I guess you could say that my food writing career got its inglorious start as a twenty-something novice gardener with an inadvertent green thumb.
And a copy of the classic Silver Palate Cookbook.
I remember plopping the book down and saying to my original husband, “I’ll never know what half this stuff is.”
My hiatus from the marriage and a degree from CIA in Hyde Park, NY would change all that.
The door opened from kitchen grunt to executive chef in a short span of years.
Suffice it to say that Anthony Bourdain nailed it in Kitchen Confidential.
Not a great career choice for the lazy or fainthearted, chefdom can make for a wild ride.
One that is short-lived for even some of the best.
When I decided against going out face-down on the flattop, I was lucky enough to walk into a food-writing gig for what was then Coast Weekly Newspaper (later Monterey Weekly). My 600-word weekly column, Window Seat mushroomed into gaining responsibility for most of the food section, including a regular Chef’s Profile feature, a deadline that would be my constant companion for seven years.
Covering the awe-inspiring food frenzy of the Monterey Peninsula was a total delight. Right up until the publisher insisted on restaurant reviews, a moral morass that I chose to opt out of. That had been me, after all, when the dishwasher didn’t show up, the waiter had a snarky attitude and the quail was 86’d. Not gonna go there! (Plus it was the same boss insisting on a pseudonym when Carmel Magazine hired me to cover their restaurant beat. I never quite bonded with “Ryan Freeberg”.)
I teamed up with another chef and illustrator to pen The Adventures of Monterey Jack, my children’s book, written in verse. It took me to elementary schools for classroom readings all over the Central Coast, dressed in my chef uniform and purveying cheese platters, plying the kiddos with a tasting of the characters.
I was thrilled to gain the endorsement and back-cover testimonials of Alice Waters and Laura Chenel.
I might add here that teaching 7-year olds to crack eggs in the companion series of cooking classes that followed is an experience I will never forget!
Fast forward to a much-different married life in rural Southwest Virginia where my interest in developing a piece of property (yes, the restaurant business was calling me again) unwittingly led me straight into a political foray that I could not have predicted nor imagined…one that would result in the creation of a watchdog website and eventually a newsletter focused on exposing the sordid underbelly of a controversial zoning and property rights proposal for all 19 counties in our congressional district. They sure didn’t teach us about this stuff in culinary school! Happily, the proposal was defeated, a huge win for small home-based businesses.
More major life changes found me tracking the progress of my divorced (oh-no-not-again) self while simultaneously rehabilitating my hundred-year old log cabin: blog cabin therapy, if you will! My apprenticeship as a cabinetmaker in my early married years paid off, albeit the rehab took three years—three times longer than I’d predicted!
My home is finished, the tools are put away and the dust has settled. I’m ready for my next writing adventure!