Maria Finn Dominguez

This book is about making use of the wealth of edible ingredients that can be found in the wilds of the West Coast. At first glance, I can tell you that I love the cover! It's like a charcuterie board of foraged goodies! You can smell the earthiness of the foraged mushrooms and the saltiness of the oysters; taste the sweet citrusy bite of blood orange.

This book guides you into the woods and to the water's edge for an adventure with purpose. It helps you see delicacies hanging over the sidewalk or slipping through the cracks. Harvesting wild food is an unscripted experience that requires us to follow nature's rhythms of tides and seasons, rain and dry spells. If we do this, she gives us incredible, nutritious food for free.

The author suggests that foraging is a great stress-reliever from daily life and a great way to come to know yourself, and to share your newly-discovered self with others over the meals you craft from your wild findings.

Due to the nature of this book, it is inherently vegetarian and pescatarian. Proteins are sourced naturally, and recipes include nothing like chicken or beef or other farmed livestock.

There are three chapters:

-- The Coast with recipes like Fire-Roasted Butter Clams with Seafood Gremolata, Dungeness Crab Boil, and includes a DIY for how to make your own Sea Salt.
-- The Forest with recipes like Fire-Roasted Kabocha Squash with Chanterelles, Wild King Salmon Bellies with Roasted Morels and Peaches, and Pine Scones with Huckleberries.
-- The Edge and Urban Foraging includes recipes like White Bean Stew with Stinging Nettles and Oyster Mushrooms, Rose Hips and Apple Jam, and a DIY for Rose Petal Honey.

The cookbook's recipes use foraged ingredients like crabs, clams, oysters, various seaweeds, wild mushrooms, flowers, pinecones, berries, herbs, ferns and various greens. It provides instruction on how to catch crab, find bivalves, and harvest seaweed. There are a few Seasonal Menus at the end of the book to inspire you to host a seasonal party, or perhaps a Campfire Brunch with recipes like:

Elderflower French 75
Pine Scones with Huckleberries
Herby Mushroom Leek Toasts
Spruce Tip and Juniper Berry Sockeye Salmon Gravlax on bagels and cream cheese
Campfire Dashi-Poached Eggs with Vegetable Hash
Flaming Pine Needle Mussels
Bay Laurel Nut Hot Cocoa
Chilled Huckleberries with Campfire Caramel and Seaweed Salt

My final word:

I lived in the Pacific Northwest for several years in the '90s and consider it my second home. I fell in love with the area while living there with a military husband. This cookbook is reminiscent of the West Coast and the time I spent wandering the forests looking to identify edibles. I love the pictures. I love what this cookbook aspires to be. The thing that holds me back is the feeling that the recipes are somewhat unattainable. As the author says in her introduction...

"The recipes are simple yet the ingredients a bit esoteric. Some you may be able to find seasonally at the farmer's market or grocery store, but the fun is in finding your own patches of rose hips and huckleberries."

It's not that the recipes are overly-complicated or filled with hard-to-find ingredients, but they feel like they are more well-suited for a gastronomist. A little amuse bouche that you find off-menu at a five-star restaurant. But I love the endeavor, and the heart and soul of this book, and I recommend it for the hard-core food crafters who are always looking for something new to try, or those who live in areas of the West Coast with lots of areas in which to forage. Beautiful photography and ambitious.… (más)

In Hold Me Tight and Tango Me Home Maria Finn relates how she recovered from a broken heart by learning the tango. It begins when she finds out her husband has been cheating on her. After throwing him out she turns to the world of tango for the intimacy, physical closeness, and mental spark she is suddenly missing in her life. As she learns each new step she gains back her confidence, makes new friends, and gradually is able to open up again. By the time she travels to Buenos Aires she is ready for all the fire and romance of dancing the tango in the country that created it.

Maria Finn does a beautiful job describing what it is that draws people to dancing, and to dancing the tango in particular. Her explanations of the connection two dancers sometimes feel and the constant quest to capture that feeling will make anyone want to tango. I liked her humble accounts of messing up the new steps and frustrating her more experienced partners and I loved her descriptions of all the personalities frequenting the milongas. Social dances make for the best people watching! I wish the book had included a bit more about the people and a little less of the technical dance talk, but still an interesting, easy read.… (más)