Winterlake Lodge - The Winterlake Lodge cookbook: culinary adventures in the Alaskan wilderness

In the first edition of this cookbook, our daughters, Carly and Amanda, were living in California attending school. I wrote, When they moved away, I realized how much I missed them. I want to thank my daughters for the many ways they contribute to and enhance our family We hope their travels bring them back to Alaska and to Winterlake. Its been ten years since I wrote those words and my daughters have indeed returned to Alaska.

After years of travel and fly-fishing around the world, Carly is now married and has a son of her own, Rohnen Zane Potgieter. Carlys South African husband, Tyrone, works at Winterlake Lodge as a guide manager. Tys interest in photography has inspired me and he has taken most of the images in this new edition.

Mandy, a trained pastry chef, works closely with me on a wide variety of culinary projects. She helps to train new chefs in the kitchens of our lodges and she acts as a resource for our culinary team. She travels often with me when we teach cooking classes. And, Mandys longtime boyfriend, Neil Lippincott, has worked for us as our Anchorage-based expeditor for the past six years since my father, Jim, retired from that very same position.

An old-fashioned family-based small business is what we have and we couldnt be happier about that.

My husband, Carl, is still the greatest inspiration for me personally and for our entire family. His love of the natural world and his desire to share the beauty of the backcountry of Alaska has led us all to Winterlake Lodge and to our remarkable lifestyle. I am incredibly thankful for Carls creative vision to guide us down a path less traveled.

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If you ever have a chance to travel to Alaska, we hope youll visit Winterlake Lodge. From Lake Hood, the seaplane base in Anchorage near the Ted Stevens International Airport, take a floatplane northwest toward Mount McKinley and the Alaska Range. Once youve traveled for about an hour and gone past the Shell Hills, youll see a picturesque little mountain below. And just south of the mountain is a log house on the bank of a beautiful horseshoe-shaped lake. Thats Winterlake Lodge, where we live.

After your floatplane lands on our lake, step onto the dock and walk up a winding path lined with Alaska roses. Ahead of you is the lodge: come on in. Go toward the back and enter the kitchen. Thats where Ill be, and thats where much of the story of this book takes place.

Winterlake Lodge is a small, intimate Alaska backcountry lodge where my husband, Carl, and I have lived since 1994. In the summertime, visitors come to the lodge to go hiking or canoeing, to helicopter to a glacier, raft a wild river, or just to enjoy the soothing quiet of the wilderness. In the winter, guests enjoy dog-mushing adventures, snowshoeing, or cross-country ski trips with Carl. And often, people come for the food.

Called Finger Lake, our lake isnt an officially named lake. In Alaska, there are so many lakes thousands of themand many carry hapless names, having been christened by some long-ago trapper or gold seeker. Carl and I call our home Winterlake Lodge on Finger Lake in Alaska.

Our lodge is the fourth checkpoint along the Iditarod Trail, named a National Historic Trail in 1976. The 1,000-plus-mile trail is, for the most part, a visible trail only in the winter and is the route used for the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. The race, starting the first weekend in March, follows the historic trail from Willow, Alaska, to Nome in commemoration of an event that took place in 1925. That winter, citizens banded together to quickly bring medicine to the remote village of Nome on the northwest coast of Alaska, which was under siege from a diphtheria epidemic. Teams of mushers and sled dogs relayed the medicine along the trail, each musher handing off the life-saving serum to a fresh team at roughly 30-mile intervals. The Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is a celebration of cooperation and teamwork, a remembrance of a past way of life, and an opportunity for dog mushers to test their skills and endurance.

This fact becomes particularly significant for Carl and me in the winter after a path through the snow is established and travelers begin to explore and make their way to Nome by snowmachine or dog team. The months of February and March are a rush of Iditarod race activities at the lodgefrom housing volunteer trailbreakers to accommodating dog mushers in training to feeding enthusiastic adventurers from all over the world. We host several other ski and dog races throughout the season. Even though Carl and I live so far away from the world, it seems that the world comes to us, particularly in the winter. Fortunately for me, I love to cook for guests, and Carl loves to lead guests in outdoor adventures. We have discovered the perfect life for us.