At 90, Dame Mary Berry Is Still Moving Forward
She keeps writing cookbooks, appearing on TV and just joined Instagram
Happy Spring! Welcome to the CulinaryWoman Newsletter. Here in Michigan, we’ve seen bulbs emerge from the ground, only to be doused with rain and some snowflakes. Nobody puts their puffy coats and snow melt away just yet.
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Off we go across the pond to talk about a much-admired culinary woman with a big global fanbase.
Mary Berry’s Great British Birthday
Dame Mary Berry published her first cookbook in 1970, when she was 35. By then, she had already been a product tester, a food editor and had professional certification from Le Cordon Bleu.
Dame Mary’s rise came at a time when women were becoming culinary figures in multiple places around the world. In Britain, her contemporaries were Delia Smith and Prue Leith (who later replaced her as a judge on the Great British Bake Off). In America, women like Julia Child, Martha Stewart, and Nathalie Dupree were combing culinary expertise with writing and broadcast appearances, later joined by Ina Garten.
Dame Mary launched her first lineup of household products in 1994, echoing what Martha was doing for KMart. Cookbooks flowed regularly, led by Mary Berry’s Cake Book that year, and later, Mary Berry’s Baking Bible, which has been a best seller since it was published in 2008.
In 2010, at age 75, Dame Mary went from a cooking figure to becoming a true British celebrity. That year, The Great British Bake Off debuted on the BBC. She was teamed with Paul Hollywood, in what became a legendary collaboration.
Dame Mary was a sometimes stern but cheerful tutor to Paul’s cheeky swagger. Favorite expressions like “scrummy” - a combination of scrumptious and yummy - became part of her charm, as was her gentle criticism. In their own instructional programs, the duo seemed like a natural team that would go on together for years.
International fame
It wasn’t until 2014 until the show began airing on PBS stations, starting with what was the fifth season in Britain. (The first two British seasons have never been aired in the U.S., although Americans later got to see seasons three and four.)
Once GBBO reached PBS, Dame Mary’s visibility soared. But two years later, she had to make an uncomfortable decision.
Love Productions, which owns GBBO and a number of spin offs including the Great Canadian Baking Show, chose to move it to Britain’s Channel 4, a free commercial network versus the BBC, for which Brits pay a subscription fee.
Dame Mary decided to stay with the BBC, her longtime home, rather than go with GBBO to its new home, and that ended her relationship with Hollywood and the show. But her loyalty amplified her as a stand alone show presenter.
Since the breakup, Dame Mary has hosted numerous series, often tied to a new cookbook, holiday specials and travel programs. A number of those shows have aired on PBS stations, and many can be seen via Brit Box, the streaming network.
She’s also become a fixture at race tracks, the Chelsea Garden Show, on the Graham Norton Show and at events hosted by the Royal Family.
During a segment for one holiday special, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, told Dame Mary that among her youngest son, Louis’ first words were “Mary Berry.” The princess keeps her cookbooks on a low shelf at home, and Mary’s name and picture were in the prince’s eye line, she explained.
Personal challenges
Despite having achieved icon status, Dame Mary’s life has not always been easy. In her autobiography, Recipe For Life, she writes about having lived through World War 2 with her family. Not long after the war, at age 13, she contracted polio and was confined to a hospital bed for three months.
Her family conspired to bring her pony to the hospital window to cheer her up. The disease left her with a twisted spine, a weaker left hand and thinner left arm. Although she has had a long and happy marriage, her son William was killed in a tragic car accident at age 20. (She also has a daughter and another son.)
But in true British fashion, she has soldiered on — and forward. For years, her assistant Lucy Cook handled Dame Mary’s social media. But last week, Dame Mary ventured onto Instagram with her own account, (@) damemaryberry.
Coming up will be a BBC special saluting her birthday, and the BBC has been airing her latest program, Simple Comforts, featuring a trip along the River Thames. She is also featured in the April issue of British Vogue (the first and third photos are from that shoot).
Although she seems to be in great health, Dame Mary says she’s not interested in becoming a centenarian. “I think 90 is a great time,’ she said. “You’ve had a good innings. You have to deal with the cards you’ve been dealt, of course.”
In all, it seems like she’s had a pretty scrummy life.
USDA Cuts Fresh Food Funding
Since 2021, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has spent $400 million on a program that purchased locally source food for distribution to schools and food banks. The program was born in the wake of bottlenecks in the supply chain that resulted from the pandemic.
Last week, the Trump administration killed the program, saying that the fresh food distributions “no longer effectuate the goals of the agency.” It also canceled an accompanying program to purchase meat and seafood, for a total of about $1 billion.
According to Marketplace on public radio, the cancellations are a blow to small farmers and producers across the country. Emma Johnson, an orchard owner in Central City, Iowa, was selling $65,000 in apples each year to local schools and food banks.
That was about 25% of her annual output. Now, she has to find a place to sell the excess fruit. “That’s jobs, that’s staff, that’s our ability to even have a profit for the season,” she told Marketplace.
Would You Like To Buy A New Orleans Bakery?
One of my favorite things to do wherever I live is to find the best bakeries. In New Orleans, I was a big fan of Gracious Bakery, which specialized in lovely croissants, pastries and light lunches and baking mixes. Along with its cafes, Gracious does a significant business as a wholesaler to coffee shops and cafes around town, working from a separate commercial kitchen.
Last week, owners Megan Forman and her husband Jay announced that they have put Gracious up for sale. The business started as a single cafe in 2012, and it grew to annual revenue of about $2 million a year.
Megan, who began as a pastry chef 30 years ago, is now getting a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling. She told the Advocate Times-Picayune that she’s as excited about her next phase as she was about baking.
Jay says the decision coincides with the end of their daughter’s high school years. As people in the culinary world know, baking can be a hard grind, and the challenges of the past few years have only increased the pressures on business owners.
"For us it's a quality-of-life question," he told the paper. "This is the kind of business where you have to be present and on site all the time and we're just ready for the next stage of our lives.”
Food Trucks Find Success In The Desert
When you think about cities with plentiful food trucks, places like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. probably come to mind. But food trucks have also become a success in a less likely spot: Phoenix.
David Tyda, a food festival producer, told KJZZ that food trucks began to appear in Phoenix around 2010. But they really took off during the pandemic, as places for people to safely obtain food outdoors, and to get out of the house.
Now, Phoenix is home to a variety of food trucks, from taco trucks to pizza trucks and even trucks that make Asian food.
Some of the trucks operate from permanent locations, while others rotate around the city. There are businesses with as many as 10 food trucks, and some that have a brick and mortar business that supplies the trucks.
One unique offering: Cloud Souffle, a pop up based in Glendale, AZ, that makes fluffy souffle cakes, similar to trendy Japanese pancakes. They are then topped with ingredients like chocolate, boba and sauces, all combined on the spot.
Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman
Continuing my work as an eggs-pert (sorry), I wrote for Food & Wine about the problems that high egg prices are causing for restaurants, cafes, bakers and even ice cream shops around the country. It isn’t simply egg surcharges: a number of places are removing items from their menus, and switching to products that don’t require eggs.
The Lions, Towers & Shields podcast looked at the noir drama Born To Kill. For me, it was a trip back to Reno, Nevada, where I’ve traveled several times as a visiting professor at the University of Nevada-Reno. The movie has a gorgeous wardrobe and depicts San Francisco high society in the 1940s.
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Tomorrow, I’ll be back for our paid subscribers with Red Beans & Advice, a weekly feature with a look at a new cookbook from Canada. See everyone else next week!