Homemade

Beatrice Ojakangas

"Beatrice Ojakangas, the oldest of ten children, came by it naturally--the cooking but also the pluck and perseverance that she's served up with her renowned Scandinavian dishes over the years. Her stories, are, unsurprisingly, steeped in food lore: tales of cardamom and rye, baking salt cake at the age of five on a wood-burning stove, growing up on venison, making egg rolls for Chun King, and sending off a Pillsbury Bake Off-winning recipe without ever making it. Those early roots flourished through hard work and dedication to a successful (but never easy) career in food writing and a much wider world, from working for pizza roll king Jeno Paulucci to researching food traditions in Finland and appearing with Julia Child and Martha Stewart--all without ever leaving behind the lessons learned on the farm. As she says, 'first you have to start with good ingredients and a good idea.'...