Cindy Bertelsen

I am a writer who loves to cook. And I am a cook who loves to write. There’s no word in English to describe me, is there? Never mind; as Popeye says, “I am what I am.”

And what I also am is a person who’s lived an amazing life. Years of living and working in several developing countries, starting with Peace Corps in Paraguay — then Mexico, Honduras, Haiti, Morocco, and Burkina Faso — and months of traveling in Europe.

I’ve cooked for years, beginning with family meals and then graduating to a little restaurant work, some catering, and many dinner parties cooked under often trying circumstances–food shortages, revolution, water-main burstings, and curfews. I’ve eaten in dives and Michelin 3-star restaurants, shaken hands with great chefs, hugged street-market women for sharing recipes with me, and cooked in more kitchens than cells in a beehive. Or almost.

My background includes more than traveling and living in many countries. A few years ago, after writing regular reviews of books on multicuItural topics for The Roanoke Times, I joined the National Book Critics Circle. As a critic and freelance writer, I make full use of my educational background, which includes degrees in Latin American Studies, History, Human Nutrition and Foods, and Library and Information Science.

I belong to the following culinary history organizations: Southern Foodways Alliance, Culinary Historians of Washington DC, Culinary Historians of New York, Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, and the Peacock-Harper Culinary History group, of which I was the Chair in 2007-2008, Co-Chair in 2006-2007, and newsletter editor from 2005-2007.