Hi, I’m GraceAnn Walden. I came to the Bay area in 1973, after living in Manhattan and growing up in Newark, New Jersey.
Like most San Franciscans, I became smitten with Herb Caen’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle. If you wanted to know what was going on in the City, you had to read Herb.
I came here to be a union organizer and wound up in dead end jobs. You know, the kind where you are counting the minutes until you’re free and your life begins at 5:01 on Friday night.
All the while I was cooking and learning about cooking. I had a good foundation from my mother and slavishly learned French cooking from Julia Child and later Chinese cooking from Joyce Chen watching them on TV.
Eventually, I left offices behind and began cooking in some small restaurants in the East Bay. Zowie!
Around the same time, I began writing a recipe column for the Montclarion newspaper and later, in 1989, I proposed a column about restaurant and chef news, a la Herb Caen, to the editor/publisher of Bay Food magazine.
“Food Scene,” as it was called, became a hot read. In 1991 the San Francisco Chronicle approached me. In New York and all over the Bay area, restaurant news columns blossomed.
With the rise of the Internet, they continue to pop up in a plethora of blogs, Web sites and e-letters.
I retired from the Chron at the end of 2005 and edited and wrote a cookbook, tried to conduct cruise adventures, while continuing to freelance and offer my history, food and cultural tours of San Francisco neighborhoods.
Two weeks ago, my editor at Northside San Francisco magazine and friend, Susan Dyer Reynolds, told me she wanted to publish a free e-letter, supported by advertising. I could write anything.
“How about SCOOP?” I said.
For wine, I suggested the grape goddess® and Master Sommelier, Catherine Fallis, while Susan called on Bill Knutson, a great home cook and author of the column, “The Kitchenless Cook” in Northside, for recipes. Susan will write restaurant reviews and chef profiles, something she has done for nearly a decade, both online and in print.
We started feverishly selling ads, gathering material, eating out, and looking up old contacts. Of course, all of our efforts would be just a pile of paper without uber-designer Jeremy Joven. Kudos.
I hope you will become loyal fans of the Yummy letter and those of you that can will buy an ad. We’re affordable, with rates starting at $50 a month.
Why call it the Yummy letter? When I began writing for large publications, the one word that was consistently edited out of my column was the word “yummy.”
But we all know, sometimes it’s just “love” and sometimes “yummy” says it all.
GraceAnn
The word “yummy” is a paring knife in the side of food editors everywhere. Perhaps it’s too cutesy, or not evocative enough, or, perhaps, not haughty enough for “professionals.” A quick search for “New York Times” and “yummy” didn’t bring back a single reference in a restaurant review or a recipe; yet “yummy” is perhaps the most universal word that slips from between our lips after taking a bite of something scrumptious. Now, there’s a word we food editors like. But when was the last time you took a bite of Chunky Monkey ice cream and said “Scrumptious!”?
GraceAnn Walden came up with the name for our e-letter for that very reason. After years of working as a print reporter and food writer, most notably for 14 years as the author of the San Francisco Chronicle’s popular “Inside Scoop,” GraceAnn found that every time she used the word “yummy” it was edited out. I must admit I have done it myself as an editor, but as words go, no other so succinctly sums up the way I feel about good food.
I am the owner, editor in chief, and food and wine editor of
Northside San Francisco magazine and the Marina Times newspaper. I have been writing restaurant reviews for nearly a decade in my column, “
The Hungry Palate.” I also write the “10 Questions with Chef…” series. Besides food, I pen a monthly opinion piece called "Editor’s Note" and a popular column about my beloved blue-eyed pit bull, Jasmine Blue, called “Jasmine Blue’s Tails of the Dog Park,” where I try to dispel the many media-hyped myths about pit bulls, while trying to change some minds (and open some hearts).
I am the daughter of a Sicilian-American mother and an Irish-American father, both from Rhode Island. Though I was born in the Bay area, where my father came to be a teacher, I spent my childhood summers in New England, digging for clams, pulling up lobster pots, and cooking up a storm with my Sicilian fisherman grandfather. When my dad decided to move my mom across the country, he promised my grandfather he would bring her home every summer. He was true to his word.
Until the day my grandfather died, my dad piled my mom, our two dogs, and me into the car and took us on a road trip – and on a gastronomic adventure. He spent the entire year mapping out our trip, based not only on historical landmarks he wanted to show me, but also on the regional cuisine. He didn’t, however, just map the trip by the restaurant – he mapped it by the dish: his favorite biscuits and gravy in Laramie, Wyoming; the perfect cheesy grits in Atlanta, Georgia; the chicken croquettes of his dreams in Keene, New Hampshire. I learned at an early age that food was the common thread that wove all of humanity together, stitch by stitch by yummy stitch.
Susan
Hi—some of you already know me, and to you I say, “Nice to see you again!” To my new friends, it’s a pleasure to meet you, and I hope we’ll get something good going here at Yummy.
My wine resume, briefly, is this: Wine Spectator (1989–93) and Wine Enthusiast (1993 and counting). I review all California wines for the magazine, and also write the main feature stories on California wine, winemakers, wine regions, vintages, travel, and trends.
You can read more about my humble beginnings at my blog. As a youngster, I was never into wine, except for a period during college when cheap, screw-top stuff was something we got blitzed on at Saturday-night frat parties. It wasn’t until coming to California for grad school (San Francisco State) that some relatives turned me on to the pleasures of vino. Immediately, I became hooked. Within months I was buying wine books and scouring wine shops, where I’d pick the clerks’ brains, asking them why one Cabernet cost more than another, if they were both the same.
Well, I have since learned that wine is not like Campbell’s soup. In 1989, fed up with my career-track job (imagine me in a suit and tie, carrying a briefcase), I lobbied Wine Spectator (then headquartered in San Francisco) for a job. After months of pestering them, they finally relented. I began with small articles, then graduated to big ones and, ultimately, to the “Collecting” page. At that time, it was the last page in the magazine, and for about four years, it was mine.
Then it was time to move on to Wine Enthusiast, where I’ve been happily ensconced for about 16 years. (I can hardly believe it!) I travel throughout our state’s wonderful wine regions, and count as my friends some of the best, nicest winemakers, owners and marketing and P.R. specialists in the business. I also rate and review about 4,500 wines each year for the magazine.
In SIP, I hope to share with you some of the things I’ve learned about wine (and, occasionally, spirits and beer). I also look forward to you hearing from you. Please feel free to e-mail anytime at steve@yummyletter.com.
What does Yummy mean to me? Yummy is comfort food, food that speaks to my soul, reminds me of my childhood, or sends my taste buds on a road trip to where the dish originated.
For the last six years, I have been writing recipes for the Marina Times newspaper and Northside San Francisco magazinein my column “The Kitchenless Cook.” This has led me on a creative culinary journey through the dining rooms and kitchens of some of the best restaurants in San Francisco. I first started cooking because I love to eat good food and have an insatiable curiosity about how things work. But I was not one to head to the books or take classes; I needed to experiment. I tasted everything I could, observed others while they cooked, and asked many questions. And, most importantly, I took chances – and I learned as much from my failures as my successes.
Okay, now for the truth: I learned to cook because in my family if you cooked, you didn’t do dishes. I wanted to get better so that my family would want me to cook every night. I hated doing dishes (and I still do).
Although I don’t have any formal culinary training, I do have extensive knowledge of the food industry. I have worked for Safeway for the last 23 years, currently as manager of the San Anselmo store in Marin. I’ve won a number of recipe competitions and had my recipes published in two cookbooks, most recently “Ribs, Ribs, Outrageous Ribs” by award winning cookbook author, chef, and host of the PBS show “Barbecue University,” Steven Raichlen.
As I have grown as a cook, I have focused my attention on finding the best ingredients, combining them to create the best flavors, and applying heat. Originally this meant grilling, which is still an important aspect of my culinary style. But, when I got married in 2006 I became an instant family man with two teenaged boys. Like most Bay Area families, we are incredibly busy, so I have turned my efforts toward making quick, healthy meals, many of which I will be sharing with you.
I hope in the coming weeks you will see how easy it is to make, in the words of the great chef Jacques Pepin, “fast food your way.” My recipes will range from gourmet to pure comfort; all will feature fresh, local, seasonal ingredients that you can find in your local market, and all will be geared toward the busy home cook. Every now and then I will throw in something more complex, like my lobster thermidor, grilled in the shell –these are for the weekends, or to impress your date or your friends or your spouse on a special occasion. Most will be very healthy (though I do subscribe to the philosophy that “fat is flavor”) and, I hope, all will be delicious.
I have been cooking in the kitchen and puttering in the garden for more years than I care to tell you about. (A lady has to have some secrets.) There was a time in my life when it seemed everyone I knew was getting graduate degrees. I had two small children and was married to a man whose job required that we move every two or three years, so my options were limited.
After some thought I decided I would specialize in food. Since I had to cook three meals a day, cooking would be my focus. In our two- or three-year stay in each state, I would start at the local library and read my way through all the cookbooks I could lay my hands on. Then I would apply this information in my "kitchen lab." Each new state offered new recipes, new techniques and new foods. Dinners were often surprising, and my children were exposed to many foods they might not have learned about otherwise. We all benefited.
When I returned to California, I offered my services to a regional agriculture magazine and, right time, right place, I got the food column. I began by interviewing the women who helped grow the food and then published their recipes. Inevitably it evolved that my interest in our food sources was heightened, and I began writing agriculture articles as well for that magazine and then several others. After I had spent 15 years there, the original magazine folded and I retired to write, sequentially, two newsletters.
I am now gardening, still cooking, still learning, and delighted to have been asked to contribute home cooking recipes to Yummy.
What does "yummy" mean to me? It is not just a word or a single taste; it is a feeling — that feeling you get when you want to snuggle down into a bowl of mashed potatoes drenched in butter. It is the feeling that overcomes you when you have a mouthful of just-made fudge, or the feeling you get when the grower hands you baskets of just-picked, truly ripe strawberries.
I remember once attending a Sunday gospel service in Harlem. The music was loud, the singing joyous, and the beat accompanied by hand clapping and foot stomping. The hats on the matrons were festive, and as they moved up and down the aisles, they left swirls of color. The scene was almost hypnotic it was so enthralling. Breaking through all this came the word yummy. In the church basement chicken was frying, and that marvelous aroma broke through all else — that was the feeling of yummy.
Cheers,
Patricia
“Yummy” is delicious with all signs of pretension removed. It is permission to connect with the pure essence of enjoyment. It is satisfaction on a primal level.
Cheers,
Liz Thigpen Hunt
Elizabeth Thigpen Hunt is a freelance culinary consultant and sustainable farming enthusiast – and may or may not be running an underground restaurant. Let’s just say she’s in the kitchen cooking with local seasonal produce in innovative and interesting ways, always with her friends, family, and community in mind. She splits her time between the San Francisco Bay Area and her home town Davis.
