About Jacqueline Church

Jacqueline Church is an independent food, wine & spirits writer whose work often focuses on “sensible sustainability” issues. She delights in helping people make practical choices to improve their lives and reduce their impact on the planet.

Her work appears in national and regional print media, including Culture: the World on Cheese and Edible Santa Barbara. She is a contributing writer to Nourish Network, writes the gourmet food column for Suite101, and publishes two blogs, The Leather District Gourmet and Pig Tales & Fish Friends, both of which are found here.

She came to writing from a career covering diverse fields including the practice of law, high tech and management consulting. Her commitment to conservation issues precedes it all and began with a love of Jacques Cousteau and National Geographic. Since discovering Julia Child as an adolescent, she’s been devoted to good food and today combines all of these in the examination of global food issues and the nature of being a responsible gourmet.

She’s the founder of Teach a Man to Fish and Teach a Chef to Fish sustainable seafood events that engage people in the work of making more sustainable seafood choices for their families and restaurants. Her work has been recognized by the Seafood Watch Program of the Monterey Bay Aquarium and called “remarkable” by Sea Change Strategies. She’s hosting a panel based on this Teach a Chef to Fish concept at the Spring 2010 Boston Seafood Show featuring Barton Seaver, Brendon Bashford and Andy Husbands.

Tanya Steel, the James Beard award-winning editor of Epicurious.com, has called her work “persuasive” “hilarious” and said reading her is like “sitting down with an old friend and catching up on the day.” The always provocative John Mariani deemed Church a “triple threat - writer, photographer, cook—who can bring together all those talents into a focus on important topics like sustainable food with a passion that is based on thorough knowledge of her subject, not academic exercises or uninformed jeremiads.”

She’s won several Editor’s Choice awards, appeared in a documentary, on local TV and in training videos. She’s a member of the IACP (the International Assoc. of Culinary Professionals), the ALBC (American Livestock Breeds Conservancy), and Boston Slow Food. She’s an avid enthusiast of the burgeoning cocktail renaissance and writes frequently about it. Travel is another interest and you can find her work on GoNomad.com as well as AirfareWatchdog.com. She’s written movie reviews for the National Association of Theater Owners Box Office magazine, contributed to an Executive Women’s site called The Glass Hammer and freelances for a wide variety of clients.

She’s currently at work on her first book about heritage breed pigs and the farmers, chefs and artisans bringing them from farm to table. The working title is “Pig Tales: a Love Story.” She's much happier now than when she was a lawyer, somewhat happier than when she was a consultant, and relieved to be rid of the pink slips or fear of them.

And here's how it began...

I cut my teeth on Julia Child (which may be a cliché - but in my case it's true). I have dreams about the next truffle ganache flavor, shortbread flavor or the next roast chicken. Literally. With each successive reinvention (from lawyer to consultant to business development director in hi-tech startups) my cover letter got more interesting. Interviewers kept saying “Yeah, I get what you can do for me, but about this cover letter… you write really well and tell a great story here. Why aren’t you a writer?"

I finally got tired of trying to re-focus people on the interview at hand. It occurred to me that the decision was sitting there slapping me in the face. (hint: Be a writer.) Next pink slip, next interview: “Okay, so I get why I should hire you but can I ask you about this great cover letter?” (slap)

Maybe I’m a slow learner. Thinking back, I avoided the Iowa Writers Workshop right after college because I couldn’t imagine myself in Iowa. Still can’t. But, that’s not really the point here. Of course, they may not have taken me, but I never even gave the recommendation that was being offered any real thought.

Fast forward several years to now: cooking, learning about food, teaching people about food, following the food zeitgeist (which is not the same as watching the Food Network or Top Chef) and writing about it is my new gig. I answer to miscellaneous editors and the need to find the next paying project, rather than to some eejit in the next cubicle. Though a hungry kitten can be quite annoying, he’s way more adorable than any boss I’ve had. (And much smarter than at least three of them I can recall right off the top of my head.)

In addition to food, I like a lot of other things. (Takes more than one thing whether it’s law, or food, to keep me happy.) To my continued amazement and gratitude, people keep agreeing to pay me to write about these other interests. Sports, films, travel, and a little fiction. You’ll find me writing about many things.

Just now, the sun is about to come up and I’m about this close to finishing what I wanted to write tonight before hitting the hay. But the molé spice rub is done, the pea soup with Benton’s Smoky Mountain ham is put away, the chocolate-orange-pistachio cookies are wrapped. And, there’s only a few dishes left in the sink. A pretty typical night.

Don’t worry, I’ll get up in time to cook, experiment, research, and write about something else before you get home tonight. It’s going to be a rough commute so drive carefully, they’re predicting ice. I’ll have the soup on the stove.

Thanks for stopping by, do let me know what you think, tell a friend, especially if they’re an editor somewhere. I'm working on two killer books, okay three...

Cheers!

Like What you See? Hire me!

If you think you have a project that needs some help, or maybe you need a quote from someone to round out that article you're writing, email me at ldgourmet [at] gmail [dot] com.

What I can talk about (I give good sound bytes!):

Sustainable seafood/sushi
Biodiversity
Heritage breed pigs
Family farms
Farm-to-table
Wine and Cocktails
Heirloom produce, artisanal foods
Food, chef, restaurant trends
S/O/L/E Food issues (Sustainable/Organic/Local/Ethical)
Social media
Head-to-tail eating
more

Where I've written (& where some photos have appeared):

GoNomad
John Mariani's Virtual Gourmet
Culture: the Word on Cheese
The Glass Hammer
Edible Santa Barbara
BoxOffice.com
IACP Food Writers, Editors Section Newsletter
Iwinereview.com (Navarra Report)

In addition, I'm a contributing writer at Nourish Network, a collaborator at Good Eater Collaborative, I write the gourmet food column for Suite101.com, and am working on my first book: Pig Tales: a Love Story - about our love for heritage breed pigs, the farmers, chefs and artisans bringing them from farm-to-table.

See me speak (recent and upcoming appearances):

Tufts University Alumni Food for Thought series: Farm, Fish and Fowl: Exploring Sustainability
International Boston Seafood Show 2010
Slow Food Boston: The End of the Line Screening and Panel 2010
Teach a Chef to Fish workshops 2009
How2Heroes Video - introducing Chef Gabriel Bremer at Salts Farm 2009