Food? I could do that.
It was my third year at The Milwaukee Journal, summer of 1981, and I was eager to try something new. A food writer position came open, and with those self-affirming thoughts in my head, I applied.
And soon I found myself in a new role, one I’d honestly never envisioned for myself. My first Food cover story was a look at the menu lineup for a brand new lakefront festival, German Fest. I remember learning two things: the meaning of spanferkel and a realization that, hey, this food writing is kind of fun.
Over the next two years, I learned the ropes of this specialty area of reporting, baked my first loaf of yeast bread, got to know local chefs and dietitians and wrote about local home cooks.
“Kind of fun” would turn into “You know, I really like this” and eventually a 25-year career as food editor.
People often asked me, how do you keep coming up with new ideas for stories? There was an easy answer to that: People get hungry. I get hungry. And I’ve always had a natural curiosity about food: what a particular food is, how best to prepare and season it, its cultural origins, its nutritional benefits, even where the name came from. I thank both my parents and my grandmother for that.
That curiosity and passion for food will continue, but the full-time career they have driven is ending. I've decided the time is right to retire.
But what a time it’s been.
When I got that first food writing job, I was still in my granola, whole-grain, tofu-is-tasty-(really!) approach to eating. I thought, in my youthful enthusiasm, that this was the way everyone would be eating going forward: with health — our own and the planet’s — at the heart of each decision.
It was not the first lesson I would learn over the years. The food culture in this country has been nothing if not in a constant state of change.
I cringed when certain food fads — like ever-more-decadent chocolate desserts (more than one named Death by Chocolate) — came along, but then put aside my bias toward healthy food and embraced them. What’s the harm in a little over-the-top dessert now and then?
I watched with amusement as butter was declared bad, then good, while margarine was condemned for its cancer-causing trans fats. Likewise, eggs as cholesterol bomb gave way to … No, wait! They’re OK after all!
I’ve seen more diets come and go than plates from a restaurant kitchen on a busy night: low-fat, low-sodium, low-carb, grapefruit, Beverly Hills, raw-foods, Mediterranean, South Beach, now paleo, Whole30 and keto.
Likewise for the gadgets and appliances we covet for our kitchen. Bread machines were on everyone’s Christmas list early in my food journalism career. For a time, cooks sought out the perfect mandoline. Now it’s instant pots and air fryers.
Cajun/Creole cuisine, nouvelle cuisine, fusion cuisine, small plates and a slew of new-to-us international cuisines have all come along on my watch.
The newspaper industry has changed, too. When I got my start in the 1980s, the Journal Food sections were packed with full-page grocery ads. The internet and direct marketing changed all that.
But still, people remain hungry for food information.
And I’ve been happy to provide it — to the readers who turn to us for new recipes and ideas, as well as to those who are likewise passionate about food but more interested in news about restaurants and local food personalities or issues.
Serving so many masters has had its challenges, but as a whole, these years have been packed with memorable, fun, rewarding and inspirational experiences.
I’ve met some culinary greats: Julia Child, on her first visit to Milwaukee, Jacques Pepin, Emeril Lagasse, Thomas Keller, Christopher Kimball, for example. But it was the local food community I most enjoyed covering and showcasing. For 13 years I had the pleasure of editing a column written by Milwaukee’s own Sandy D’Amato and later, profiling both him and his successor at Sanford restaurant, Justin Aprahamian.
I’ve written about my family — my daughters and grandchildren, usually with a dash of humor — and I was able to more than once honor my late mom and grandmother, from whom I acquired a love of so many foods and an appreciation for from-scratch home cooking. (Aside from perhaps Oreos, a cookie isn’t a cookie unless it’s homemade.)
Through conferences put on by the Association of Food Journalists, I’ve explored the foods of Boston, Charleston, Puerto Rico, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, New York City and many other places. I’ve lunched at the Swedish Embassy, toured the White House kitchen garden, enjoyed an outdoor Thanksgiving feast in Napa Valley, had dinner at the James Beard House.
(Our food team also has been honored by that organization with a total of 18 awards for our work.)
In Wisconsin, reporting assignments have taken me to the Warrens Cranberry Festival, the Green Bay Packers training camp, the wine regions of the Mississippi River and the Fox Valley, and just a few miles down the road to State Fair to judge the Sporkies. (An experience second only to judging the Pillsbury Bake-Off.)
And I can’t forget 12 years of Holiday Cookie Contests, along with other reader-participation projects we’ve hosted over the years. (A few, including On Our Plate, Lousy Cooks and The Recipe Box, can still be read online.)
Interacting with readers was especially gratifying and something I will miss, whether it was answering a cooking question, listening to lonely older men and women reminisce about cherished childhood foods or tracking down a favorite recipe that somehow got lost and that a reader needs RIGHT NOW.
Those interactions have brought humorous moments, too. There was the unidentified woman years ago who called whenever we featured bananas in the section to rant in some detail about how bananas almost killed her. Another reader once called to ask about the safety of a turkey that had been in her freezer for two years; I told her consuming it would be not be a good idea. She thanked me and said: “OK, then I’ll just donate it to the church.”
And there were some silly mistakes we’ve had to correct — like the salad that called for 12 cups of sunflower seeds instead of ½ cup. (Fortunately, those have been rare.)
So a new era of food journalism at Milwaukee’s newspaper is about to begin. Be assured, coverage of food and restaurants will continue, and I look forward to seeing the new directions it takes.
Indulge me as I sign off as your food editor with a few final words of advice:
Life is short — put some thought into what you eat. Cook at home when you can. Support local farmers and food businesses. Be good to Mother Earth.
And enjoy the gift of eating. Splurge every now and then. Slow down and savor every bite of a food you love. And remember, 1 teaspoon of vanilla is never enough.
Thank you for all your years of loyal readership. I wish for you a future filled with many wonderful, nourishing meals and unforgettable food adventures.
You can reach Nancy Stohs until Jan. 10 at nancy.stohs@jrn.com; after that, at nancyjsfood@gmail.com. For many years she wrote a column called First Course.
—————
New food editor shares food memories and goals
Editor’s note: Nancy Stohs was named food editor of The Milwaukee Journal in 1994. Here is the first column she wrote, introducing herself to readers. It was published on Oct. 5, 1994:
This is a story about good food, noble intentions and transitions.
My childhood table in Nebraska characterized one transition: my mother’s from farm to city.
She couldn’t step outside any more to gather fresh eggs, but my brother and I were spoiled by the tradition of from-scratch cooking she brought with her.
Every Saturday she baked a week’s supply of whole-wheat bread. (I’ll never forget that smell.) Homemade desserts were a typical ending to a typical dinner of meat, potatoes and steamed vegetables. My parents ordered beef from the locker. My mother bought thick farm-style cream in a jar. She canned and froze all summer from her garden.
My chiropractor-father’s health bent added another twist to our table. For some years, I thought the raw sugar, wheat germ and stone-ground cornmeal he special-ordered from a Nebraska mill were staples in everyone’s kitchen.
However, even my mother couldn’t escape the corrupting influence of the ’50s and ’60s — another transition. She embraced Jell-O like another food group, my brother and I came to ask by name for “the San Francisco treat,” and the cheese of choice in our refrigerator was clearly Velveeta.
(Sorry, Dairylanders: It wasn’t until after I left for college that my parents started buying “real cheese.”)
In spite of all that good food, I could have felt deprived. Many of the foods and beverages my friends enjoyed freely – potato chips, Wonder bread, canned soup, Kool-Aid and soda (“pop” where I come from ) — were rare treats in our house. Deprived?
Not that I remember.
The concern about eating right carried into my adulthood and through my own culinary transitions:
Marriage: Health-food zeal (mostly mine) produced the likes of homemade yogurt, tofu quiche and carrot pizza (don’t try it — you’ll get a watery mess).
Kids: Reality check! Through the high-chair years, the weeknight after-work regimen of “survival meals” varied little from week to week: frozen pizza, waffles, chicken pot pies . . . I didn’t dare think about the dinners of my childhood.
Older kids: The time crunch eased up, but finickiness cast a new spell on my good intentions. Do you make them eat, let them go hungry, or get out the peanut butter and jelly?
And now, another transition, as I face alternating weeks of cooking for my three school-age daughters and myself, and then just for myself when they’re with their dad. (Some transitions are tougher to swallow than others.)
Following my mother’s act in the kitchen has proved more difficult than I ever thought possible.
But the vision for my table remains the same. Pure, fresh food, prepared healthfully. Variety. And indulgence, of course.
When they’re grown, I want my daughters to feel free to revel in a waist-busting dessert or a bag of Doritos, on occasion, yet most of the time give careful thought to what they eat.
I hope to instill in them respect for other cultures’ food traditions and other people’s tastes. And I want them to find the tasks of cooking, eating and sharing food — whether at home or in a restaurant — enjoyable and fulfilling, not to mention fun. It’s so easy to spoil a good thing by taking it too seriously.
My hopes for Food Section readers are quite the same.
These are challenging times for people who like food — at least the home-cooked variety. Experts predict that by 2000, Americans will spend an average of just 15 minutes preparing dinner. (It’s 30 minutes now.) The family dinner is high on the endangered species list. Studies suggest that most of us cook the same five or so meals over and over.
People clearly need inspiration.
And they need information — as outbreaks of food-borne illness continue, and genetic engineering and nutrition research move forward.
I hope to provide both, along with a good helping of entertainment, in both the Wednesday and Sunday Food Sections.
These pages are designed for you, so please let me know what you’re interested in.
Think of this column, and each week’s section, as just the first course, with more tasty selections to follow on inside pages and in the weeks to come.
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