Bios
Pam
My mother was a fine but dutiful southern cook. Since I was an only child, she was a frequent playmate, and I quickly discovered that making real stuff in the kitchen with her was a whole lot more fun than playing dolls. By age ten I could cut up and fry a chicken. And because Mom didn’t like biscuits (how could that be!), I could bake up a batch pretty quick for Dad and me.
In college I attempted a major in Home Economics but quickly realized I was hopeless at everything but the cooking part. I high-tailed it to the history department. After graduation, I made up for all of the lost cooking time by taking a cubicle day job at Allied Van Lines, but coming home and cooking most nights until long after Johnny Carson signed off.
All that cooking meant my husband and I hosted a whole lot of dinners. After exhausting all of our good—and not so good—friends with invitations, we took to asking over virtual strangers. If we met you Sunday morning, you could very easily be eating at our house that night.
All those dinners meant I was spending a huge chunk of my check on food. By shifting from hobby cook to caterer, however, my habit went from budget breaker to profit maker, and that’s the way it’s gone ever since. I keep finding ways to get people to pay me to learn.
Rather than go for a formal culinary degree, I got a job in 1987 as test cook at Cook’s Magazine, eventually becoming Food Editor. Everyone always wants to know how I got that job. The answer’s simple. I took the $14,000 salary which, even back then, qualified me for food stamps.
Rather than take some course in food writing, I learned it on the job at Restaurant Business Magazine. And instead of going to grad school, I researched and wrote bi-monthly articles for Cook’s Illustrated from 1992 to 1999. In 1996 I turned to books. I’ve written five, with a sixth out September 2010.
My first semester of college, one class in particular, Child Care, made it perfectly clear that Home Ec was not my calling. I should have known. The one time I babysat in high school, my mother had to come over and help me change the diaper. So many thanks to Maggy and Sharon for all that on-the-job-training. Like a lot of my opportunities over the years, the salary was measly, but in Master Card terms, the experience was priceless.
Sharon
Attempting to describe oneself in a few paragraphs is risky business. You have to grapple with that big question: Who am I? I guess, to put it simply, I am a study in contrast.
I’d cut off all my hair (a way bigger deal than giving up my first-born child) to get a reservation at The French Laundry, but I also worship regularly at the altar of the ramen noodle.
I give money to just about every homeless person and street performer I happen upon. I have, at one point or another, generally functioned as an unpaid therapist for almost everyone I know. And I’d give, do, say, or sacrifice just about anything for the people I love. But I’m also one of the biggest bitches I know.
I’m sometimes known as a tough, intellectual type. But I’m a sucker for romantic comedies and made-for-TV movies, raucous debates about celebrities (why can’t Jennifer Aniston hold down a man?), and baby animals. Seriously, I never make it out of the Barnes & Noble without peeking at the kitten calendars.
I’ve just started my Master’s in religion at Yale Divinity School, but I’m not even sure what religion and spirituality is all about. And I look like a 15-year-old cherub, but my evil twin has a mouth like a 55 year-old trucker.
I love to cook, but it’s kind of like going to the gym. So often just the idea of it makes me want to take a nap, but once I get into it, I’m good to go. That’s not really a contrast, but since this is a food blog, and in the interest of full disclosure, I thought I ought to put that out there.
Enough already. I’ll let my writing, ranting, and cooking do the rest.
Maggy
If it’s possible, I am equal parts hippy adventurer and 1950s housewife.
I love growing my own vegetables, experimenting with recipes, and seeing what happens when people sit down to good food. But I love traveling the world. I’ve lived for six years in England (married a Brit) and just finished my Masters in International Development here in London. I’m passionate about issues of maternal/child health, migration, refugees and human rights. But nothing gives me more pleasure than putting on a retro apron and whipping up a batch of cupcakes or planning a dinner party for a crowd.
In retrospect I realize that my interest in cooking started at home, watching my Mom cook—and write about it—for a living. But growing up, it was my sister Sharon who was the understudy in the kitchen. I was far too busy with friends, malls, concerts and punk rock to learn how to make simple tomato sauce. My interest in food was pretty much limited to the eating part.
Then I got married and realized that I knew how to fry a hamburger and make pancakes. This was not going to cut it. I loved food too much and I sure couldn’t afford to eat out. My interest in cooking was of necessity. I started following a few food blogs, and before long I was deep in the whole blogosphere. Living in the UK, an ocean away from my family, I missed the endless conversations about food and life, and the inspiration I always found in the family kitchen. So I found it in cooking blogs. I love the seasonality and the “now-ness” of blogging, the creativity and ingenuity of the community that surrounds it.
As of fall 2009, I am living in Malawi, Africa with my husband, Andy. For the past two years I’ve been developing a project to build a maternity clinic in a rural Malawian village—planning, fundraising, coordinating with village leaders. Finally I’m here, ably assisted by Andy and another volunteer, overseeing the actual construction of the clinic. We’re supposed to be finished by Christmas (fingers crossed).
Kevin
Thankfully my skill in the kitchen is totally irrelevant to my ability to draw food, so I’ll skip the food talk altogether.
Since age 14, my answer to the question, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ has been “Artist.” During college, the answer bounced around from Comic Book Artist to Illustrator, Animator to Fine Artist. After much deliberation and experimentation, I resolved not to make a choice. Maybe I’ll be forced to decide if I ever do choose to grow up.
In recent years I’ve been formulating other answers to that question, answers that sit solidly ‘outside the box’. The fine artist and illustrator in me have found a good alliance with my inner mystic and together they use my art as a tool to stitch together the fabric of my subjective and objective realities, creating a sort of Surrealist Quilt; a Metaphysical Macramé if you will. From this perspective, the answers to “What do you want to be” sound more like: Metaphysical Cartographer or Photojournalist for the 5th dimension, terms that are intentionally tongue in cheek, and yet, in keeping with the fusion between subjective and objective, pretty serious.
Ultimately, pictures are better than words. So head over to my site and look at the inner workings of my strange mind.