Jonell Galloway | Page 5 of 7 | The Rambling Epicure

Jonell Galloway’s Résumé

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, February 14, 2013 Permalink 0

Jonell Galloway
Switzerland
Skype telephone number: 1-270-859-1112
Skype name: jonell.galloway.white
E-mail: jonell@theramblingepicure.com

Professional History and Experience

I started my culinary career in Paris in the early 80s. At the Sorbonne, where I studied French language and civilization, I asked for special authorization to write my thesis on the history of French cuisine, which was exceptionally granted. I later studied at both the Cordon Bleu and La Varenne, and studied wine in various locations all over France, including Steven Spurrier’s Académie du Vin. While in France, I developed and taught a method I called Spontaneous Cuisine, a market-based derivation of classic French cuisine; was a contributing editor for the English version of GaultMillau for France; and worked as a food translator and interpreter.

I have recently dedicated myself to a “literary” food website, The Rambling Epicure, joining the voices and visions of professional writers and photographers from around the world who promote a mindful, responsible approach to real food shopping, cooking, and eating, as well as food politics, safety, history, art, literature and philosophy. I invite you to browse the site to see the depth and professionalism of the coverage. http://theramblingepicure.com/

I am fluent in English (native tongue), French and Spanish, and have proficient skills in Italian and Portuguese. Having a scientific background, I thrive on investigative journalism and writing that requires in-depth research and documentation.

I currently divide my time between Switzerland and France, where I have a 1,000-year-old house in Chartres.

Other publications and projects I have worked on or participated in:

10Best / Travel Media Group at USA TODAY, Gannett Media
Travora Media
Le tour du monde en 80 pains/Around the World with 80 Breads, Orphie (Paris)
Serious Eats
Paris Voice
André Raboud: A Review of his Life’s Work, Edipresse (Switzerland)
Ma Cuisine Méditerranéenne/Small Plates of the Mediterranean Basin, inspired by Christophe Certain’s recipes
CityGuide Paris
GourmetLive
Geneva Lunch, Savouring Switzerland
The New York Times dining section
Athena Publications
Three Sisters’ Café, farm-to-table restaurant (Kentucky)
La Fourchette de Dimanche, RSR (Swiss French-speaking radio station)
Kentucky Poetry Review
Biography of Pierre Gagnaire, St-Etienne Tourist Bureau (France)

For more details about my professional path and education, please consult my résumé on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=33977805&trk=tab_pro

Education

University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Bachelor of Science Magna Cum Laude in Psychology. Honors: Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa

University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky. Graduate studies, psychology and literature.

Sorbonne, Paris, France. French language, literature and culture. Level A diploma.

L’Ecole du Cordon Bleu, Paris, France. “Grand chef” diploma.

La Varenne (French cooking), Paris, France. Non-diploma program.

L’Ecole du Louvre, Paris, France. Art, 17th-century to present. Special diploma for foreign students.

L’Academie du Vin, Paris, France. Wine tasting.

Memberships

International Association of Culinary Professionals

Geneva Writers Group

Slow Food

Les Artisanes de la Vigne et du Vin (Swiss women wine producers association, for which I am ambassadress)

Social Media and Marketing

Websites: TheRamblingEpicure.com, TheRamblingEpicure.tumblr.com

Twitter @RamblingEpicure @SwissFoodies @JonellGalloway approximately +3,000 followers

Facebook: Jonell Galloway, The Rambling Epicure, Swiss Foodies, 4,400+ followers

Google+ 5,000 followers

Klout index usually between 61 and 63

Alexa rating The Rambling Epicure 1,200 in Switzerland (currently being rescanned). My main readership is Western Europe and the Anglophone world as well as the BRICS.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on My Mother, January 15, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, January 15, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My mother saw the world through beauty until she went blind seven years ago.

Will the metronome stop suddenly, will my fingers stop playing, frozen in their accustomed position, no longer able to stroke the keys to the rhythm of life? Will the angels stop singing?

When she goes, will I ride through life without a song? Will all the music stop? Will I still be able to keep a beat, listen to Horowitz in the same way? Every time I hear a hymn, will I remember her beautiful alto voice as my grandmother played her upright piano and the extended family sang shape-note hymns in harmony on a Sunday afternoon after church?

Will I cry every time I hear or read Whitman or Longfellow, or the many poems she knows by heart and can still recite? Will poetry ever be the same, or will it too lose its capacity to take me into its arms and soothe the day’s wounds?

Will I look at a painting, a quilt, a piece of art, and still perceive its beauty? Will visual beauty have the same all-encompassing, skip-a-breath effect it has now, or will it become cerebral and dull?

Every quilt she made was an objet d’art. Will quilts all be beautiful, or will they take on an unforeseen ugliness, forever bringing my mother back to life like a dagger through my heart? Quilts will become like life — pieces patched together however the quilter can, using whatever is available; living life with whatever, however it takes to survive — not art. Or will they? Perhaps that’s what art is, and not some planned and orderly activity. It’s about putting the chaos into some form that is aesthetic, pleasing, and has an important message.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 13, 2011

Published by Jonell Galloway + Sunday, January 13, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My parents lost their only son, my brother Cecil, when he was only 25. Life was never easy after that. They kept on hoofing it through life, getting up every morning to face a little world they’d built, made up of four children and two exceptionally bonded parents, a world now broken apart, a world from which one of the vital building blocks had been abruptly and inexplicably snatched away without a moment’s notice. For nearly a year I would wake up in the middle of the night, and feel my right arm to see if it was still there, because I had the sensation that it had been brutally jerked off from the moment my brother died. I can’t imagine the nightmares my parents must have had. My mother’s jet-black hair started to turn white immediately. My 6-foot father started drooping his shoulders instead of holding them high, as he had always done. There was always a lingering sadness, a hole in what was once a whole. The grief was ever-present and it didn’t go away. It never has. It never will.

Explosion of the Mind, painting by Abram Cruz

We were a tightly-knit family, welded together by the strength and love of my mother, and as I saw her emotional strength and courage wither away, she still held her head high and endured. Imagining that she too will go away soon loosens all the nuts and bolts that hold me together. Will I fall apart when the moment comes?

Local vs. Non-local Food: The Arguments

Published by Jonell Galloway + Saturday, January 12, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

I think we got spoiled by eating cheap food from all over the world. That put us out of sync with nature and skewed the price of local produce and products vs. produce and products from distant places, leading us to waste what we once had held precious because it was seasonal and local and therefore rare. Slow Food USA and Josh Viertel were right in fighting for fair wages for our own farmers and trying to lead us back to a way of eating that is in line with nature, which of course means paying a little more, but improving our health and local economy.

There are many more arguments to be put forth. Let’s talk about it: the pros and cons, your experiences, your convictions, etc. We’d love to get a big discussion going here.

Click here to watch Building a Slow Food Nation, outlining the history of Slow Food in the U.S., and including Josh Viertel’s view.

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 9, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, January 9, 2013 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

My mother has been bedridden since the spring, in a hospital bed with bars so she can’t get out, as if the blindness were not itself a prison. The Parkinson’s, along with Prednisone for her temporal arteritis, affect her sleep cycle, so she sometimes doesn’t sleep for 3 or 4 nights straight. She eventually starts hallucinating. Sometimes she thinks she can see little children coming out of the ceiling, rather like angels coming down from heaven. The “angels” do not comfort her; they disturb her and she tries to jump out of bed and go after them, thus the necessity of the bars. No medicine stops this cycle somewhere between heaven and hell, and probably nearer the latter. How do we calculate a life, when is it time to stop the clock? By spending her days saying, “dear God, dear God, why do I have to live like this?” has she not decided she wishes the clock to stop? We cannot do it for her; we are forced to hold her hand and suffer alongside her.

Painting by Benozzo Gozzoli

The Mama Posts: Reflections on my Mother, January 8, 2013

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, January 8, 2013 Permalink 0

by King James Version

Mama went blind nearly 7 years ago due to an autoimmune disease called “temporal arteritis.” For a quilt artist and designer, a woman who expressed herself through images rather than words, there could have been nothing more devastating. She felt her life had ended and didn’t want to go on. We tried to give her bits of cloth, yarn, ribbon, wire, etc., in hopes she’d learn a new way of making sculptures or sewing patchworks in some crazy, original way using her fingers to feel her way around, but she couldn’t even see what she’d made, so it was of no interest to her. She would usually try for only a very few minutes and then throw it into the air in anger. She listens to audio books; her caregivers sing with her, read to her, play music for her – all things she loves — but she has lived in deep discontent because she has lost her most precious sense. Now she is physically diminished because of the disease, and speaks in the King James Version all the daylong. “Dear Lord,” she says, “let me go home,” where I will be able to see (I add).

The Mama Posts: Hanging out with My Mother

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, December 28, 2012 Permalink 0

Yes, you might have noted my absence over the last month. I’ve been hanging out with my mother in Kentucky.

She is still hanging in there. Her body may be shrunken and “miniature”, like the workings of a fine Swiss watch, but her heart beats strong like an ox. I’m not sure she was aware when the clock struck Christmas this year. She had already stepped far into another world where one speaks in the King James Version. She talks to God all day. “God, please help me. God, I doeth love thee. ”

Often I climb into her bed and hold her, talking of the old days and saying, “You’re the best Mommy in the whole wide world.” She strokes my cheek, and says, “I love thee,” and stops talking to God for a short while.

I’ll see you soon. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Jonell Galloway, Editor

A Look at Slow Food’s Salone del Gusto, October 2012, in Turin, Italy

Published by Diana Zahuranec + Saturday, November 3, 2012 Permalink 0

by Diana Zahuranec

Salone del Gusto ended on Monday 29, but I can’t stop thinking about it.

Salone del Gusto, held in Turin, Italy, is a Slow Food biannual food fair and conference. To sum it up in these few words undermines everything else it is, too, and its importance as an event that brings together producers from all over the world. These are producers that grow ancient varieties of grain to save genetic biodiversity, that make Slow Food Presidia cheeses or salumi, that pipe their cannoli full of the freshest organic ricotta you’ve ever tasted, and whose principles and values align with your own and, it goes without saying, Slow Food’s – good, clean, and fair food for all.

The Slow Food mascot

For all things Slow Food, here are some links courtesy of Scoop.it and Slow Food. To understand a few of those words in the paragraph above, just look at the end of the article.

This year, Salone del Gusto was a marriage of the original Salone del Gusto, first held in 2006, and Terra Madre, first held in 2004. While both events had food artisans and producers from all over the world, different activities were held at each and were not all accessible to the public. Salone del Gusto focused more on the exposition and sale of high quality foods and products, while Terra Madre was a gathering of a network of food producers from around the world. Having never been to either of these before, I can’t offer judgment on the differences of before and after. What I would love to do is share my first-time impressions of this year’s.

To say Salone is a food fair means that, like your down-home county fair, the place is jumping with activity – with a few notable differences. The funnel cakes are replaced with French butter cookies in 20 different flavors, the groundhog whacking game is replaced with the foodie’s (divisive word, I know) form of fun, that is vertical Barolo wine tastings, and that feeling of riding the Zipper right after you eat your funnel cake is replaced by the feeling of pressing up against crowds right after you drink your Barolo wines.

Weight Loss Challenge: Eat Smaller Portions

Published by Jonell Galloway + Thursday, September 13, 2012 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Eating smaller portions is not always as easy as it sounds.

In restaurants, they invariably serve portions much larger than you would take if you were serving yourself. I decided a long time ago that I would eat until I felt full, and not feel guilty about leaving the rest. My husband and children often end up eating the rest or taking it home in a doggie bag. I often solve this problem by ordering two starters and no dessert, which is a somewhat less noticeable way to go about it.

And here are the winners of the 6 Kuhn Rikon knives at our Expat Expo drawing

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

Husband Peter and I and Rosa Mayland, author of our column “Rosa’s Musings,” had a great time at the Expat Expo Geneva on Sunday. It’s a great way to make contacts in Geneva.


Jonell Galloway at The Rambling Epicure’s stand at Expat Expo Geneva 2011

We had a drawing for 6 red polka-dot Kuhn Rikon knives.


Kuhn Rikon Knives Drawing, The Rambling Epicure, Expat Expo Geneva

Here are the winners:

Paula Davies-Smith
M. Rowe
Peter Zornow
Sayjel
Alison Farley
Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter

Congratulations. You are now the proud owner of knives made by one of the most reputable brands of cookware in the world, and they’re made in Switzerland!