A Toast to Six Months of the Eat Wild Cookbook, in the Wild

I vividly remember the immediate aftermath of my kids’ births, an adrenaline-amped flurry of excitement, sentiment and logistics, all of it underscored by a sense of hard work and deep gratitude. I’m not going to lie: the aftermath of the publication of our cookbook — Eat Wild: Cooking at Home with the Seafood of Alaska — felt a lot like that, too!

And so it is, with both the kids and the cookbook, that things gradually start to settle into a sense of normalcy, giving us bandwidth to reflect on the momentousness of these new chapters. So, indulge me, if you will, for this week’s letter, to fondly look back on some of the wonderful moments that we’ve experienced since we brought our book into the world, nearly six months ago.

What a wow moment it was to walk into the Homer Bookstore and see our cookbook featured prominently on the “new and noteworthy” shelves, with a hand-written note about its ties to a "local Homer boy." Homer is, after all, the hometown of my husband Arron (WAC Founder + CEO), so we were even further moved and delighted when the staff asked us to sign their display copy.

Here’s another one: just last week I took my daughter to an out-of-state doctor's appointment. Throughout the intake I had to answer questions, as one does, about our family, our lifestyle, and so on. Long story short, by the time we reached the end of the session and the word “seafood” had come up several times already, the doctor looked up from her laptop, squinted her eyes and said, “Wait…are you Monica from the cookbook?” As it turns out, she’s a member and a fan!

But my absolute favorite cookbook moment took place this summer in Alaska during the WAC team-wide onsite. We were in the midst of a lovely outdoor dinner facing a silhouette of epic glacial mountainscapes. When out of nowhere the team handed me a copy of Eat Wild, signed throughout its pages by all the WAC teammates. Each person chose their favorite spot in the book to leave a note, and their messages were as tender and thoughtful as they were loving and kind. I will cherish this copy of the cookbook forever. And more than that, I will always cherish the experience of co-creating it with this incredible group of people.

I hope that you, dear members, are having as much fun with Eat Wild as I am!

Live Wild!

Monica

Pictured above: Our sweet son on the shores of Bishop’s Beach in Homer this summer, featuring Eat Wild, our cookbook that celebrates the seafood of Alaska.