Staying Fit
While looking for a job during her senior year at Maine’s Bowdoin College, Lidey Heuck took a chance. A college friend’s father was the attorney for celebrity chef Ina Garten — would he pass along a note asking if she needed any help? “It was fortuitous timing, because she just happened to be looking for someone to join her team and do social media. I went down to East Hampton, and I had an interview, and we had a great talk,” Heuck says. “A few weeks later, [Garten] called and said, ‘I want you to come work for me.’ It was pretty incredible.”
During her seven years working for Garten, Heuck, 32, was an eager protégée, learning by testing recipes at work and practicing by “cooking incessantly” in her off-hours. Today, she’s a New York Times recipe developer and writer, and she’s debuting her first cookbook, Cooking in Real Life: Delicious & Doable Recipes for Every Day, complete with a heartfelt foreward by Garten, 76.
The book offers more than 100 recipes designed to build your confidence in the kitchen, including snacks, main courses, veggie-forward sides and desserts. The approachable recipes are peppered with insightful tips, so home cooks can adapt them to suit their lifestyles and their family’s preferences, while adding new favorites to their mealtime repertoire.
Heuck shares with AARP her recipe inspirations, how she came to work for Garten, and the one skill she recommends home chefs practice.
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How do you hope someone feels when they read through Cooking in Real Life?
First of all, I hope they feel inspired by the recipes. I also hope that they feel capable and confident that they’ll be able to make them. Every recipe in this book is meant to be for any cook, with any [level of] experience. They’re meant to be really doable, easy recipes that fit into your everyday life. Not everyone feels comfortable in the kitchen. I really wanted my book to be a helpful tool for making people more comfortable. Something can look really beautiful and taste delicious, and it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a complicated recipe.
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