The American illustrated cook book of budget meals by Marion Howells

She and Beard became fast friends, and he soon hired her to set up cooking classes in the Bay Area and to help him teach classes in Oregon. 'But I don't ever remember actually being taught because I was always in the kitchen with my nonna, learning little by little.' A bigger kitchenīut by the time she finished the class with Beard, she was destined for a national stage. 'I don't remember not knowing how to cook,' she told The Chronicle in 2001.

Cunningham learned to cook at her maternal grandmother's knee. Her mother was an Italian immigrant, and Mrs. Cunningham confined her kitchen skills to family and friends. While the couple raised two children, Mark and Catherine, Mrs. Cunningham said was the first time she felt a sense of power and hope in many years, was the beginning of a journey that would change not only her life but the Bay Area culinary community.īorn Marion Enwright in 1922 in Los Angeles to Joseph and Maryann (Spelta) Enwright, she married Robert Cunningham, a medical malpractice lawyer. Despite her panic disorder, she forced herself to cross the Bay Bridge, leave California and embark on the two-week adventure. Cunningham, an agoraphobic and a self-described alcoholic who had recently quit drinking, let a friend prod her into going on a road trip to Oregon to take a cooking class with the famous Manhattan cookbook author James Beard. Her metamorphosis from amateur to pro started in 1972 when Mrs.

'She was the person who kept us all together during the early days of the food movement.' Forced change

'Not only did she know everyone and everything, she was the person you called when you had a triumph or when things weren't going so well,' Reichl said, adding that she thought of Mrs. Cunningham had completely reinvented herself at midlife and never thought it even remotely remarkable. Former Gourmet Editor Ruth Reichl later mused that Mrs. Cunningham, who spent her early adult years as a housewife with a penchant for cooking in her family's Walnut Creek ranch home, didn't enter into her professional food career until she was 50. She is best known for writing cookbooks, including 'The Fannie Farmer Cookbook,' and teaching culinary classes, where her goal was to demystify home cooking.

The American illustrated cook book of budget meals by Marion Howells