Despite what one might assume about someone who writes about foraging, hunting, fishing, and homesteading, in most of my eating and living, I’m not really interested in self-sufficiency (a myth), purity of source or method (boring), or preparing for the end of the world. Every day is the end of the world, you’ve surely noticed, but here we still are. So, while we’re here, I am interested in pleasure and possibility.
Possibility, I’ve found, tends to lie, not in the heart of the idyllic farm, not in the heart of the old growth forest, not in the promise of new technologies, not in the future, the past, or any projected or remembered utopia, but in the thickets between - the edges of right where we are in place and time.
After a youth spent trying to escape the country for the city, and my twenties in no-man's land on the edge of the sea, breaking my back to do every little silly thing myself, I am now forty - middle-aged if I’m lucky - in this in-between kind of town, a perfect hour from everything. I hunt, forage, fish, and grow plenty, but only what I want, now, without the distortion of need and urgency that used to drive me (to an early grave). I have neighbors, friends and markets that can supply whatever I don’t feel like getting myself, which is most things these days. I eat as much chicken as wild game and don’t feel one bit bad about it.
Edge habitat, I think, is the place to be if you want to live and eat well. I hope that’s the spirit of what I share here on Appetites - the sweet spot - the seasoned, fortunate, well-fed margin. I went through my photos and kitchen notes from 2025 and picked some favorites to share with you that I hope clarify and magnify this spirit. You’ll see, by the length of this letter, that I am no good at picking favorites. One eats every day of the year - that’s tough to cull down to fit in an email, so you’ll have to click something or other at the bottom of the page to see the whole thing if you wish.
While most are not in any ranked order, I did want to begin with my clear favorite, and a handful of others that live very near my heart.
My most cherished bite of the year was a little morsel of red squirrel from just a few weeks ago. I took my nephew on his very first hunt, after some gun safety and target practice, and he killed his first squirrel with a perfect shot. We took it home and cleaned and cooked it together and he brought the meat home to his family and the tail and skull to preserve as treasures. Man, it felt so good and right to share that with him it almost made me want to have kids. Almost.
In early spring, when everything was the greenest green, I picked a medley of tender things and blanched and marinated them. I made some ricotta and had a picnic with my Mom on Mother’s Day sitting in the spring sun amidst our family gravestones. Wild leeks, fiddleheads, dandelion crowns and buds, hosta shoots, maple keys and more went into a fragrant oil bath and were sopped with soft cheese and good bread along with buttery morel mushrooms and toasted dulse crushed over. Everyone was there. It was special.
Cioppino on the porch at the beach house made and eaten with family and friends was as sublime as a gathering can get. A glut of Frutti de Mare in the pot, including a few filets from my trip offshore to Platts Bank, which offered a freezer full of gorgeous fish and one of the better stories I wrote all year.
Three shots of Jaeger and a toast to Karen's first roadkill deer , the first deer I’d ever guided anyone through gutting and butchering, was a milestone moment for me.
I was overjoyed with how my first attempt at a Palestinian mezze spread came together for my early fall wild food walk. I was pleased over and over again at how the produce and wild foods of Maine fit so perfectly into these Palestinian dishes. Taught me a lot about dissolving the boundaries of plants and flavors I thought I was familiar with, and going with them to new places.
Poached baby vegetables (cattail spikes, milkweed buds, daylily buds, garlic scapes and garden veg) served with a creamy, herby, capery dip. Eaten with friends in the back of a boat, off the top of a cooler full of fish, out in the big Atlantic, on our way back from fishing Platts Bank. What a day.
There was a stretch of about two weeks last winter when I wanted nothing but Caesar salads with Auntie Andrea’s dressing and lots of toasted dulse on top, so that’s what I ate until I’d had enough. 10/10 will do again, and dulse has proven my favorite ingredient of 2025 - I crush that stuff on everything.
A staple lunch that I have yet to tire of. Jammy eggs showered in toasted Dulse. Splash of malt vinegar is nice.
Fishing was a bust at smelt camp, but the guy on the bridge selling scallops out of his truck saved the day. Searing them in bear fat was gravy. The ice is good already this year - should be back in the shack very soon. Volume up for full effect - smelt camp is mostly about eavesdropping.
This perfect, perfect chocolate cake with acorn flour and toasted wild nuts knocked my socks off. I baked it in between thawing and butchering a very frozen roadkill deer. Perfect time now to be hot leaching acorns on the woodstove for another.
Not a new revelation, though it does feel like a revelation every time, that mackerel, grilled simply with a little soy and sake is one of the best things to eat on planet earth. Served with miso soup (again with Maine seaweed), butter rice, and barely dressed cucumbers. Japanese breakfast beats Cheerios to dust.
Mom wanted a fatty steak for our last family meal at the beach house so I grilled a hanger steak, vegetables, and peaches with a side of grilled clams and rosehips. As much as I love wild game, it’s hard to beat a hanger steak. When I’m cooking at the beach, it’s easy to incorporate wild foods into almost any meal in small, natural ways - I just throw a little seaweed, rosehips, sea rocket, bay leaves, or shellfish in it.
This is, without hesitation, the best fish sauce I’ve ever tasted. This bottle is long gone now, and I just received their new Green crab garum, which has already umami’d up a few pots of stew with its very singular savoriness. My second-most-reached-for pantry item of the year, second only to dried seaweeds. Try some!
This, like most food memories that stick with us, is more about the sweet little moment than the food itself. The bear fat biscuit kept in the pocket while cutting firewood for the office, then a short break for tea and to write a few things in one of Gram’s little books, now stained with bear fat. Ravens playing chase. Sal got plenty of crumbs.
The memory of this grilled chicken with mustard sauce served over milkweed buds, new potatoes, and little lettuces, all dressed in warm bacon fat and apple scrap vinegar, holds still as a moment I savored in an otherwise feral blur of July.
Vintage 2021 but tasting its finest yet in ‘25. A reminder to you nocino makers out there, including myself, to make enough to leave a few bottles to age a while - pays off big time.
Nuff said.
The weather, as almost always, was bullshit for harvesting Black locust blossoms. There was a brief window one afternoon when it wasn’t sheeting rain, or gusting wind, or scalding sun, and in that window I did grab a few handfuls that still had their perfume and snap. I ate most of them like popcorn, but also enjoyed some very much on a Salad Lyonnaise, where they just barely wilted under the warm dressing.
The San Marzanos were the bright red stars of the garden. Before we canned a million pounds of them, we stewed them nearly every day with the infinite melange of late summer vegetables and herbs - wild and garden, always a stem of kombu or handful of seaweed flakes, and whatever tin of fish and hard cheese we had on hand.
Mom set the hostess bar high with homemade croissants and fresh fruit plates for breakfast when we visited in FLORIDA.
Gram's Apple Pancake is special every time. Exceptional with feral apples, though these, I believe, were storebought.
Whitetail ribs in wild cherry barbecue sauce. Grilled vegetables and wild herb green sauce for company. Whitetail ribs are often boned out for the grind pile, which is fine, but I like to keep them on the bone for when I have a hankering for barbecue in high summer.
This was what we call a happy accident or maybe even divine intervention. I was eating a sad girl dessert, standing at the counter after a long day feeling bad about something or another. I’d roasted chicken thighs for dinner and had not done the dishes yet. I was slicing a feral apple and spreading with goat milk caramel when I dropped a slice into the chicken fat left on a pan. For a split second I pouted until I realized what I’d just been gifted. The resulting combination was one of the best bites of the year. I’ve been thinking of how I can replicate it intentionally for a fall wild food walk menu this year.
Happy New Year. Happy cooking, eating, living, being human, and sharing. XO.
Amazing. The only newsletter that can make me miss the Northeast.
Love this write.