As she announced on Twitter: “Look, I’ll still be writing about food. I’m just adding murder, natural disasters and politics to the mix.”

Food reporter Kim Severson is leaving her current job  at the New York Times, taking over the New York Times’ Atlanta bureau.

Why is she going? Maybe it’s for the food. In her memoir, Spoon Fed: How Eight Cooks Saved My Life, there’s a chapter on meeting the late, great food writer Edna Lewis. Says Severson, “I didn’t know how much I didn’t know about Southern cooking until I started reading what Miss Lewis had written. Soon it spoke to me in a way that is second only to the food of Italy.”

Or maybe she missed news reporting. Her passion for getting the story was clear when I interviewed her about a typical day as a full-time food reporter for the Times. Here’s an excerpt from the new edition of Will Write for Food:

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A NEWSPAPER REPORTER

How does a food reporter at a daily paper cover her beat?

“I wake up at 6:30 a.m. and immediately hit the email to see what’s come in overnight. I subscribe to several RSS feeds and listservs. The USDA might have a package of news releases, and there are emails from grocery manufacturers associations and restaurant associations. A host of food institutions might have a valuable story idea. I can see how something’s trending, like the peanut recall, when the emails keep coming. They keep growing until I see enough to know want to pursue it.

“I probably get 100 emails a day, most of which are people wanting a story or pitching a story, or press releases. A dozen restaurant p.r. people might want me to go to an opening, look at new menu, or taste a new dish. A similar amount comes from food companies who have new products. There are people who are outraged about something and think I will want to write a story about it. I used to try to answer every email, but I can’t anymore. It’s too much.

“I use Twitter a lot for reporting, tracking bloggers, hard-core food politics people, media reporters, and pop culture reporters. I’ll glance through the last 100 tweets, and see, for example, what’s going on with school food programs, or that someone in Omaha gets jailed for doing sous vide. There’s a little boot camp of about 200 people who send info, who help me scan this wide world. Then I’ll go check a round of websites, then read the newspapers. I make breakfast and coffee and sit down with my 2-year old.

“I come into the office between 9 and 10 a.m., and if it’s a reporting day, I get on the phone. I have lots of conversations about what I’m trying to find out. I might make a dozen calls, or 30 or five, if it’s a short story. If someone tells me something newsworthy I have to find a verifier. The story may turn out to be ideas or trends for more stories. I write 50 to 60 stories per year.

“All day long I’ve got my iPhone, and I’m checking email and getting texted while walking along. It’s a bombardment. I’ve had to develop a skill set to triage info quickly and decide: Does this matter, is this something that could be part of a larger trend, does this really mean something in the long run? It’s like a fire hose of constant info, and I dip in. People pay me to decide what’s relevant and important. I’m not a daily news reporter. I can pull back and let things develop.

“I also do blog posting for the online Diner’s Journal. The New York Times has a high standard for a blog post, so I have to report out stories a little more. If I hear that a chef got arrested from two people at the restaurant, I have to find out if it’s true, find out what happened, and get verification. Other bloggers might just print it, and then update it later. We don’t do that.

“I don’t go to many press conferences. Usually I want to be in front of the story. The press conference is almost like a tip sheet, and it’s too late by the time it happens. Because I mostly cover policy shifts, I have to get the story out the day before.

“When I go out, I’m doing interviews with people, trying to find people, trying to talk to anyone but a government official. I will spend the day with someone I’m profiling, like hanging out in a cafeteria if writing about school foods. Or I’ll try to find activists in school food reform movement, school administrators, or suppliers. I think, “Who in the story would someone not be talking to, who are the non-obvious people?”

“I’ll spend a few days reporting hard, and then take a few days to write. There’s a day’s worth of editing with my editor looking at it and making suggestions. I also have to think about visuals.

“Sometimes I will take a video camera out with me or work with a video crew. We’ll do some stand-up stuff, where I say, “I went out to discover…” After that, I work with video person to produce a 3-minute video. Sometimes there’s a slide show. The photo editor will assign a photographer, and I’ll help the web producer write captions. I think about how I could tell the story differently, with cool graphics online and reader comments.

“Most of the time, it’s good old-fashioned reporting, finding the underlying cause of things, finding out the truth and presenting it to people. How we present it will change, but gathering and figuring out what matters and creative ways to present it is still important. People who are under 30 think in different ways than I do, but they’re still interested in what their neighbors are doing.

“Today reporters need to be more branded, have more personality. Before it was not about me, and I tried to stay out of the story. Now there’s a hunger for people to know more about my opinion or me. I wasn’t 100 percent comfortable with this change, but at this point, it’s ‘what the heck?’ I’ve got a lot of editors looking over my shoulder who will keep me from crossing lines.”

Few full-time food writing positions like Kim’s are left in the US and Canada. Does this kind of food writing appeal to you? Why or why not?

Editor-in-Chief Tanya Steel was in town recently to promote Epicurious.com, home of 30,000 recipes, at the farmer’s market at the San Francisco Ferry Plaza. I thought I’d stop in to get her thoughts about today’s food writing scene.

Over spearmint tisane (for me) and coffee (for her) from Blue Bottle, she said she tries to keep her ear to the ground, stay ahead of trends, and innovate. To do so she scans 10 to 12 blogs and aggregate sites from around the country every day, including The Food Section, Cold Mud, and newspaper food section blogs. Her staff scours social networking sites.

It must be working. Her latest accomplishment, the free Epicurious app, available for the iPhone, iPad, Droid and other mobile devices, has more than 2.5 million copies in circulation, making it a leading app.

When asked how today’s food writer could get ahead, she said every writer should be learning “on a parallel track.”  You must be “platform agnostic,” she advised.”Think of yourself as a brand and expand your writing into every platform.”

There’s no such thing as enough, she continued. Writers should “have a website and blog every day. Whatever excites them is what they should blog about.” Food writers should also be building up expertise at the same time. So “if you’re passionate about meat, take classes on butchering and grilling.”

Today’s writers have to be tech and social media savvy as well. “Everyone should know what SEO is, how to submit to Digg, how to Twitter when you put something up.”

Steel, a former magazine editor turned website editor and apps developer, walks her talk. She has also pushed into a yet another new area, publishing her first cookbook. For less experienced writers who want to write books, however, she’s big on self publishing because there are “so many ways to sell content online.” “You could bypass any publisher and create an e-book, then sell it on Amazon, and with the right keywords and tags you could be on the front page.” She also suggested food writers explore self publishing through sites like Blurb.

When asked about freelancing possibilities for Epicurious.com, she said the daily online food publication already uses “a ton of freelancers,” who write about restaurants, wine and drinks, travel and health. They include many writers she has known from her print days as an editor at Food & Wine and Bon Appetit. “We try to go with people who are experts in their field, people who have a track record and are well established,” she said. Like other national magazine editors, she rarely takes a chance on a new writer.

Is her advice doable or implausible? Exhausting or exhilarating? Profitable or income-starved?Let me know your thoughts.

p.s. Want to win a copy of my book? Head over to Wasabimon and enter.

As you might know by now (because I’ve been shouting it from the rooftops), Will Write for Food, 2nd edition, is out with a new cover. I thought you might like a behind-the-scenes look at how the cover selection process works and how I ended up with my current cover.

Here’s the original cover of Will Write for Food. This cover came in an email from the publisher (Marlowe & Co.). I loved it immediately and danced around the room. People told me how lucky I was to have a great cover on the first pass. It’s an old-school journalism kind of image, and back in 2005, I was an old-school journalism type of gal. I bought matching jewelry, a bracelet of typewriter keys. My agent gave me a necklace with a “D” typewriter key to celebrate the book’s release.

Fast forward to 2010 and the revision of Will Write for Food. The new publisher (Da Capo Press) said they wanted to freshen up the old cover. Even though I loved the old one, I had to recognize that it needed an update for the new generation of people who want to blog or write memoir. It took me a while to come around. Months, actually.

Da Capo needed a new cover image immediately for the catalog. Below is the first pass, a placeholder because they needed something fast.

Months later, my editor sent me three images. I was lucky that she gave me a choice, because many authors do not get that privilege. All three covers had food images — something that seems obvious now. I had heard that sweets and desserts do well on covers, so that was a consideration.

Below is the runner up. I love the black background and the clean lines of this one.

The next cover seemed like a diet book to me, I suppose because of the veggies. And I love veggies! Maybe I was stuck on the dessert idea. Kind of like how Cooking Light magazine wouldn’t bother with a salad on the cover. But chocolate cake, now we’re talking.

And last, the cover of choice. At first I was taken aback by the softness of the new cover, by its scallops and pink-ish background. But now I like it, and it’s perfect for its target audience of women who want to write about food.

You might also notice that Anthony Bourdain’s generous quote is gone. I asked to have it moved to the back cover, and the editor agreed. The focus of the new edition is blogging, so I wanted a blogger’s endorsement. And who better than Ree Drummond, whose not-even-published-yet memoir was already optioned for a movie starring Reese Witherspoon?

I’m thrilled.

Lorena Jones became publishing director of Chronicle Books last fall, and she’s focusing on the newest part of her  job: developing dynamic digital content for mobile applications, enhanced e-boooks, and iPads.

The former publisher of Ten Speed, Jones worked at Ten Speed for 15 years. Now she’s going digital and embracing the learning curve.

“Five of us here are trying to learn all this stuff at warp speed,” she said. “We work super collaboratively.” Jones has done about a dozen deals since January, including six iPhone apps and 3 iPad apps. She calls the products “suites.”

She’s developing her talent pool, working with both established Chronicle authors and new writers excited about digital media. “I think of it like the Matrix. I think about what authors know in a 360 degree perspective. How can that knowledge be developed and expanded and rendered in video, audio, an interactive game or a quiz?”

All the big publishing houses are busy developing and producing electronic apps. Ten Speed, for example, made the app for David Lebovitz. Publishers are deciding how much they want to invest and experiment, said Jones. It’s an intriguing issue, since apps sell for just a few dollars compared to a hard-cover cookbook, which typically retail for $25-$35. Publishers need sales in the hundreds of thousands to make the investment add up.

For now, Chronicle is content to experiment. Some of the process is familiar, mirroring producing a book, Jones says. She gets involved at the acquisitions stage, determining whether a book has digital potential. She’s attracted to reference and tool-based books, so cookbooks are a natural. She decides whether the author is suited to the project, and maps out the deliverables and a production schedule.

At this point, since the technology is new, Chronicle plays a big part in imagining and producing the content. Chronicle produces app pieces in-house that cookbook authors have never heard of, she said, like  “a shopping cart with an aggregated shopping list, provided in an Excel spreadsheet.” It is used to create an interactive grocery shopping list, based on recipes the user selects.

For a recipe app, Jones might narrow down a cookbook to 35 essential recipes. Headnotes must be edited or recast for the screen. She identifies opportunities for additional learning moments, such as videos that appear as sidebars. She thinks about what would make more sense as a video versus text, such as whipping egg whites or making caramel.  She coaches the author on how to write a script for the audio in these videos, then the author records the media in a studio, with a producer.

What if writers have ideas for a digital content? “They just have to articulate their thoughts, not create a full-fledged proposal.”

I asked why techie authors should work with publishers versus try to create this content on their own as entrepreneurs. At this point  they get a lot of hand-holding, said Jones. She feels there is an advantage in Chronicle ’s vendor relationships. I’d add that the publisher provides some marketing support, a distribution method, and Chronicle pays writers to create digital content.

So what do authors need to do to be attractive in this new medium? “Authors have to learn to work in the video medium,” Jones said.  While some can communicate well in audio, it’s not for everybody. But you don’t have to be Giada, she said. Not yet. “We’re not so focused on entertainment quality, more like PBS at this stage.”

What should food writers do to step up their skills? “Get familiar with the devices and the way people are consuming content on them,” she advised. “Everyone should have a smart phone where you can buy and use apps. Have access to an e-reader. We’re all going to know someone who has an iPad. Play around with them, see what you like about them. You will start having those thoughts: this part of what I know would make a great app. ”

What if you’re not interested in developing digital content? Jones is reassuring. “There’s always going to be a market for books, and the digital products we’re making are not replacements,” she said. “There are books that should not have digital products for them, particularly single subject or trendy books.” Asked for an example, she said she didn’t need an app based on 50 gingerbread cookies.

As for me, I just got my first smart phone and spent 15 minutes yesterday trying to type a Twitter message on the super-sensitive Apple keypad. I have a long way to go. I have yet to download the cooking and food apps and play with them, but I’ll get there.

What about you? Are you downloading apps and seeing how they work? Are you fantasizing about your own app or already working on one? Or are you thinking you’ll stick with just type for now? Let’s discuss.

I thought you might like to know how a book revision works, and in doing so I’ll discuss how I approached a large writing project and how I interview.

It seems that hard and fast rules about what constitutes a book revision don’t exist. Usually it’s because the author or the publisher feels the information needs updating. And that’s how it happened.

Last year I decided to update Will Write for Food, mostly because of advances in blogging and social media. I couldn’t go back to the editor I worked with and discuss it, because a new publishing company (Perseus) acquired the original publisher of my book (Avalon). So I met with my new editor at Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus.

A girl needs to be prepared, so I brought her a list of what I thought I could enlarge upon from the first edition.  I wanted a big new chapter on food blogging. I wanted to incorporate information from bloggers in other chapters such as freelance writing and how to get started. I had co-written a cookbook in 2008 and wanted to say more about the process of writing and production, photography and collaboration. Self-publishing had changed, particularly when it came to e-books and print-on-demand. And freelance writing had changed, some of it drying up. There had to be a positive way to approach that.

She said a revision had to be 25 percent larger than the original book. That meant adding 20,000 words, about 80 pages of 8 1/2 x 11-inch paper, double spaced. We spoke in pages, though: 50 pages on blogging, 7 more pages on freelancing, 9 more pages on cookbooks. Fortunately, our meeting was enough, and I didn’t have to write a full book proposal. The manuscript would be due this spring, the book to come out in the summer. That’s considered a rush job, doable because it’s a paperback with only type, no photos.

The editor hoped I would make all changes on a hard copy, to save time in production. Soon a huge envelope of 8 1/2 x 11-inch pages arrived by UPS. I tried. I really did. I would write in a sentence in pencil, erase it, write it again, erase it because my writing was hard to read, then change my mind about what I’d written and erase it again. It was torture! I begged her to let me edit my original Word file using Track Changes, a mark-up program, and she agreed. What a relief!

I tackled the chapter on food blogging first, since it comprised the majority of the update. I read books on blogging, scoured Internet sites such as Problogger and Copyblogger for tips, and interviewed many of the biggest names in food blogging for insights. I interviewed by phone or by Skype, wearing a headset, typing into a Word file. This system works a whole lot better than sending questions by email, where people typically respond with  as little information as possible. Just about everyone I approached was open to being interviewed.

About halfway thorough my research, I wrote an outline based on what I thought made sense for a beginning blogger and, as the chapter progressed, for experienced bloggers who still wanted to learn something. Because I had started a blog that summer, I had many questions and issues to answer for myself too:

• Why blog?
• Choosing a software service
• Deciding on a title
• Creating an About page
• What to write about
• How to make people care
• How personal should you be?
• Developing a distinctive voice
• How to come up with and structure a post
• How blog recipes are different from print
• How to write book reviews
• How to take great food shots
• Accepting and reviewing products
• How to get noticed
• Increasing your readership
• Can you make any money?
• Going from blog to book
• How to stay inspired.

Organizing the chapter halfway through gave me a chance to review my research and see where the holes were, and to decide who else I needed to interview. I also figured out which sidebars to add and where to put them.

It took about a month and a half to write the chapter. Once I broke it down into the sections above, I filled in the information in each part. That’s a secret of big writing jobs: breaking it down into small steps. Otherwise it gets overwhelming. I let myself write whichever sections I wanted, just to keep writing. In the old days I’d force myself to start at the beginning. I’m more relaxed these days — I know I’ll get there, and it doesn’t have to be in order. I made a point to keep my tone consistent with the rest of the book: be helpful and inspiring, but realistic.

As for the rest of the book, I decided which info — and people — needed updates. Some info was dated, some less relevant. People had left their jobs, some had new titles. I worked the advice and experience of bloggers into other chapters. Molly Wizenberg’s reflections on writing memoir and how it was different from blogging, for example, went into the section about memoir.

I could have kept going and kept revising, but at some point, I had to decide I was done. (Having a deadline helped.) My editor had a few comments, and then the chapter went off to the copy editor. From there we worked on a cover (a whole other story I’ll share soon) and a new index, and then…off to press. It was much easier than writing the whole book, but a big project nonetheless.

So that’s my story. What about yours? If you’ve worked on a big writing project, what’s your secret to managing it all?

Thanks to LoAnn Mockler for the suggestion.

]]> http://diannej.com/blog/2010/07/anatomy-of-a-book-revision/feed/ 12 http://diannej.com/blog/2010/07/here-it-is-the-new-edition-of-will-write-for-food/#utm_source=feed&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=feed http://diannej.com/blog/2010/07/here-it-is-the-new-edition-of-will-write-for-food/#comments Wed, 07 Jul 2010 01:49:47 +0000 diannejacob http://diannej.com/blog/?p=3884

Last year, based on the success of the film Julie & Julia, my agent persuaded my publisher that Will Write for Food needed an update. “EVERYONE who has seen the movie wants to write a food blog,” she said, “and Dianne has already been received as an expert on the subject.”

Published in in 2005, the first edition of Will Write for Food needed an update, as it did not say much about food blogs. Back when I wrote it in 2004, the print world ignored bloggers as unproven and unedited. And I had a background in print.

How things have changed in five short years. Now food bloggers are the darlings of the food writing world, and some blogs have higher readerships than national food magazines. Some bloggers have higher incomes than the executive editors of those magazines too. And then there are the blog-to-book deals, the opportunities to write for print, and all kinds of other doors that opened as bloggers blasted into international consciousness by embracing easy blogging software and appearing online immediately. Now, every print publication and most general websites have begun blogs as a way of staying relevant.

A year ago I launched this blog as a way to research my new version of Will Write for Food and to build a platform for its sales. I couldn’t say so because I didn’t want sales of the existing version of my book to come to a halt, so all this time I’ve been waiting to make this announcement.

Meanwhile,  it’s been fun learning how to blog, build an audience, figure out what resonates with readers, and become part of an enormous online community. Along the way, I interviewed the most successful food bloggers, writing a 17,000-word chapter on  food blogging (about 70 pages double spaced) that will answer your questions, inspire you, and provide resources and insider information.

In addition to the new chapter on blogging, the new edition of Will Write for Food incorporates tips on using social media as a freelancer and a blogger; updated info on book publishing, whether traditional or self-publishing; and updated info on the newer, more competitive freelancing market. There’s a foreword by the multi-talented David Lebovitz, a successful food blogger, author and freelance writer and one of the first to champion my book (and note comment from Cooking With Amy, way back then too). You’ll also find insider information based on 75 interviews with the most successful authors, writers, editors, agents (and bloggers) in our business, plus a bibliography of more than 200 books, and a resource guide of magazines and websites that take freelance writing.

I hope you’ll check it out. The new edition is 25 percent bigger, clocking in at around 100,000 words, and the price of $15.95/$20 Canada has not changed. I’ve grown to appreciate the new cover, a departure from the oh-so-journalistic typewriter keys.

My new edition should be in stores by the end of this month, or pre-order it online or at your local independent bookstore. And as soon as it’s out, I’ll be running around the US and Western Canada to appear at conferences and bookstores to promote it, so I hope you’ll come by and say hello.

Befriending chefs and purveyors when you’re a food writer can be perilous. Worse yet, the practice can come back to bite you in the butt.

And that’s exactly what happened to Josh Ozersky, a food writer who got married recently in New York and showed poor judgement when planning for his wedding.

The trouble started when he accepted food from his buddies in the business as  presents: free bread, dips, seafood, lasagna, strip loins, and a free place to hold the event.

Then he devoted his column on Time magazine’s website to promoting the food and purveyors, never mentioning that his buddies supplied the goods for free, and saying most caterers “aren’t really good cooks” anyway.

Another food writer, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice, busted him in an open letter, suggesting the food and venue could have cost $24,000 and asking whether he paid. And then the New York Times did a fascinating story about not only Ozersky but the whole issue of restaurants getting an increasing number of requests for free meals.

Time got so many comments on Ozersky’s column that they closed it, and later issued a statement: “Josh is friends with a variety of chefs and those relationships inform much of his writing. Usually, those connections are clear in his work. This piece describing his wedding, however, lacked adequate disclosure. Josh should have made his personal ties to the chefs in the piece clear and disclosed that the food and the venue he was describing were gifts. Josh understands that such proper disclosures are to be made in the future.”

So obviously, Ozersky screwed up. It’s best to disclose when you get a free meal or product, at the very least. Whenever you’re being treated in a way that’s not identical to the way your readers would be treated, you have to fess up.

So let’s discuss: Are you friends with food purveyors and chefs? Have you ever considered whether this might cause a conflict for you? Or do you think it’s inevitable to have friendships with the people whose food you admire, and whatever happens, you can handle it?

Thanks to Cynthia of  Life of Cyn and Carole Bidnick for sending me links.

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me…oh, hello there. My blog has made it to the one-year mark and I’m celebrating. Want to join me?

I know I’m a piker compared to many of you, but when I started blogging about food writing, I didn’t know if I could continue posting at least twice a week, or if I’d have enough to say (hah!).

I just looked back at my first post, and I think I’m still delivering what I promised: a useful place to read and comment on the world of food writing. I also said you’ll find  links to lots of articles and sites on food writing, and while that’s true,  you can now find more in my tweets, so people can read them right away. I had no idea why Twitter was valuable back then.

Launching the blog has been exhilarating. Here are some of the benefits, for those of you who might still be on the fence:

• I’ve had a ball getting to know food writers and bloggers from all over the world
• I write regularly again
• 2009 sales of Will Write for Food were up 50 percent in the first six months after I launched
• A reader hired me to edit her cookbook based on my posts about recipe writing
• People have hired me to advise them on starting or repositioning their blogs, and
• I’ve been invited to speak and teach at blogging conferences, including BlogHer Food and the Club Med Food Blogger Conference.

I’ve also got a better idea of what not to do: criticize another blogger publicly and then let her have her say on my blog. When I did so, five months in, my readership  peaked and the numbers were never that high again for the rest of the year. But that’s no way to get the page views up, and the whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. (In fact, I wondered if I should even provide the links if you missed them the first time around, but in the interests of full disclosure, I’m trusting you.)

As for what works, I still like to be controversial and opinionated sometimes, and that has a certain appeal. You can see, at the top right, which posts have generated the most comments. Sometimes, in your replies, you have helped me see that I’m wrong. I love that, actually.

Beyond popularity, I’m still deciphering which posts work and why. Sometimes I don’t care and write whatever I like, including personal stories. I guess that is the privilege of having my own space. I give myself permission to get off track and see what happens. I sometimes post things that don’t strike a chord. It’s all part of the mix, and I enjoy the wide range of content and the freedom to write about whatever strikes me.

Most of all, thank you for taking me seriously with thoughtful comments, debates, engaging with other commenters, adding resourceful information, and helping me generate a thoughtful discussion about all the different ways we express our passion for food by writing about it. It’s been a heck of a year, and I’d be nowhere without you.

Food writing doesn’t pay the bills. I hope this isn’t news to you. Sure, a few people are employed full time to write about food. Did you notice the key word? Few.

To make ends meet, the rest of us self-employed types take other jobs: cooking classes, private cheffing and catering, consulting for corporations, more lucrative forms of writing, and editing. And a lot of people have real jobs during the day and write about food on the side.

The thing is, we’re still obsessed with food. So how can we get  jobs working on what we love?

Enter two books. The first, self published in 2008 by the wickedly funny Irena Chalmers, teacher of food writing at the Culinary Institute of America, is Food Jobs:150 Great Jobs for Culinary Students, Career Changers and Food Lovers. Now, I can’t be objective about this book because I have adored Irena since I heard her speak at an International Association of Culinary Professionals annual conference years ago. She was hilarious and wise, and I vowed to get to know her.

I have, and now we are friends. I was a guest speaker at her class last year, and she published an excerpt from my book, Will Write for Food, in Food Jobs. So of course I think this book is good reading, practical, and jammed with good ideas and insights.

Coming from a culinary school perspective, Irena begins with jobs in restaurants in food service, then covers retail jobs, art and design. There’s a big chapter on media, where you’ll find out how people became culinary historians, recipe developers, recipe contest winners, food radio hosts and media trainers, culinary copywriters and television producers. The book moves on to jobs in promotion and publicity, history and culture, science and technology and farming. Throughout are sidebars of advice by luminaries such as Nach Waxman, proprietor of Kitchen Arts & Letters bookstore in New York, and author Betty Fussell. At the end, Irena advocates getting an education, and lists culinary schools, scholarships, and teaching.

The second book came out this year. It’s Culinary Careers: How to Get Your Dream Job in Food, by Rick Smilow, president and CEO of the Institute of Culinary Education; and Ann McBride, an adjunct professor of food studies at New York University. Right off, there’s an argument for going to culinary school –not surprising, considering the author’s job. The book’s trajectory continues the way it might if you were a culinary school graduate: internships, writing a resume and cover letter, and raising capital to open a restaurant. Strangely, interviews with writers such as Ruth Reichl and Michael Ruhlman are included here.

In Part II, the book veers off into jobs, career paths and profiles of those who found success. Predictably, the first few are related to graduating from culinary school, such as catering, becoming a food artisan, or becoming a pastry chef.

The authors include dozens of interviews, my favorite part. You’ll find out about a day in the life of a cheesemaker, restaurant wine director, rotisserie truck owner, public relations person and food stylist, among others. They ask for salary ranges and some interviewees provided them. Talk about living vicariously! Gail Simmons of Food & Wine said events directors at big magazines make between $75,000 – $150,000 per year. She runs the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen. Pamela Mitchell, the executive food editor of Every Day with Rachael Ray, said the range is  $90,000 to $120,000 for magazine executives. Sweet.

Both books are valuable resources if you want to find out what other kinds of jobs exist for food obsessed people like us, who probably do more than one thing. For me, in addition to my books and blogging, it’s editing for publishers, coaching and teaching.

What other food-related jobs do you do besides food writing, and do they pay the bills?

On the prowl for food with my father, Moses Jacob, with me (on right) and my sister.

On Father’s Day yesterday, I thought about my dad, a food-obsessed poet and songwriter who loved produce more than anyone I’ve known.

It sounds funny to say that he was obsessed with produce. But my dad lived for it. He grew vegetables in our Vancouver back yard, specializing in a Chinese green called celtuce. All summer long he cut down the stalks and sliced them into juicy green batons that floated in a bowl of water in the fridge. While other kids ate Popsicles, I fished out those crisp, green stems for a refreshing treat.

In winter, he pickled turnips with beets and carrots, turning them hot pink in their tall Mason jars. We ate them at dinner with meat stews my mother cooked, brimming with bamboo shoots and peas, cauliflower or lima beans.

For dessert in spring, we ate artichokes, at least one for each of us. My father loved how, when he washed them down with a glass of water, his mouth filled with sweetness. For fall dessert, my mother roasted a pan of  sweet potatoes, cooked until the sugars wept out and caramelized in pools around the sides. They reminded my parents of Shanghai, where they purchased sweet potatoes from street cart vendors.

Even when we gathered around the television at night, my father appeared with a dinner plate piled with crisp wedges of iceburg lettuce in summer; slices of apples and oranges in winter.

When I was around 8 years old, my dad convinced a produce vendor in Chinatown to order a box of mangoes from the Philippines just for him. In the 1960s there were no mangoes in the supermarkets, and he ached for the fruit he remembered from China. Once the mangoes ripened in our basement, my parents covered the dinner table with newspaper, then brought in armfuls of ripe yellow fruit. We ate them with spoons, the sicky juice running down our faces.

My dad’s been dead for 28 years, but I carry on his obsession. He would’ve loved the farmer’s market I visited yesterday, overflowing with beets, peaches, cherries and lettuces. I’m still looking for celtuce, though. The last time I tasted it was in China,  maybe 8 years ago. It was a diamond-shaped green served in a breakfast dish, and when I bit down on it, all the memories of those stalks in the fridge flooded back.