Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

Kivalliq (Aug 15/01) - Mosquitoes have replaced the ice, and wildflowers, not snow, cover the ground. And families around the region are turning to the great outdoors when it comes time to cook dinner.

Almost everywhere you look, you can see picnickers -- clusters of people out on the tundra, huddled over a camp stove or a pile of smoking heather and moss, preparing their nightly feast.

"I can just taste it. I want some right now," says Rankin Inlet resident Martha Hickes.

Hoping to catch a caribou, Hickes said she was really looking forward to a meal of caribou and caribou fat -- her very favourite -- cooked outside. And, in the true summer spirit of things, Hickes plans to make the fire out of moss and heather.

"My mom used to cook with moss. That's what I prefer. It gives food a very natural taste and the smoke smell just adds to it," says Hickes.

Little bits of wood are often used to start the fire, and then heather -- qiyutaq in Inuktitut -- is added. In fact, the fragrance of burning heather is so good that Hickes' father used to collect it and dry it to smoke in his pipe.

Hickes says even now, the smell of a cook-out takes her right back to her childhood.

"It brings me back to when we'd go camping all year and my mom used to cook with my grandma. They're good memories," she says.

In Whale Cove, Jennifer Makpar also prefers heather and moss gathered on the tundra over a camp stove. "I like caribou with barbecue sauce, when it's just a little bit burned. It tastes really good," she says.

She also likes the taste of hotdogs on an open fire and often wraps char in tinfoil.

"It just doesn't taste the same as when you cook it in the oven," she says.

Whale Cove's Kerrirose Teenar also goes in for hotdogs and prefers to keep them simple -- just a little ketchup and mustard -- so she can taste the flavours added by moss and heather.

Leonie Duffy, known in Coral Harbour for her skill in the kitchen, is also a whiz on the tundra fire. She builds a little pit out of rocks, makes a fire from plants she finds and nestles a rack just above the flames. The result? "Really good," says Duffy, hoping to get out last month to make heather tea for the first time this summer.

If she were to prepare a meal while out, she would either wrap muktaaq in tinfoil or go for the equally popular char and caribou.

"I love it," says Duffy.