The Whale and the Cupcake

From fish and fiddleheads to salmonberries and Spam, Alaskan cuisine spans the two extremes of locally abundant wild foods and shelf-stable ingredients produced thousands of miles away. As immigration shapes Anchorage into one of the most ethnically diverse cities in the country, Alaska's changing food culture continues to reflect the tension between self-reliance and longing for distant places or faraway homes. Alaska Native communities express their cultural resilience in gathering, processing, and sharing wild food; these seasonal food practices resonate with all Alaskans who come together to fish and stock their refrigerators in preparation for the long winter. In warm home kitchens and remote cafés, Alaskan food brings people together, creating community and excitement in canning salmon, slicing muktuk, and savoring fresh berry pies.

This collection features interviews, photographs, and recipes by James Beard Award-winning journalist and third-generation Alaskan Julia O'Malley. Touching on issues of subsistence, climate change, cultural mixing and remixing, innovation, interdependence, and community, The Whale and the Cupcake reveals how Alaskans connect with the land and each other through food.

"With every generation, Alaska connects further to the outside world, but there are ways in which it will never be able to transcend the distance, physical and psychological. What Alaskans eat is an amalgam of wild-sourced foods, intricately tied to their landscape and identity, and foods that travel wildly long distances to get here, from faraway homes they long for or from places they can only imagine. In The Whale and the Cupcake: Stories of Subsistence, Longing, and Community, widely-published independent journalist and third-generation Alaskan Julia O'Malley reflects on the rub between self-reliance and longing that lives at the center of Alaskan food culture. The highly illustrated book will feature 12 new and previously published essays on that highlight Alaska's unique blend of isolated and international foodways, covering everything from whale hunting in the wake of climate change and the growing popularity of Spam musubi, to how Anchorage residents stock up on proteins and crave fresh fruit in the face of a long winter. It will also include five interviews with people who work with food (chefs, home cooks, purveyors, etc) and 10 - 12 of O'Malley's own recipes"--

Through this book, she doesn't merely introduce us to Alaskan foods, she discovers the soul of Alaska itself.

-- (01/01/2020)

Here's a book recommendation for you, the product of one of the great reporters and writers who pals around our set: Julia O'Malley's The Whale and the Cupcake, from the University of Washington Press. Order today, and I think you'll have it by Christmas.

--New York Times

What comes across most is that Alaskan cuisine is adaptive--all about preservation, creativity, and surviving harsh landscapes. The Whale and the Cupcake is a thoughtful and enticing culinary text.

--Foreword Reviews