My love affair with good food got its start in Scottish and South African boarding schools, where the cuisine was abysmal. Haggis, anyone? Or leathery stewed prunes? I was convinced that food didn’t have to be that awful. Happily for me, later travels in Europe proved my hunch to be correct.

After settling in San Francisco, I fell into a food-related career by creating the first Williams-Sonoma mail order catalog, and still write copy for them today. I became James Beard's West Coast editorial assistant, and was a contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle food pages in the ‘90s. In addition, I wrote, co-authored, or illustrated several cookbooks, including The Olive Harvest Cookbook with Chef Gerald Gass of McEvoy Ranch; Cooking Basics and Bread (both Williams-Sonoma cookbooks); Convection Cuisine, with Master Chef René Verdon; and La Nouvelle Pâtisserie, with Jean-Yves Duperret.

Then I discovered that I was a food writer with celiac disease. The result was The Wheat-Free Cook, followed two years later by Gluten-Free Italian plus a reprint of the first title with color photos included. Amazingly, both books have made it onto mainstream, national “Best Cookbooks of the Year” listings. And yes, my third gluten-free cookbook is simmering on the back burner. Watch this space!