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Kara Rota
Editor
Cookstr
June 28, 2011

Occasionally we feel sheepish about the fact that, while many food bloggers are out there sweating over their keyboards to find the perfect phrase, we designed this blog to be largely written by the folks that we interview. Is it a cop out? We actually consider it an opportunity to hear how unique each individual gastrognome's voice is (for us, it's a constant source of inspiration). Kara's blend of humor and passion are a delicious accompaniment to her way with words. If you aren't already using Cookstr on a daily basis, she may inspire you to check it out. (We're particularly fond of the feature that allows you to search recipes by Chef or Author.)

What attracted you to a good food job?

My first "good food job" began when I was sixteen and worked as an office assistant for Chicago's Green City Market - the city's only year-round farmers' market promoting local, sustainable farmers, producers and chefs. I loved everything about it: the interaction with chefs and vendors; waking up at 6 AM on Saturday mornings to go to the market and spend all day surrounded by incredibly good food and the people who had committed themselves to growing it. My next job was as a personal assistant for Jeanne Pinsof Nolan, The Organic Gardener of Chicago, a very dear friend who helps families install organic vegetable gardens. Watching the joy she takes in teaching people how to grow whole foods for their own meals, and engaging kids at the Edible Gardens at the Lincoln Park Zoo in the fun and amazing work of food production, absolutely made an indelible impression on me when I set out to find my own good food job.

Cooking, to me, is deeply personal. I make food for my family and friends who I love, and I appreciate the freedom of being a self-taught cook: among other things, it gives me the opportunity to take big risks that sometimes fail (my boyfriend, who's eaten his fair share of ruined or reconstituted desserts, including cookie lasagna and accidental red velvet cake truffles, can attest to this enthusiasm). I daydream about opening a restaurant, but for now, I'm happy as a definitively amateur chef and a professional food enthusiast.

How did you get your current good food job?

Through Goodfoodjobs.com! (Editor's Note: No, we never get sick of hearing that . . . if you got your job through Good Food Jobs, reach out and let us know!) I left my past position as assistant editor of Irish America magazine to pursue the areas of technoethics and food politics that I'd focused on during my undergrad studies at Sarah Lawrence College, where I wrote my senior thesis on the sociology of posthumanism in the science, technology and society department. Coming to Cookstr from the world of print & web journalism with all of the media experience that had allotted me, I was thrilled to find a thriving company that's situated right at the intersection of food and technology. Cookstr maintains a database of high-quality, 100% tested recipe content from the top twenty cookbook publishers, rights-reverted libraries from authors, and recipes aggregated by third parties (including Top Chef recipes for NBC). Our uniquely cultivated and curated recipe database and nutritional tagging system have situated us in an ideal position with lots of exciting opportunities for innovative partnerships and projects going forward. Cookstr believes that great food is for everybody, and that we can use new technologies to help people have a more meaningful, accessible and productive experience with food in their daily lives.

How did your previous work or life experience prepare you for a good food job?

My dad is 100% Italian and my mom spent many years as a macrobiotic & natural foods chef and then as a vegan raw foodist, so my food experience runs the gamut. I grew up on several acres in a part of South Jersey that was still bordering on rural, where we got produce from pre-farmers'-market stands by the side of the road and I raised chickens in a coop my dad built in the backyard (which were named after Greek gods and goddesses rather than turned into soup and marsala, but the eggs were delicious). I learned how to cook from a hodgepodge of sources: gorgeous full-color cookbooks and the backs of sauce cans, websites and index cards, meatballs from my great-aunt, vegan seitan gyros from my brother, perfect cranberry sauce from my mom. I love making things I've never tried before: osso buco for the first time in college to procrastinate while writing a term paper; a vegan three-layer chocolate-strawberry cake to transport twenty-five miles for my niece's first birthday. Along the way I found one common thread: that good food comes from good ingredients, grown and put together with good intentions.

What advice do you have for others in search of a good food job?

In 1989, two years after I was born, a self-help book came out entitled Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow. Growing up, I remember a copy that one of my parents probably bought at a yard sale sitting on our bookshelf, and while I never opened it, the title instruction stuck with me. I've never applied for a job I didn't really want.

If you could be compensated for your work with something other than money, what would it be?

When I was unemployed for a few months at the beginning of this year, I cooked all day long, spent time back home in Chicago with my family, and did a lot of reading about food politics, production, distribution and consumption (everything from Wendell Berry to Marion Nestle to Mark Schatzker to Adam Richman). I also started keeping a food blog, and as everyone knows, blogging is not something you take up for the fame and fortune. My blog began as a conscious effort to record what I cook and eat, an outlet for the plethora of foodtography that I was accumulating on a daily basis, and a way for me to continually write every day while searching for what my next steps would be. It quickly became much more than that: an opportunity to put into words what food means to me, both in my personal life and in the universal role that I believe food and food politics play in America and in the world. We have made some truly terrible choices surrounding food in this country. But there are incredible individuals creating change on many levels, whether they are working towards policy reform in public school lunch programs or making gluten-free pastries from locally sourced ingredients in a tiny bakery in Louisville, Kentucky. I believe that cooking is a revolutionary act, a daily opportunity to create and choose our ingredients anew. When you cook, you begin to think seriously about what you're eating, what it's made of, where it comes from. The answers to these questions are vital. If I can participate in empowering individuals to cook for themselves and for each other, that feels like compensation enough for me. (A lifetime supply of Peanut Butter & Co.'s Crunch Time also wouldn't hurt.)

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