Meet the Team Behind Off the Forkin' Path
Tina: Tech Support, Home Chef
I grew up a bit of a nomad, Los Angeles, Chicago, back to Los Angeles, and finally Lexington, Kentucky, where we stuck around long enough for me to finish elementary school. My parents were the type who saw a cross-country drive to visit family as an opportunity, stopping along the way to see sights, especially ones with historical significance. We saw so many Civil War roadside markers during one trip that my brother and I eventually staged a coup and refused to get out of the car. My dad took great pride in the fact that we knew more about U.S. history than most people learn in school. It worked, mostly. I still remember the monuments, but I remember the coup better.
Nobody in my house was chasing a Michelin star - my great-grandfather was a chef and my dad worked in a bakery when he was first married, but by the time I came along, cooking was a forcing function for nightly family dinner time. Still, my parents each had their lane. My dad grilled and experimented, sometimes with results that worked and others that didn't. His lasagna and sweet and sour chicken recipes are still in my regular rotation. My mom baked and stuck closer to the recipes she grew up with. Her spaghetti sauce is the one dish in this house that never goes out of favor; Mark would eat it several nights a week if I let him.
I got a bachelor's degree in computer science from Transylvania University and went to work for IBM, which is about as far from "food and travel blog" as a career can start. Not long after, I took a whirlwind tour of Europe, 12 countries in 19 days, and came home with the travel bug firmly lodged in my system. It never left.
Mark and I met on a blind date at a Kentucky Thoroughblades hockey game in 1999. We got married exactly one year to the day we met. Somewhere in there, the travel bug jumped hosts and infected him too, and we've been chasing flights and reservations together ever since.
A few years in, I considered a career change seriously enough to enroll in Sullivan University's culinary arts program, graduating with an associate's degree in 2006, just in time for Mark and me to pack up for Seattle, where I had a second act in tech at Microsoft. Twenty years later, I retired, and this blog is my third act.
Mark: Storyteller, Photographer
Growing up, my father worked for newspapers. He started as a news reporter, but his specialty was feature writing and for much of his career he was a human-interest columnist. I grew up seeing the world as a place of stories, and that idea came along with me into journalism, and then into food. I studied journalism at the University of Kentucky and after graduating, I worked as a freelance journalist and photojournalist. Later, I worked as lifestyle editor for Ladies Golf Journey and spent time as staff photographer for The Lane Report. My first published photo - of William Shatner, of all people - went out nationally over the AP wire.
I have always enjoyed good food but find it even better when there's a good story behind it.
We recently traveled to Iceland and tried a traditional dish: fermented shark. The shark in question is a Greenland shark, a species that excretes waste through its skin, making the flesh poisonous when freshly caught. Someone, at some point, decided the fix was burying it for 40 days to ferment. Sounds delicious, right? It wasn't. I'm named after Mark Twain, and all I could think of was his line about climbing Mt. Etna - he said he was glad he did it, for two reasons: first, that it was well worth doing, and second, having done it once, he'd never have to do it again. Same verdict on the shark. We didn't like it, but we got a story out of it.
The best food experiences are about surprises. Whenever Tina and I try something new, we compare notes on which dish surprised us most. For me, the best surprises come from humble ingredients - anyone can make lobster taste good, but one of the most memorable dishes I've ever had was cucumber sorbetto. We'd recently watched an episode of Iron Chef, and the secret ingredient was cucumber. We were eating at a restaurant a few weeks later and recognized Chef Wayne Johnson, who competed on the episode. We mentioned the cucumber sorbetto he had made, and he told us it had gotten so much attention it made it onto the menu. The dish and the chance meeting made the evening.
This blog exists because Tina and I had been collecting these memories for years without realizing it, and we've always wanted somewhere to share them with people who see food as an adventure too. There will be more discoveries and chance meetings to come, hopefully you'll want to follow along. I want to tell you a story.
Got a story of your own, or just want to say hi? We'd love to hear from you.
Symon, Bugle: Support Staff
Everyone needs a support team, and Mark and I have Symon and Bugle.
Symon is an enthusiastic 90-pound black lab mix pandemic pup. He is not a supporting character but has a starring role in our life. Symon has a love for anything he can eat (thus named for Chef Michael Symon) and is always ready for a walk or a game of Jolly Ball.
Bugle is Mark's African grey parrot (they were a package deal when we got married). He spends his time listening to 80s and 90s music while reforesting the family room carpet (usually with grains that Symon is allergic to). Like most African grey parrots, he mimics sounds including knives chopping, the American Family Insurance jingle, and our security alarm (our favorite).
