Simple Pleasures of Alaska is a family-owned and operated a business in the beautiful temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska. With the help of our community and dear friends, we offer you an authentic taste of Alaska made the Alaska way, with friends.

 

We have been harvesting wild things in and around Sitka, Alaska since 1999, and even earlier if you count the years we weren’t yet in business. Our love of harvesting wild berries and the abundance of berries available to us led us to begin selling our jams and jellies in 1999, following in the footsteps of some dear friends that graciously GAVE US the beginnings of this amazing business we began filling jars with the abundance and beauty of our home. Each berry is handpicked and each jar is hand-poured. The flavors and colors come directly from the berries and flowers, just as they were created. We add nothing artificial to enhance them. Everything we make is truly an authentic local taste of Alaska. I am continually amazed by the beauty of each jar.

 

Now let’s skip a few years down the road… A local Sitka friend came to us and asked us to make something yummy with the abundance of bull kelp in the ocean surrounding our beautiful island home. They owned a boat at the time, with a glass bottom, (so cool!!) and offered tours of life underwater. They had scuba divers swimming along with the boat pointing out interesting things. One of those things was the strikingly beautiful kelp forests.

 

Did you know kelp is edible? Not just edible, but superfood quality edible. Did you know kelp can grow up to a foot a day? YES, I said that right, ONE FOOT PER DAY. When we harvest kelp, we cut some off, essentially pruning the plant, and it just keeps on growing. This is a renewable sustainable food source at its very best. Super healthy food that grows abundantly in the frigid waters of Southeast Alaska.

 

We came up with a bread and butter pickle and an orange lemon marmalade for our friends. And both were huge hits! The visitors on their boat loved eating the kelp, it connected them to their experience in
a special way. Soon, we were putting this delicious kelp in jars for them to take home to share with friends and family. Our kelp products became best sellers in one season!

 

You might wonder, how do we get the kelp from the ocean to our kitchen, to jars that end up in your kitchen. It’s an adventure, every time! An adventure with you guessed it, friends!

 

Here in the story let me introduce you to a few more of our local Sitka friends, they are commercial trollers. They are the people catching your wild Alaskan salmon, yum. In between fishing, they graciously harvest our kelp for us, usually with one or more of our kids as ‘deckhands’ they head a couple of hours out of town, preferably on a low tide, drop down into a rowboat, row into the middle of a kelp bed, and with machetes they fill up the boat, reaching about a foot underwater they chop, chop, chop lots of kelp for us to make taste delicious for you.

 

After this, we meet them at the dock and begin the process which does
not stop until it’s all put up into either pickles or marmalade and most recently we’ve decided to expand our kelp product line because it’s crazy not to! We have a renewable sustainable superfood here! We
have so far added a salsa, sooooo yummy and HEALTHY, and a strawberry kelp jam with a surprising kick, best eaten with cream cheese in my opinion.

 

Alaska is an amazing place to live. We are blessed to call it home. Thank you for shopping with us. We truly appreciate your support of our family-owned and operated, with the help of amazing friends, business. We hope you enjoy your taste of Alaska! 

​

All our best to you,
The Pierce Family & Friends