Ok, so a little about me, I guess. I’m Amanda, and I love food.
It all started in college, I guess. After taking a couple foods classes as electives and not having a clue what I wanted to do, suddenly, like a slap in the face I realized my hobby didn’t have to just be a hobby. I changed my major my junior year, to Family and Consumer Science with a concentration on Foods and Nutrition in Business. It’s a mouthful, so I usually just simplify by telling people my degree is in Foods and Nutrition. The focus on sustainability has been my own, prompted by a project I did in my last semester. I thought I was going to blow the lid off the organic hype, prove that it didn’t mean much and wasn’t worth the price. Boy, was I wrong.
Since college my passion has only grown stronger. I spent the first year after college working in an upscale wood oven pizza restaurant, first as a cook, later bartending and serving. I enjoyed the job a lot, loved the food and the philosophy (lots of local ingredients – and everything from scratch). But alas, I had to pay the bills and I couldn’t do that because they couldn’t afford to employ me full time.
I spent a miserable year working for a bank, and finally landed at Bob’s Red Mill recently. Now food is my life, I cook for fun and I get to talk to people about food all day. I love my job at Bob’s and I think many good things are to come. I hope to work developing recipes or in the product testing and quality control lab eventually.
Outside of work, I have been blissfully married for almost three years now to my high school sweetheart. We live in our very first home in a small-ish town outside of Portland, Oregon. I am a novice but enthusiastic gardener, which goes hand in hand with my love of food. We have no children, but do have a needy cat and hopefully soon, a dog (if I get my way). My sustainability goal reaches beyond food into all areas of our life and home. You can follow my adventures (and misadventures) on living green at my personal blog:
Cooking Local and Living Green.
So now allow me elaborate on my initial introduction. I’m Amanda, and I love food. Real food. Unfortunately, these days most of what is found on the grocery store shelves is not food, but a science experiment. I will never understand why man has felt it necessary to take something already perfect and wonderful and nutritious and mess with it. It has only proven to be a detriment to our health. So I write. I don’t claim to be a writer, but I write so that I might show others how enjoyable real food is, to eat and to make.
