Ann ChandonnetAnn Chandonnet lived in Alaska for 34 years--in Anchorage, Chugiak, Anchorage again and Juneau. On board The Fair Ann out of Juneau, she hooked into a few kings and a fair-sized halibut, and pulled them in herself--while a 108-pound Akita perced on her boot toe to be close to the action.

Chandonnet wrote the "Frontier Fare" column of Alaska magazine for 10 years, was the food writer for The Anchorage Times from 1982-1992 and continues to piece together food histories including Gold Rush Grub (University of Alaska Press), which won both state and national awards for education writing.

She enjoys getting behind the scenes of good food--in the kitchens of wilderness lodges and seafood restaurants, in the orchards of Washington fruit growers, and at a 5,000-year-old Alutiiq fish camp site on Prince William Sound. (Her find at that remove dig was a seal knuckle.)

Her articles on food history have appeared in Early American Life, California Girl, the Alaska Airlines magazine and Food History News.

Chandonnet and her husband of more than 50 years recently retired to Lake St. Louis, MO, where she volunteers in 1820 costume at a nearby Daniel Boone Historical Site and is learning open hearth cooking.