Sally Schneider

Sally Schneider is the creator of ‘the improvised life,’ a lifestyle blog about making and creating with whatever is at hand, and the “Home Cooking” column of The Atlantic Monthly’s Food Blog. She is a regular contributor to “The Splendid Table” on National Public Radio, and writes a syndicated newspaper column called “The Improvisational Cook” for Universal Press Syndicate. The author of the best–selling cookbooks The Improvisational Cook and A New Way to Cook, she has won numerous awards including four James Beard awards for her books and magazine writing.

A former chef, Sally has written about an array of topics — from hunting truffles in Italy, to an eccentric Swiss settlement in Appalachia, to curing hams in a city apartment for publications such as The Los Angeles Times Magazine, Saveur, Food & Wine Mgazine, Self, and Connoisseur. She has been a Contributing Editor to both Saveur and to Food & Wine Magazine, where she wrote the popular monthly column “Well-Being” for many years. She has contributed to many books including The Encyclopedia of Appalachia, The Collected Traveler, and America’s Best Recipes. In addition, she designed and taught a ground–breaking online cooking course called “A New Way to Cook with Sally Schneider” for Barnes and Noble University.

Sally’s most curious project was an artist’s book collaboration called The Onion As It Is Cooked, a poem embossed on a sheet of saffron pasta. It is in several rare book collections including The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Yale Library, and MOMA.

Sally has appeared frequently on television, including ABC’s Good Morning America, The CBS Early Show, Molto Mario on The Food Network, and Real Simple on PBS. As a food stylist, she worked with such notable photographers as Irving Penn, Hiro, Annie Leibovitz, and Maria Robledo.

Her varied work has been the laboratory for the themes she writes about today: improvising as an essential operating principle; cultivating resourcefulness and your “inner artist;” design, style, food — anything — that is cost effective, resourceful, and “outside the box.”

Sally lives in New York City where she is at work developing a web–based business.

Photograph, Ellen Silverman