About Rona Roberts

Rona Roberts, with Kenny's Country Cheese

That half-moon-like thing in my hand? That’s a piece of creamy Gouda from Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese, in Barren County, Kentucky — a symbol of Kentucky’s food and wine renaissance.

I loved cooking and baking while I was growing up seven miles outside Monticello, Kentucky, in beautiful Wayne County. Mother was a gifted, intuitive cook who thought HER mother was the best cook in the world, making meals out of not much, and making them delicious.

I learned to make the family’s evening meals, with some backup from Mother, by the time I was 11. She headed outside for flower gardening most days after her work as a school librarian. I liked the kitchen better than the heat, sweat, and sweat bees outside.

Mother and Dad grew most of what we ate, even after they took full time jobs as teachers and had to be away from the farm much of the time. Their vegetable garden always included some new vegetables from the winter seed catalogues that looked too intriguing to pass up. I remember when new types of English peas, sweet corn, kohl rabi, tomatillos, zucchini, and broccoli came into our lives.

I helped bake a cake when I was five, I’m told – and I discovered a lifelong love – cake dough! And baking, cooking meals, making things from scratch.

I had to grow up a looooong time before I realized that the foods and growing habits from my childhood made sense long after people abandoned them for the unappetizing, costly packaged foods sold in mega-grocery stores. In fact, my Massachusetts-born husband had to point out to me the wonders of Kentucky.

Starting 30 years ago, when I met Steve, he talked about Kentucky as a paradise, a place where we can all feed ourselves with spectacular, healthy, abundant food. My sweet older sister, Paula, got interested in healthy foods and supplements before anyone else I knew. I listened.

I joined Lexington, Kentucky’s Good Foods Coop when it was a buying club nearly 40 years ago, more for the low cost cheeses and grains than for the principle of the thing. Same with the more than 30-year old Lexington Farmers Market – I started shopping there seriously at least 10 years ago, and now much of what we eat from April through November comes from our friends at Lexington’s successful 31 year old market.

We grow quite a bit of our own food, too. Asparagus, splendid lettuces and spring greens, six or seven types of green beans, and tomatoes – Brandywine and Sungold. We have a fine small herb garden in our downtown side yard.

Starting in 2009, we have a new “add-on” garden about 100 steps from our house. The amazing London Ferrell Community Garden offered 40 plots this year, and we have planted Golden Cross Bantam corn and a variety of green beans there. “We” meaning Steve, while I cheerlead.

I still like cooking much better than gardening. Steve grows our vegetables now. I am lucky! I have had home grown or locally grown foods for most of my meals, most of my life. In this blog I share some of what I am exploring, learning, and trying with real, organic, luscious, sustainably and ethically grown local foods.

Nougat Magazine, a beautiful monthly arts publication, no longer with us, gave me a chance to become a food writer (or sorts). I started Savoring Kentucky because I needed a place to put all the extra ideas and information that came my way as I wrote 27 columns for Nougat.

Enjoy, and, of course, bon appetit!