join me, Juneau friends?

For the workshop, on Sunday June 23, we’ll explore how an important recipe can lead you into your personal history. This is a no-homework writing workshop where we will sample some recipe-prompted memoir and then dive into our own. This class is open to anyone with an interest in food or writing—no previous experience in journalism or food-writing is required. Come with a meaningful recipe (original recipe card or cookbook preferred), a favorite pen, and a notebook. Space is limited. Sign up here.

Or you could just eat! I’m collaborating with the brilliant chef and one of my favorite Instagram friends, Beau Schooler, on a Sunday supper on June 23 at In Bocca Al Lupo, inspired by the themes of my forthcoming book, “The Whale and the Cupcake,” that explores how Alaskans eat. (Spoiler alert: Among the dishes he’s working up, I think we’re making Tang panna cotta with rhubarb.) Seating’s limited and it’s going to be ridiculously fun. Buy tickets here.

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This recipe is SO EASY it’s almost not a recipe. And, like all the Alaska recipes I write, it’s totally ripe for substitutions. You can use just about any ground meat, including a mix of sausage and wild game, which would be pretty ideal. And the vegetable mix is flexible, too. HOT TIP: If you buy frozen pastry dough, you have to let it thaw for 40 minutes, so plan ahead.ADVERTISING

Oh and PS: the “past” in pasties is pronounced like “past” as in past lives, not like “paste.” (That’s a whole other thing.)

Wild game pasties

Makes 3 to 5 pasties, depending on their size

One package pre-made pastry dough

About one pound ground meat or a mix of meat and sausage

1 to 1 1/2 cup Yukon Gold or other waxy potatoes, chopped into small bite-sized cubes

1 cup carrot, parsnip, rutabaga or a mixture of the three, chopped

1 large shallot, finely chopped

Salt and pepper

1 1/2 teaspoons thyme

1 egg, beaten.

Preheat oven to 400°. Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment. Brown the meat and set aside. In the same pan, sauté onion or shallot with all the other vegetables until the hardest ones are no longer firm, about 8 minutes. Mix in ground meat, thyme and give a very generous treatment with salt and pepper.

On a sheet of parchment, give the pastry dough a light roll. Using a round object, like a saucer or small plate, cut the dough into circles. Lay the circles of dough on the baking pan and spoon filling on half of each circle, leaving room around the edge of the meat side.  Fold the dough over to cover the filling and crimp the edges together. You can re-roll the dough scraps and make an additional pasty or a couple baby-sized pasties, which kids love. Using a sharp knife, carefully slash vents in the top. Brush with egg. Bake for about 15 minutes or until the pastry is fluffy and golden.

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“On a recent trip to Seattle, I found myself nursing a mason jar cocktail in a bar that also sold beard oil and leather notebooks. Looking up, I spotted an ax mounted on the wall. Like, as décor. In that moment, I knew I’d never quit Anchorage.

Don’t get me wrong; I liked living in the Pacific Northwest: Portland, specifically. (New Seasons, you complete me.) But 13 years ago, I moved to Anchorage for a job. Now, I love my city—hard.

Ain’t nobody turning their axes into wall art up here. The beards aren’t oiled. There’s no irony in the old Wranglers we wear, or the plastic nuts dangling from a pickup’s tow-hitch.

Maybe this sounds weird, but I love that stuff—the giving of zero Fs, the relief from the cute and the curated. I wave that well-endowed pickup through the intersection with a nod. Because months from now, I might find myself in a snowy ditch, and you can bet that guy’s got a tow-strap. (This has totally happened.) That there, whatever that is—that’s Alaska. We don’t wall-mount our axes; we use them to split kindling. And we’ll split some for you, too.”

Read the rest here.

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Here’s the beginning….

The 30-day whale diet started as a joke. It was Christmastime 2016 and Josh Ahsoak’s sister, AnnaFlora, was visiting him in Anchorage. She was doing a 30-day CrossFit diet and was trying to get him to join her. Ahsoak wasn’t sold on her regimen, but it did make him think.

“I had a bunch of life stuff I was dealing with, including trying to get my health and my weight under control,” he said.

Ahsoak, 38, is an Anchorage-based attorney by education. By avocation, he’s a hunter. Ahsoak is Inupiat, with roots in Barrow, where he is on his family’s whaling crew. He travels frequently in the state and estimates he spends about a third of the year subsistence hunting and fishing.

As his sister listed her new dietary restrictions, his thoughts turned to his freezer and the array of wild food inside: fish, birds, seal, walrus, bowhead. “At any given time, I will have anywhere between 50 and 500 pounds of just incredibly good meat and fish on hand from all the hunting and fishing activities,” he said. What would happen, he wondered, if he switched to a traditional Alaska Native diet for a month?

Read the rest here.

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Here’s how the story begins:

ANCHORAGE — There have been times in Alaska’s history when people have had deep anxiety about foreign threats. The state was bombed and two of its islands were occupied by the Japanese in World War II. And it is, after all, the closest anyone can get to Russia and still be on American soil.

But nobody here seems all that worried right now.

With North Korea’s test of an intercontinental ballistic missile last week, the news has been filled with speculation that a nuclear warhead could reach the Last Frontier and that Anchorage could be the most realistic U.S. target for destruction. But people here have been talking about the possibility of missile strikes for decades, and Alaskans tend to focus on more tangible hazards, like avalanches covering the highway, bear maulings at campgrounds, boating accidents and earthquakes.

“I’m worried about moose, not missiles,” quipped Anchorage Mayor Ethan Berkowitz. “Bears, not bombs.”

Read the rest of the story here.

And, hilariously, the story wound up on Colbert, watch it here.

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This is a no-judgement, no-homework, nonfiction workshop focused on techniques that stoke creativity, build writing fluency, hone listening/editing skills and develop revision strategies. This workshop is well suited for creative thinkers who write or edit for work as well as creative writers and journalists looking for new ways to get started or reboot. Our work together is meant to help you think more clearly about your audience, better say what you mean, and find the most resonant parts of the story you are trying to tell. My big thing this year is having fun. LET’S HAVE FUN. Life is too damn serious.

It will be held at the glorious Yukon Island Retreat Center a short boat ride out of Homer. (Here is a slideshow.)

And, I have two discounted openings for women who want to share skills, looking in particular for someone who might want to teach basic yoga and someone else who’d like to teach an art or craft related subject. For skill sharers the cost of two days of food, accommodations, writing instruction, and water taxi is $375. Regular rate is $435.

( Also: I AM TOTALLY MAKING T-SHIRTS. T-SHIRT COST IS $25.)

To reserve a spot, send me an email with dietary restrictions (and, if you want one, your t-shirt size) and pay by PayPal. (Find me at julia_o_malley@yahoo.com.) It’s first come, first served, but I’m happy to make a plan to pay half by July 4, and half at workshop time if you want.

Let’s do this!

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But, maybe, tonight, you want to mix things up. Maybe you want to make a dessert with all that rhubarb that is just as easy as the traditional crisp, goes great with ice cream, but breaks the routine (and isn’t too sweet, either).  Here, my friends, is your recipe. It requires only a little planning. You have to pick up a pastry sheet. (Oddly, my favorite ones are at Walmart in Anchorage, next to the canned crescent rolls.) If you have a frozen one, you need to remember thaw it, which takes a day on the counter. (Look, I totally didn’t make that piece of buttery dough down there. Nope, not homemade, Pinterest. )

And, you have to let the rhubarb soak for at least a half hour in the orange juice.

If you do all that, the actual assembly of this dish might be a tad faster that crisp. The result is great AND it doesn’t require a truck load of sugar. This makes a wonderful brunch dish as well . Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.

Quick Rhubarb Pastry

Ingredients:

1 cup fresh orange juice

3/4 cup sugar

1 and 1/2 pounds (Roughly 2 1/2 cups) chopped rhubarb. ( Sliced pretty thin. Cutting it diagonal looks prettiest. A mandolin set to 1/8 works great for this.)

1 tablespoon orange zest

1 sheet puff pastry, thawed

Ice cream or whipped cream (optional)

Instructions:

At least 30 minutes ahead, stir the sugar into the orange juice and soak the rhubarb in the mixture. (If you’re using previously frozen rhubarb, just soak it for 10 minutes.)

Preheat the oven to 425°.

Strain the rhubarb, catching the liquid in a saucepan. Set that on the stove on medium heat.

On a parchment-covered sheet pan, unroll pastry sheet. Arrange the rhubarb slices in a thin layer on the pastry sheet, leaving a border all the way around the edge. Slide in the oven and bake for 28-30 minutes.

Meanwhile, simmer the soaking liquid, stirring occasionally, reducing to a thin syrup. Pull the pastry out. (It should be a rich golden color around the edges.) Generously brush the whole thing with the syrup a couple of times. Sprinkle with orange zest. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

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All you need is a recipe.

Kim will guide us as we use personally meaningful recipes as prompts to craft short food memoir essays with potential for publication. We will also consider salmon, a food that is deeply evocative for Alaskans, and its connection to family, community and place.

Writers will work alongside chef and food writer Kirsten Dixon aboard The Widgeon II, Tutka Bay Lodge’s re-purposed crabbing boat turned cooking school.

Aside from writing, participants will enjoy cooking demonstrations, foraging and a seafood-related Kachemak Bay boat tour. Hiking and yoga optional.

About Kim:

Kim Severson is a New York Times domestic correspondent covering food trends and news across the United States. She was previously the New York Times Atlanta bureau chief and, before that, a staff writer for the Dining section of The Times. Since she arrived at the Times in 2004, she has pushed the food beat in interesting directions and onto Page One. She previously wrote about cooking and the culture of food for the San Francisco Chronicle, after a seven-year stint as an editor and reporter at the Anchorage Daily News in Alaska.

Ms. Severson has won several regional and national awards for news and feature writing, including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for her work on childhood obesity in 2002 and four James Beard awards for food writing.

She has written four books, “The Trans Fat Solution,” “The New Alaska Cookbook,” a memoir called “Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life,” and, in 2012, “Cook Fight!” a collaborative cookbook with fellow New York Times food writer Julia Moskin.

About Tutka Bay Lodge: 

One of National Geographic’s Unique Lodges of the World, Tutka Bay Lodge is located at the end of a 7-mile fjord off the southwest coast of Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula near the seaside community of Homer.

The main lodge and six guest cabins are set on a piece of remote coastline and connected by a wooden boardwalk raised above the beach and ocean. Guests feel completely immersed in the Alaska wilderness, yet they have all the comforts of home around them and five-star service in addition to the thrilling soft adventures of Alaska (fishing, kayaking, hiking, bear viewing and more). Tutka Bay Lodge is owned by Within the Wild Adventure Company, run in partnership by Carl and Kirsten Dixon and their daughters, Carly Potgieter and Mandy Dixon.

Details:

Workshop dates are July 21-23. Cost for food, lodging and instruction is $875 and includes water taxi transportation to and from Homer.

Rooms are double-occupancy. Payment in full is required at time of registration and is refundable up to 30 days prior. To reserve a spot or ask questions, email me.

There are two subsidized spots available for enrolled, degree-seeking university students. To apply for one of these, please send an email with a bio, a writing sample and a paragraph that describes your recipe and why it is meaningful to you by May 15.

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