Forage. Gather. Feast.- A Guide to Foraging in the West

Sausalito-based author Maria Finn has come a long way from her Irish Catholic upbringing in the Midwest, where she thought of food mainly as a vehicle for either ketchup or Velveeta cheese. For nine summers she worked on an all-female commercial salmon fishing boat, then in field camps for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, where she learned from the local Yupik natives how to smoke salmon, find wild spinach and search the tundra for low-lying blueberry bushes and salmonberries.

When the salmon weren’t running, Finn worked as a sustainability-focused food writer. She’d learned firsthand from her time in Alaska that “food is never just food. The where and why matter.”

After considerable success as both a chef and food writer, Finn’s work came to an abrupt halt during the pandemic, inspiring her to focus on her passion: foraging. She adopted a truffle dog named Flora Jayne and trained her to find fungi. From there, Finn began teaching others to forage, gather and prepare food over an open fire. She named her new business Flora & Fungi Adventures, “a way to connect to wilderness, to seasons, to each other and to ourselves.”

Finn’s debut cookbook celebrates the culinary gifts that grow and thrive along the coast, throughout the forest and in your own backyard. She helps readers identify foods that can be safely foraged and features more than 100 nourishing, flavorful recipes that integrate ingredients you can “dig, snip, or catch” along the Northern California coast, all the way up to Alaska—like Spruce Tip and Juniper Berry Sockeye Salmon Gravlax and Chilled Huckleberries with Campfire Caramel and Seaweed Salt. Filled with ideas for using everything from wild greens and berries to mushrooms and seaweed, this fascinating book will open your eyes to the edible bounty that awaits just beyond your doorstep.