[Sca-cooks] Marion Cunningham has died

[Johnna Holloway]

Returned home to the news that "award-winning cookbook author and champion of home cooking Marion Cunningham passed died yesterday, July 11, 2012. A former homemaker, Cunningham conquered her agoraphobia to attend cooking classes led by James Beard. The rest, as they say, is history.  Kim Severson writes in the New York Times, "Mr. Beard took to this tall, blue-eyed homemaker, and for the next 11 years she was his assistant, helping him establish cooking classes in the Bay Area. The job gave her a ringside seat to a period in American cooking when regional food, organic produce and a new way of cooking and eating were just becoming part of the culinary dialogue. Her association with Mr. Beard also gave her the big break of her career, in the late 1970s, when he passed her name to Judith Jones, the well-known New York culinary editor, who was looking for someone to rewrite The Fannie Farmer Cookbook.
"One of the people she discovered was a young Alice Waters, who was cooking organic and local food at a little restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., called Chez Panisse. Mrs. Cunningham took Mr. Beard to the restaurant in 1974, and he put it on the culinary map, marking the beginnings of California cuisine and the modern organic movement." Marion Cunningham will be missed by her friends and family and foodies the world over. She set a shining example for home cooks and enthusiasts and more than a few people welcomed the humor she injected into the cooking process via her cookbooks and shows. ." from Pam at Jessica's Biscuit.


Johnnae