MN’s Beth Dooley – cooking locally, seasonally, deliciously in icy North

Mid-winter: ground is frozen, snow’s predicted. You can still eat locally, in season and deliciously.

If you live in the Upper Midwest or the Northeast, it’s hard to imagine eating locally-grown foods when trees shiver in frigid winds. Yet that’s exactly what Beth Dooley’s newest cookbook, The Northern Heartland Kitchen, helps us to do. Loaded with recipes, short profiles of local growers, and tips for pickling and preserving, the book celebrates the farmers, gardeners and home cooks of the northland.

Cooking doesn’t have to be complicated, says Beth in this Deep Roots Radio interview. Beth’s approach is practical – she’s a working mom – and liberating. She knows of what she speaks. Beth has covered the northern food scene for 25 years. She’s the food critic for Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine, and writes for the Taste section of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. A regular on KARE 11 television, she also teaches cooking classes at the University of MN Landscape Arboretum. [Audio below]