A lot of people love the idea of improvising but are terrified of it, so I tried to make a book that was not a chef's book about improvising but a real home cook's book with a real home cook's pantry, supermarket ingredients, that sort of thing.

After Schneider visited a ramp (wild leek) festival in the town in the early seventies Sally Schneider returned yearly to document and write about the compelling and unexpected culture that Sally Schneider found there a mix of Swiss and Appalachian that manifested in unique foodways art music architecture and story-telling. She developed these ideas in her long-running Food & Wine Magazine column “Well-Being” and her ground-breaking tome “A New Way to Cook”. She began her career in food working in restaurants in the in 1970’s.

Sally Schneider is a journalist and Founding Editor of the website 'the improvised life'. She is a columnist for The Atlantic Monthly Food Blog as well as a radio commentator for the national public radio show "The Splendid Table". A former chef Schneider is author of The Improvisational Cook A New Way to Cook and The Art of Low Calorie Cooking.