Often people want to know how I became a food editor. My recipe for the job contains some fairly eclectic ingredients and yielded a lot of great experiences.
As a child in my hometown of Rush Valley (southwest of Tooele), I enjoyed wading in Clover Creek and picking crunchy apples off the trees growing along the bank. That taught me the value of fresh produce. I cut my culinary teeth on summer 4-H classes, where a friend and I ruined a batch of fudge because we didn’t know the difference between corn oil and corn syrup. We learned from our mistakes, though, and turned out such other fare as potato soup, muffins and pizza that summer.
I earned a communications degree from Utah State University before ramen noodles became the big college survival food. My roommates and I concocted unusual casseroles based on what was in the cupboard, supplemented with Aggie ice cream and cheese curds from the Gossner cheese factory.
When my husband’s job took us to Saudi Arabia for four years, my naive palate became more globalized. I learned how to make tabbouleh and hummus in the kitchen of an Arab friend. As editor of a company newsletter, I printed — and tried — recipes of employees from different parts of the United States and the world. During vacations, we sampled real Chinese food in Hong Kong, pasta dishes in Rome, strawberries and cream at Wimbledon and fresh seafood in Sydney and Mombasa. Yet, I missed the familiar foods from home, savoring a Big Mac in Madrid and relishing Kentucky Fried Chicken in Singapore.
For the past seven years I was food editor at the Standard-Examiner, a great part-time job. During that time, I won a few regional and national writing awards for “The Dirty Dozen of Dashboard Dining” (the 12 messiest foods to order in the drive-through); “Matters of the Heart,” a nutritional comparison of margarine and butter; and “Dining Through the Decades,” a look at local food history and trends.
For ten years I worked full-time for the Deseret News, joining the legions of harried parents who, during their commute home, start wondering what to round up for dinner. That’s one of the promptings for my cookbook, “Soup’s On!” (Covenant, 2012) with 100 great-tasting soups, 75 of them that could be made within 30 minutes. When the book was published, I cooked my favorite soups on local TV shows such as KUTV Noon News, KSL Morning News, Good Things Utah, and the Daily Dish.
I’ve now gone full circle, as I’m back writing a freelance column and stories for the Standard-Examiner.
Some of great food experiences include:
– Catching, cleaning and cooking crawdads with the late, great outdoorsman Doug Miller.
– Walking through watermelon fields in Green River, cornfields in Layton, peach orchards in Willard and raspberry patches in Santaquin.
– Making beef borscht with Masha Kirilenko, as a comfort food for Utah Jazz player Andrei Kirlenko the day after he broke his wrist.
– Toffee-making with master chocolatier Ruth Kendrick.
– Varying the annual Thanksgiving story with recipes for cooking turkey in a Dutch oven, a deep fryer, upside down, herb-stuffed, and thrown in the oven while completely frozen.
– Crab College and Shrimp School with the Market Street Grill chefs.
– Slipping and sliding through a blizzard in Parley’s Canyon at 1 a.m., after attending fancy-schmancy Sundance dinner parties with Paris Hilton, Adrian Grenier and other celebrities.
– Meeting cooking celebrities such as Emeril Lagasse, Martha Stewart, Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, Sandra Lee, Cat Cora and Kelsey Nixon.
– Walking the floor of the Pillsbury Bake-Off and the National Chicken Cooking Contest, and crossing my fingers that a Utah contestant would win.
– And speaking of contests, I’ve enjoyed criss-crossing the state to donate whatever judging expertise people assume I have. It is a great way to connect with readers, and nearly always yields new story ideas. There were numerous chef show-downs and throw-downs, the Dutch Oven World Championships, the Iron Pig Contest at Daybreak, the Scandinavian Bread Contest in Ephraim, Build A Better Burger in Tooele, the Interior Design Association’s Edible Chair Contest (a seat you can eat!), Riverview Junior High’s annual Dutch oven cook-off, Rhodes Bake-n-Serv Recipe Contest, Utah Beef cook-off, the Governor’s Pie Contest with Jon Huntsman Jr., Little Miss Cherry Days in North Ogden, a Hardee’s Biscuit Contest with Karl Malone and his mother, Miss Shirley; the International Chocolate Salon and even the 4-H Green Food Contest.
I wish I could say that I always cook from scratch, always make gourmet meals and never resort to casseroles with cream-of-something soup or mac ‘n’ cheese out of a box. But, my friends and neighbors who will read this know the truth. My raspberry brownie cheesecake, however, won my LDS ward’s bake-off awhile back, and I was known as a soccer mom who baked end-of-the-season team cakes. Other specialties in my repertoire include Dutch oven stew, Nacho Chicken Soup and honey-glazed salmon.
My pet peeve is pretentious food, where every trendy, expensive ingredient is thrown into one dish and it’s proclaimed fantastic, whether it tastes good or not. I think great food shouldn’t have to try that hard.
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