Giving back and sharing what I’ve learned is important to me. While teaching is a creative outlet that keeps me engaged in my community, the solitary act of writing expands my knowledge and allows me to learn what I think providing me with the tools to explore and expand and evolve.

I’ve been interested in food and cooking since I was a child growing up in small town Ohio (Shelby). But I didn’t learn to cook at my mother’s knee with the cultural cooking knowledge of generations before her being passed on. No, our eating habits were a mishmash of foods taken from the likes and (mostly) dislikes of my parents who grew up during the depression. Mostly I remember hearing why we didn’t eat something—because one or the other of my parents didn’t like it. Rather mom took on the role of making foods my father liked without the direct oversight of her mother-in-law. As I look back on it, my mother was a creative cook within the narrow confines of what dad would eat and what the eight of us kids would be willing to try. I often heard her remark that it wasn’t that she disliked cooking, the chore—the actual work—was in making the cooking decisions for the week and procuring the groceries. She wanted input. This she said as she sat at the kitchen table every Saturday morning making out the grocery list.

Later I learned to love cooking in high school Home Ec and wanted to become a Home Ec teacher. Due to circumstances, that didn’t happen, but I never lost my love of cooking and now it represents to me my vibrant health as well as my main creative outlet.