My name is Pam White and I adore fresh vegetables and fruits, love pastries madly, dream of fabulous feasts, and create gorgeous meals from my own recipes.
It was only a matter of time before I found my way to make a living writing about food. Life is a journey whose end is a mystery hidden by the many twists and turns along the way, but if our passions drive us, then we will arrive at the place we were meant to be.
I barely cooked until I gave birth to my first miracle over 20 years ago. I desperately wanted to stay home so I promised to learn to cook which would surely save money. I bought a collection of “Easy-to-Cook” recipe books on sale and began cooking my way through them. Within six months, I wanted more and made my way through the Orange County (CA) Register’s food page recipes, including several tea cakes, cream puffs, tarts, rich, moist coconut cakes and my first lesson in making sauces with cream. Many people asked me to bring cakes to dinners, and the ones that didn’t, well, they got cakes anyway.
Vegetarianism was very attractive to me, so it was only natural that I expanded my culinary efforts into ovo-lacto, vegan and macrobiotic meals. My children still remember begging for seaweed miso soup, kidney bean and arugula tacos in a homemade corn tortilla, and bancha tea.
I learned Mexican cooking from my former in-laws and returned to my Yankee (pot roast) roots when we moved to New York over ten years ago.
By then I was writing my short stories and plotting novels, still cooking with fresh ingredients and adding new recipes to my repertoire weekly, when I felt compelled to write a cookbook. The topic was a straightforward, home cook, save money, easy-to-prepare and healthy kind of idea, but halfway through testing recipes, I saw an ad for a cookbook that was nearly identical to my idea.
Even as I packed up my notecards and dreams, I realized there would be no turning away from a future as a writer.
When I became a restaurant critic, I searched for inspiration in books, magazines and online, and found very little. Within a year from starting the most odd and wonderful of all jobs, I was asked by a new publisher to write about being a food critic or restaurant reviewer, and about the other aspects of food writing. Six months after its publication, I conceived, developed, wrote and began teaching the first online food writing class.
I’ve had food writing articles published in Writer’s Digest ByLine Magazine, The Great Blue Beacon, Working Writers, The Writing Parent, Writing Success, Inscriptions Magazine and Absolute Write. I’ve had my food articles in local newspapers, Low-carb Energy, Healthy Living Today, Garden and Hearth, Home Cooking, BackHome, and Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine where I wrote a monthly column that combined mystery and munchies called “Victims and Victuals.”
Yes, I love to write about food, but the joy I feel when one of my students breaks into a new career as food journalist, magazine editor, newspaper columnist, radio talk show host, and cookbook or food book author is much greater than if I had done the work myself.
I work from home in what used to be a parlor. We turned it into an office by cramming it full of books and files, and reams of paper, printers, scanners, and other assorted “necessities.” For now, we continue to live and thrive in New York state, but there are times, when the thermometer hits 17 below 0, we dream of retiring to a warm place.
My oldest child is a budding fashion designer and my middle child leaves for college soon. My son rocks out with his band after school, so I spend a lot of time talking to our five cats and one dyslexic lab dog (she thinks she’s a LAP dog). I am also a great dog cookie baker, thanks to my own recipe tester.
I continue to write books to support the food writer, and to teach classes that feed the aspiring food writer’s soul.
Please write me at: pwhite05 @ twcny.rr.com (remove the spaces around “@”) and let me know what you would like to see on this site and share your feelings about the broad spectrum of food writing.
Here’s to the best in all of us!
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