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
I am a recovering food snob.
After graduating from college, I spent two years working at a food magazine learning about daikon, chayote, olive-oil braising, cooking en papillote, mangosteens, micro-greens, and all manner of other wonderfully non-practical foods and techniques. (And some practical ones, too!)
At 24, I’m still in that phase of cooking where I want everything to be perfect (and maybe slightly exotic) and all the ingredients to be fresh, organic, local, and beautiful. But now I’m in grad school and working on a solid $30,000-worth of student loans. Though the whiff of impending debt can sometimes put a damper on the beauty and perfection of my raw materials, I try not to let it affect the deliciousness of the outcome.
I fancy myself the culinary version of an armchair-traveler. Since I can’t actually travel the world on my budget, I try to make the world come to me. I love to cook with Indian, Asian, Middle Eastern, and African flavors and am a total sucker for cuisine from any country that even touches the Mediterranean. (Which has absolutely nothing to do with my culinary-whiz boyfriend, Anthony, who is…you guessed it…Italian.)
I’m also a devoted baker. Something about the certainty that flour, water, and yeast will always combine to make one of the simplest, oldest, tastiest foods on the planet is intensely comforting to me. And some days, when school is overwhelming and the world seems bleak, methodically following a recipe for a batch of cookies, scones, or muffins is all the relaxation I need.
The more I cook, the more I’m OK with some less-than-crispy chicken skin here and a little burnt rice there. In short, I am learning to roll with the punches. But I’m always on the lookout for my next big culinary adventure. Next up: brioche or handmade Chinese dumplings.
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.
