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Behind the Kitchen Door – Come back in and Cook on the Wild Side.
For me it’s been a long fun food journey since the summers when I milked cows at my cousins’ farm in the U.S. state of Washington. Baking bread and churning butter at the time resulted in a lifetime of inspiration for my career, which has taken the fresh and natural approach to the culinary arts. This experience also instilled a commitment to quality that has been consistently exhibited in the cookbooks that I have both written and styled, along with recipe development for major food chains, food columns for national publications as well as teaching nutrition and cooking classes for health spas and television programs.
I’ve always had a ‘low on the food chain’ approach to cuisine after receiving a B.S. in Home Economics, Journalism at Washington State University. During my junior year abroad, I was accepted (after a 3 year reservation) at the prestigious Cordon Bleu in London, taking the advice of my mentor, Julia Child, who steered me toward the London School for its thorough approach to French cuisine in an English-speaking environment. I later studied at La Varenne in Paris and taught courses at the Cordon Bleu Academy in Auckland, New Zealand. This experience gave me a mastery of French Provençale cuisine, creating superb dishes from farm fresh ingredients and presenting them in a Cordon Bleu (or blue ribbon) manner. First job out of college (1975) was at Sunset Magazine test kitchens developing and styling dishes for their publication and cookbooks. And were they ever conservative to even having a dress code at the time.
All of these practices gave me an introduction to the artistic presentation and styling of food. I embarked upon a career at 30 as a culinary consultant, after seven years in the corporate environs, for leading food, restaurant and product development kitchens.
“Way back in 1983 I wrote my first cookbook entitled 30 Minute Meals. This included both preparation and cooking time to finish all dishes at the exact same time for service. So, after developing and creating each dish and complete menu I put the stop watch on and timed the entire process. My nickname became the ’30 Minute woman’, my company Wilder Wellness!
Currently on an on-going basis I also conceptualize and implement food styling and writing my eBook cookbooks ~ Wilder by the Dozen. For each title I’ve garnered the best and most favoured dishes with a multitude of variations from 3 decades in this good food fun field!
Pick a book, any book or the sample menu and free recipes here on my site to put together a Simple Healthy Timeless meal ~ Fast & Fresh! Each dish has a plethora of substitutions and creative garnishments so there are really many more than a dozen.
The price alone is less than $1.00 a recipe formula and ¼ of what you’d pay for a cappuccino in Australia.
I hope you enjoy making and eating food as much as I have,
Susanne
