It was a completely surreal experience.

Like, it was so out of my comfort zone and it was so new and there was no one to even explain what it would be like We have a home cook from Alaska.

Hello, Chef.

What are you making?

Alaska sausage, It's made with some reindeer meat.

Have a little tasty.

I tried reindeer for the first time.

This season of The Great American Recipe is, I think, the best one yet.

Great American Recipe is where diverse home cooks from across the country showcase their cherished family recipes, Cooking never really became a passion.

Probably until I met Bruce, my husband, you know, when he introduced me to You can cook like all you need is these different ingredients and you can make some amazing meals.

Because I'm like, the only way you can get it and amazing meals go to a restaurant.

You know, that's not true at all.

I'm from a little town called King Salmon, and it is like right before the Aleutian chain starts, it's pretty much known for being a fishing village, commercial fishing for sockeye.

And so that's where I grew up.

In a little village, there was 18 kids in my graduating class, out in a lot of the villages, groceries can be really expensive.

Like you don't want to buy beef, it will be so expensive.

And so we supplement it with like moose and caribou.

So I did not grow up with beef.

I grew up with moose and I was used to having it as, you know, moose tacos and stew and everything.

And so as a kid, that's what I knew.

Go off to college.

You don't have that anymore coming back here.

It's just really nice to have something from your childhood and and now you realize how special it is to have that.

this is the sour dough that may or may not be over 120 years old supposedly when it comes to sour dough, it's more the environment than the age.

The sour dough and say San Francisco will taste different than the sour dough in Seattle will taste different than the sour dough in Anchorage because we all have different yeasts and things in the air that affect the flavor.

So my mom's side of the family came to Alaska quite a long time ago.

I believe it was like the 1890s.

Both of her great grandfathers came up for gold mining, and one of them actually settled in Hope.

Alaska.

And the story is that that's where our sour dough comes from, is from her great grandfather.

yeah, he came up and either brought it with him or was gifted it to him when he got here.

And supposedly we have some of that original sour dough.

I think I've kind of, like, evolved in my cooking these days and I've gone from, I don't know, like, pantry style cooking.

I don't know if you call it that.

Just from living in the bush to really using a lot of Alaska proteins and ingredients I use a lot of moose and salmon.

Those are probably the biggest two proteins that I like to feature in my cooking.

So we get our salmon from dip netting down on the Kenai Peninsula.

We do it every year.

We try not to take more than we can use, so we really try to figure out exactly how many fish we want Have any of you ever halibut fished?

No, I have.

It's pretty fun.

I didn't catch a fish, but so I would have more fun.

Less fun?

Yes.

We were.

I'm sure I wasn't the only one intimidated by the judges, but they were never intimidating, you know, on purpose.

It was just the idea of being judged more than anything that was kind of scary.

But they were really supportive and actually at different aspects, really helpful.

They would literally come into our little kitchen areas and like help us with something if they had some ideas of how we could do it differently or better.

I'm not even really sure what baby corn it is it really baby corn or is it like a special corn?

I don't know.

This is Alaska Salmon, the best in the world.

That was my first time on TV.

I was.

You know, gone from my family in a hotel room.

And so I'm really glad that I had the connection with these other contestants because they became your support system there.

And we were really supportive of each other.

I guess I just hope Alaskans are proud of me.

I mean, my biggest fear going into this was that, like I'm representing Alaska, and that's a big ask because Alaska is huge.

We have a lot of different kinds of people.

We have a lot of different cultures.

I did my best to you guys!