I live with my husband and two felines in Brattleboro, a lovely small town in the corner of Southern Vermont that borders Massachusetts and New Hampshire, near New York State. Growing up in the fertile St. Lawrence Valley where farms and foraged ingredients abound, my mother encouraged my siblings and me to explore our creativity in the kitchen as a way to spend time as a family. We had free range of the kitchen and my mother’s recipe books and notecards. We had the full trust of our parents—the oven, stand mixer, stove, and even a small deep fryer were not off limits, as well as the whole pantry. This is where my creative time in the kitchen first began, where I would let my imagination go wild and tweak recipes and experiment with ingredients. The family table often included milk and cream from local dairy farmers, fruits and vegetables from area farms, orchards and our own garden. We loved wild berries picked trailside in the nearby Adirondacks, fresh-caught trout from local lakes and streams, and venison, rabbit and pheasant that my father hunted and prepared (verily leading me to become a vegetarian for many years, but that’s another story).
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