About

The Culinary world is my passion- from cookbooks to restaurants to products, edible and otherwise.  As a child, I learned about kitchen adventures from my grandmother, mother, and a special great-aunt.  Whether it was sneaking bites from my mother’s bridge club gathering or stringing green beans from an Iowa garden, I picked up on everything culinary and filed it away.  After receiving a B.S in Food Science, I became interested in cooking competitions.  I have competed in the Pillsbury Bake-Off, National Beef Cook-Off, National Chicken Contest, Build a Better Burger, Betty Crocker Cookie Mix, Kraft sponsored contests, Hunt’s Tomato Sauce, and many, many more over the past thirty years.  Give me any product, and I’ll make you something.

All of this cooking led to my passion for cookbooks.  I call my blog “The Culinary Cellar” because all my cookbooks are in the basement.  It’s the only place they all fit!  I’ve rarely met a cookbook I didn’t like which might explain why I have so many, and I continue to collect them on a regular basis.  Since I began my blog in 2010, I have enjoyed receiving emails from other cookbook collectors and cooks all over the world, from coast-to-coast in the USA and from Finland to New Zealand.  I love my readers.

I am Debbie — wife, mother of two daughters, sister, friend, daughter, cancer survivor, avid reader (besides cookbooks!), lover of theater, movies, and 60’s music; a former hula hoop champion, and only one of twelve people inducted into “The Kraft Cream Cheese Hall of Fame,” with a medal to prove it.

Nice to meet you.  Now come into my cellar, we’ll find a recipe, and head up to the kitchen…