Abigail Napp grew up in the food business as her mother was a leading caterer in the Pacific Northwest, and she never strayed too far from the culinary world. After college she began a career of traveling and writing about food, including at Condé Nast's La Cucina Italia. Her circuitous path led to Ojai, where she's been experimenting with various local products, including an Ojai adaption of a Northern Italian-French traditional liqueur made with walnuts and neutral grain spirits.

Abigail's varied interests in the culinary arts led to a wide discussion about eating and writing about eating, and how shortest path to understanding a culture is through its food. We talked about MFK Fisher and Julia Child, and wondered how they would have adapted to the quarantine.

Her pandemic-era journalism drew a focus on those various innovations and substitutions chefs and kitchen artists have been making during this strange time (including pizza pullers) and her interviews with leading figures such as Meryl Streep ("Julia & Julia,") Stanley Tucci ("Big Night") and Rhiannon Giddens and her Italian partner, Francesco Turrissi's grandmother's favorites. We also talked about Abigail's plans to write about the Biden family as the first red-sauce family to inhabit the White House.

We did not talk about ancient Roman recipes, Australian meat pies or New England clam bakes.

Check out Abigail's stories at https://www.lacucinaitaliana.com/contributor/abigail-napp