"When I began work on this book, I knew it needed to be firmly located in the Pacific Northwest, my chosen home. It feels to me that we have three distinct seasons of food: Mist, Evergreen and Bounty. Within each, there are waves of seasonal foods; there are fewer in the long grey months of Mist and we treasure them dearly. Evergreen comes on slowly, the forests and farms waking up from a long wet winter to unfurl their leaves and hope for some sun. Then for a brief window in the late summer and early fall, we struggle to keep up with the season of Bounty – the choices are overwhelming and in the kitchen we try to stay out of the way and let each ingredient sing.” -- Chef John Sundstrom

James Beard Award-winning chef, John Sundstrom, has written a culinary homage to the Pacific Northwest, which is his home and the source of inspiration that is showcased at his Seattle restaurant, Lark. His new self-published cookbook and corresponding iPad app, Lark: Cooking Against the Grain, celebrate the distinctly moody and majestic Northwest and its bounty of ingredients, telling the story through over 140 recipes with full color photographs.

Sundstrom took a very personal and even artisanal approach in the creation of this cookbook. The project had to be a true reflection of Lark and its locale, extending beyond the ingredients and images to the very people who worked on the book. Every contributor to the cookbook, from the designer to the printer who used non-toxic soy-based ink, is a resident of Washington State. To do this his way, to move against the grain, Sundstrom recognized he would need to self publish, thus his imprint, Community Supported Cookbooks was born.