Until I headed “up North” (as my friends would say) to Duke University, I enjoyed a sweet childhood in Houston, Texas.  A whole host of fun memories circles around a year or more of cooking lessons: Five of us friends talked our mothers into teaching us to cook and serve whole meals (to ourselves!) when I was in the eighth grade.  Each woman had her own style and each home its own culture, and so we learned to appreciate a variety of approaches to making and enjoying good food while picking up practical skills, too.

As a wife, mother of three, and happily a grandmother to three more, I have loved the home arts of cooking and offering hospitality.  I’m no culinary professional as Annhorner is; my career was in teaching English.  However, a tiny kitchen claim to fame is for my bread.  For over thirty years, about once a week, I have been baking a batch of sourdough bread.  Our kids’ friends used to call it “Val-bread,” and now my grandkids call it “Lolli-bread.”  My girls say “home” to them is the smell of freshly baked bread!

I enjoy my small part on the communications team at Plentiful.  Plentiful Foods is a business that seeds common good into our community, both by way of its products and its people, and it feels like a privilege to be a part of it.  

Fun Fact: My horse, Tommy, and I used to barrel race with friends for fun, when I was growing up in Texas.