There's a lady who has been around the bases a few times. Good grief, her bio reads like a racy romance novel, and I'm sure she'd take umbrage at that, but tough. She came from a properous English family that bankrolled her early jaunt through Europe dodging Nazi invasion, drinking and carousing with actors, writers, and libertines. She finally married some Schmo (I say this facetiously) and when things got dicey, she moved back to England and shacked up with some other Schmo. Man, oh man. That seems to have been her mantra.
There! The racy stuff is out of the way. In between all that libidinous putzing about, she developed a taste and skill for cooking the French and Mediterranean flavours. In post-war England, she championed a return to flavour - olive oil, garlic, the herbs of southern Europe, simple rustic treatments for vegetables and meats that would bring back to life a beleaguered post-war kitchen. Of course, there was other stuff in there - writing books on cuisine, doing magazine articles, co-owning a kitchen store that marketed pottery, pots and pans, and all manner of gadgetry, developing a kitchen 'lifestyle' look that became stylish during the 60's ... you know, the usual kitchen diva stuff. For these actions, she has made the Gourmet Live List of 50 Women Game-Changers ... #14 on the list.
