A former editor of Louisville magazine, Ronni Lundy is the award-winning author of six cookbooks, including Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden, nominated for the IACP’s Best American Cookbook Award in 1999 and Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken, named one of the six essential books about Southern cooking by Gourmet magazine in 1994. As a freelance journalist, she has written about food and pop music for newspapers and magazines around the country, including Gourmet, Esquire, Sunset, Cooking Light and Bon Appétit. A founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, Ronni received the organization’s Craig Clairborne Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. Born in Corbin, Kentucky, and raised in Louisville, she now makes her home in Cerrillos, New Mexico.
There’s something about living in the high desert Southwest, where ancient cultures and agricultural traditions still inform daily life, that brings us closer to the land and to the role that food plays in creating community and connection. So it’s no surprise that a daughter of the rural South and a refugee from the urban Northeast would find enough common ground here to pool their talents and experience as editors, journalists, authors, cooks and cultural explorers to launch a new digital magazine that would publish the kinds of stories they liked to read — stories that could take readers from around the corner to around the world as they explored a diverse array of culinary themes.
Less academic than Gastronomica and no replacement for the late, lamented Gourmet magazine, TheZenchilada.com features well-written original content from both established and newly hatched writers, beautifully designed and illustrated with top-notch photography and a wide range of art work — as luscious as a print publication, but with the added depth and dimension web-based multimedia productions can bring to a story. Not a blog, not a recipe-only site and definitely not a sound bite for foodies with a short attention span, the magazine’s founders decided to take the leap and bet the farm that there were enough people out there who still liked to read as much as they liked to cook or eat to support this unique publication.
Still, for all its commitment to fine design and food writing, TheZenchilada.com is as simple and straightforward as it is sophisticated, as accessible as it is beautiful. We hope that readers from all parts of the country — from all parts of the world — will find a home here with stories (and yes, recipes!) that both break new ground and rekindle memories of tables shared with family, friends, colleagues and strangers.
Less academic than Gastronomica and no replacement for the late, lamented Gourmet magazine, TheZenchilada.com features well-written original content from both established and newly hatched writers, beautifully designed and illustrated with top-notch photography and a wide range of art work — as luscious as a print publication, but with the added depth and dimension web-based multimedia productions can bring to a story. Not a blog, not a recipe-only site and definitely not a sound bite for foodies with a short attention span, the magazine’s founders decided to take the leap and bet the farm that there were enough people out there who still liked to read as much as they liked to cook or eat to support this unique publication.
Still, for all its commitment to fine design and food writing, TheZenchilada.com is as simple and straightforward as it is sophisticated, as accessible as it is beautiful. We hope that readers from all parts of the country — from all parts of the world — will find a home here with stories (and yes, recipes!) that both break new ground and rekindle memories of tables shared with family, friends, colleagues and strangers.
A former journalist and food editor for The Santa Fe New Mexican, Patricia West-Barker has been a partner in a communications consulting firm providing internal and external programs and campaigns for corporate clients, including Burlington Industries, John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Company, the Association of Washington Cities, Avon Products, Inc. and FMC Corporation. As a freelancer, she conceived, wrote and edited print and video materials for such clients as Johnson & Johnson Health Management, Inc. and the Behavioral Sciences Department of the University of Rhode Island. Pat is the author of three books, including Healing Spirits: True Stories of the Journey Toward Health and Wholeness. Born and raised in Boston, Massachusetts, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband Richard Cady.
Barbara Walzer’s first career revolved around her love of books: She has been a bookstore manager, antiquarian bookseller and library consultant with clients that included The British Museum, The Getty Center, Harvard and Brown universities, Yale Law School, the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. A second career that included positions as director of an inner city economic development program in Providence, Rhode Island, executive director of Santa Fe Indian Market and an independent consultant to arts and crafts organizations, further honed her management, marketing, fund-raising and public relations skills. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Barbara tasted life in a number of urban and rural communities on both the East and the West coasts before relocating to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she now lives.
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