Marie Simmons
When she was a child and part of a large Italian
extended family in small-town Milton, New York, alongside the Hudson
River, Marie Mataraza learned about food. "I stood on a stool and
watched my mother pluck chickens and clean shrimp," she says. "I had
Saturday playdates in my grandmother's kitchen." After high school, she
enrolled at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. "It's mostly known for
engineering and art," she says. "I studied food and nutrition." At
Pratt she met her husband, John Simmons. She graduated and got her
first job at Woman's Day Magazine in Manhattan, developing seasonal
stories for the food pages. "I made lunch for James Beard when he
visited," she says. Later, she worked as a pastry chef at the historic
Gage and Tollner Restaurant in Brooklyn, and rose to food editor at
Cuisine Magazine in New York. "It was heartbreaking when the magazine
folded," she says, "but it gave me the opportunity to write all these
books." Simmon's first book, 365 Ways to Cook Pasta, was a best-seller
in 1988, and she has since published more than 20 cookbooks. In the
photo she holds Fig Heaven, written soon after she and John moved to El
Cerrito, California in 1997. "Many are single subject books," she says.
"I love to research." The Simmons followed their daughter Stephanie
when they relocated to Eugene in 2012. They keep bees, raise veggies
and chickens for eggs, and have fig trees planted in the yard. Her
latest book, Whole World Vegetarian, came out in 2016. "I think of it
as my opus," she says. "It brings together all of my travels and
experiences. Each book represents where I was in my life at the time."
happening people
photograph and story by Paul Neevel
Eugene Weekly / 22 February 2018
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