TARHEELFOODIE

I've been curious about food since I was a small child. We grew up with many Aunts & Uncles. My mother had twelve siblings and there were five in my father's family. Needless to say, there were many cousins and a lot of food at our family parties. But my inspiration for cooking didn't come initially from my family. Growing up, both of my parents worked full-time and my sister and I had a sitter each day who immigrated from Holland. I remember going out to her garden to pick fresh vegetables and learning how pull the strings on green beans and snap the ends off before we cooked them in a big pot. Like us, she lived in a small row home in Baltimore with a tiny back yard and a sidewalk in the front. There didn't seem to be any room for grass as the back yard was a mass planting of vegetables and amazing flowers. Her love of the garden was evident, and as I look back, there was a gentle rhythm and structure to each day, year after year. Her ability to inspire me to learn about new foods is..