What’s a sausagetarian?

For a while, I only ate meat in the form of sausage. Though my diet of animal flesh is a bit more inclusive these days, I still try to keep meat-eating to a minimum. But I love hot dogs, and there is no acceptable vegetarian substitute. In honor of my passion for the most noble of all charcuterie forms, I named my blog The Sausagetarian.

So Sara, what makes you qualified to do this stuff?

My past jobs run the gamut: donut shop counter girl, microbrewery fry cook, sausage cart vendor, wine country banquet server, magazine recipe tester, chocolate factory tour guide, cookwares store floor lead…and probably a few others I forgot. Though oftentimes far from glamorous, such jobs give you the best stories, as well as a thick skin (literally and metaphorically).

If you’re a food writer, you must review restaurants. How cool!

Well, no, I don’t review restaurants. Some food writers do, but most of us focus on other areas, like recipes, essays, and profiles of interesting folks.

For about a year and a half I was the restaurant critic for the North Bay Bohemian in Santa Rosa, California. I dined at amazing establishments throughout Sonoma, Napa, and Marin counties and the paper picked up (most of) the tab. Any sane person would have loved it! Me, no. Driving home halfway buzzed with a belly full of beurre blanc and seared tuna, I’d feel like a disgusting gourmand, and sometimes the food at these places was disappointing, and I’d think to myself, “That meal was a lost meal, those calories wasted calories.”

I really do get the most satisfaction from cooking at home and sitting down to a simple meal with family and friends, or even by myself, with a crossword puzzle to keep me company.

You don’t like to eat out? That’s impossible!

Of course I like to eat out! I just don’t eat out often.

What do you cook at home, then? Do you have a specialty?

I like to assess what's around and cook with that. All of my best ideas come from combining left over dibs and dabs of stuff. You could call this frugal cooking or garbage cooking. Often what I make would be vegan except it's sauteed in beef or chicken fat.  

What led you to attend cooking school?

After dropping out of Ohio State University, I floundered around for a while before moving back in with my parents. Marietta, a charming little historic town at the confluence of the Ohio and Muskingum rivers, offered little in the way of social activities for a disgruntled 20-year-old punk rock aficionado. I grew restless.

I read a lot. My mom would have magazines around the house that she got for free from the proprietress of the wine shop downtown, and I began reading them: Cook’s Illustrated, Martha Stewart Living, Food and Wine, and especially Saveur. To fill my empty hours at home, hours when I was not holed up in the basement typing out false starts to doomed short stories, I embarked upon the sort of project-driven, hobbyist cooking that affluent geeks and retirees excel at: breads made from sourdough starter, homemade jams and marmalade, hand-rolled pasta. Some of these things didn’t turn out so well, but it was fulfilling and worthwhile. I’d always loved to eat, but I realized I also loved how food shapes and defines who we are. And I wanted to write about it.

After touring various East Coast cooking schools, I applied to The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. The school admitted me conditionally, as I’d never worked in a professional kitchen: I’d have to spend a year working in the industry before I could be enrolled at the CIA. The bastards!   

Chastened, I went into the kitchen of the fanciest restaurant in Marietta (read: not very fancy) and asked for a job. I worked as a prep cook there for a summer. They had a cockroach problem at the time.

I learned more from working at the Levee House Café than from any other kitchen job I’ve had. I learned a lot about what was not good to do, actually, but I was young and cocky and hopefully being thrown into a teeny-tiny kitchen with people whose backgrounds were very different from mine taught me a thing or two about being a team player.

Finally, I was able to begin my schooling at the CIA and it was awesome and engrossing and very hard.

What is Martha Stewart like?

When I did my externship in the test kitchens at Martha Stewart Living in 1998, she was not nice 100% of the time. I didn’t interact with her but for a few memorable instances (remind me to tell you the story of the bunny cake). I can tell you that I was a nincompoop back then and was, in all likelihood, a terrible extern. It appears that both Martha and I have since mellowed.

Who are some of your favorite cookbook writers?

Alice Medrich, M.F.K. Fischer, Paula Wolfert, Maida Heatter, and anything involving Betty Crocker and Good Housekeeping in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

I still have a fondness for the aesthetic of Martha Stewart’s whole enterprise; she’s a massively competent chef with a gift for hiring other massively competent chefs and cooks and editors to carry out and extend her vision.

Nancy Silverton’s book The Breads of La Brea Bakery was like my Beatles. I raised sourdough starters and baked my way through the whole thing. I had Breadmania. Silverton’s willingness to break down and re-build even the most simple preparations taught me that you should never assume anything; the only way to know something for sure is to try it yourself, and who knows how dazzling the results can be.

What are your favorite foods?

Beets, goat cheese, chocolate, cacao nibs, asparagus, pawpaws, kale, shrimp and blue crab caught off the waters of Edisto Island in South Carolina…but generally, it’s easier to say what I don’t like. I don’t like frozen lima beans or tarragon very much. I don’t think chicken belongs on pizza. That’s a pet peeve of mine.

What was it like working at a chocolate factory?

As awesome as you’d figure. As a tour guide at Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker in Berkeley, California, I ate chocolate every day, and I had pounds and pounds of chocolate at home. And not just workaday chocolate, but Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker chocolate. It spoiled me.

Chocolate is one of the most complex and rewarding foods in the world—food, not candy. Real chocolate has integrity. I learned new things every day, and while I know more about chocolate than the average person, there is so much more I don’t know. At Scharffen Berger, I was fortunate enough to encounter the generous minds of Robert Steinberg, John Scharffenberger, and Brad Kintzer; were I a smarter person, I would have asked them a lot more questions.

A chocolate factory smells intoxicatingly rich, but when I came home at the end of the day, I stunk like old gym socks. This is because when cacao beans (especially well-fermented ones) are crushed, they release an acidic aroma. In the context of the factory it was an ambient smell, but it worked its way into clothing fibers and, outside of the factory, reeked like hell. I had special sweaters I wore only at work just for that reason.

Why did you move away from Portland, Oregon?

Leaving Portland was one of the hardest but happiest things we’ve ever done. I miss a lot of things about our time there. I miss our Oregon friends and family. I miss the abundance of excellent Vietnamese food. I miss the quince trees that grew a few blocks away from our old house. Every fall I’d raid them and get quinces, which I forgot to put on my list of favorite foods. There was always good coffee around. I miss reading The Oregonian and the Portland Mercury. Newspapers and coffee: two of the best things in the world.

Your chef coats are so cute.

Thank you! I made them myself.

Can you make me one?

Probably not. I was able to complete my chef coats through a combination of determined seam ripping and dumb luck.

Didn’t you used to write for Section M?

Indeed I did. You must have been one of the several hundred readers of Section M, the inimitable magazine of the North Bay music scene. The paper was around from 1998-2003, and I began writing for it shortly after arriving in Sonoma County in 2000. Section M had the most emotionally invested readership in the world—despite, or perhaps because of, covering bands barely anyone had ever heard of.

For a few years, I lived for Section M. It made me a writer and allowed me to be a writer, and was an entrée to the scruffy world of indie rock bands. Understandably, my food writing was on the back burner at the time: who needs to rhapsodize about foie gras when there are rock bands around! It was heady, but also very unbalanced for me. I burned brightly and burned out quickly, but it was worth it.