After years of research, travel, cooking, and writing, my latest cookbook Borderlands: Recipes and Stories from the Rio Grande to the Pacific is ready for pre-order in my shop. It ships in June.

Borderlands is my first cookbook since 2021, when my fish and seafood book Hook, Line, and Supper came out amid the weirdness of the pandemic. I am hoping this time will be better, to say the least.

I started work on Borderlands around 2018, and I’ve been traveling to the region for far longer than that, gathering stories, recipes, knowledge, and understanding of that vibrant space between the US and Mexico. This book is the story of my journey.

Borderlands has more than 125 recipes and nearly 300 photographs from the Pacific to the Gulf, and everywhere in between. It includes classics like carne asada, fish tacos and chimichangas, some cool vegetarian dishes with mushrooms, wild greens, fresh cheese, and cactus paddles, as well as a ton of just downright awesome recipes you won’t see anywhere else, like smoked sweetbreads, “ceviche” made with beef or venison, smoked fish quesadillas, and a fantastic style of outdoor cooking using what is essentially a Mexican wok, called a disco.

Most of the dishes can be made with fish and game, and just like my book Pheasant, Quail, Cottontail, I added icons to show you at a glance what meats or fish will work well with each recipe.

Borderlands also includes many stories from all over the region: tales of my travels — all with an eye towards the special foods — wild or farmed, traditional or esoteric — that make this place special.

Reserve Your Copy!

I Need Your Help

You should know that the reality of life as an independent creator in 2025 is as harsh as it has been since I started Hunter Angler Gardener Cook all the way back in 2007. Online ads are tanking hard as AI races ahead more rapidly each week. Google itself is fading. Facebook feels like MySpace. Instagram no longer cares about photos. It’s brutal. I know dozens of fellow creators who have lost their livelihoods overnight. 

Quite frankly, more than ever, I need you. All of you who have been generous enough to support my work are the future for all us creative types.

I want to acknowledge your support with a discount off the cover price of the book, and I am hoping you can help me spread the word about Borderlands as the months go on. Tell your friends to get copies, cook some recipes for a backyard party, post on social media — especially TikTok if you do that sort of thing — and leave reviews in places like Goodreads and yes, Amazon.

The single hardest task for a piece of creative content — book, song, film, you name it — is to get people to know it exists. I am grateful for anything you can do to help with this. Honestly, I don’t pretend to be an expert in marketing, so if any of you out there have these skills, I am all ears.

I have faith in you. Some of you I know in real life. Many more I “know” through online conversations sometimes dating back a decade or more.

One thing to note is that this book is 100 percent made in the USA. It is important to me to support fellow American businesses. All the editorial staff are in the US, the book is printed in Illinois, and warehoused and shipped from Michigan.

A final point: Borderlands’ cover price is $35 because that price dictates what Amazon will pay me per copy — if you’re not familiar with how Amazon works, I get just 45% of that, so $15.75. Jeff Bezos takes the rest. Printing costs have skyrocketed, as have shipping costs, so my portion is a fraction of that $15.75.

In my shop, you will see the book on sale for $30. That discount almost offsets the $6 I need to charge to mail you the book. So that’s what you’ll pay if you want to support me and not a billionaire.

A side note to my non-US friends: I am exploring shipping options to Canada and Mexico, but overseas shipping is simply too expensive. That said, the book will be on Amazon in Europe and Australia.

Book Tour Coming

Finally a real book tour! The tour for my last book took a header with Covid, and I am hopeful that this time around will be a lot more fun. I start events in June in Minnesota, starting with a beer party at Fulton Brewing in Minneapolis on June 19. We’re planning on brewing a special beer and offering food specials for the occasion. No tickets needed, just show up!

The first actual book dinner will be at Chilango in Minneapolis on June 30. That one will be a sort of greatest hits of the borderlands, and you’ll need to get tickets for that. Stay tuned for that link.

After that, I’ll be back in my old stomping grounds of NorCal, then the DC area. After that, things are still coming together. You can see the full list of book events here, and it will expand as things firm up.

Want to host me? If so, know that I’ll need to sell at minimum 50 copies to offset travel costs. But if you think we can do that, send me a note to hank@huntgathercook.com

Bottom line: I am so, so excited, hopeful and grateful for this chance to get out in the world again, to meet you, sign your books, chew the fat, hoist a beer. See you soon!