Gaynell Rogers is behind “Gaynell’s Kitchen: Down Home Cooking from a Wayward Southern Belle.” (Photo by Kim Sayre Photography)
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Gaynell Rogers is behind “Gaynell’s Kitchen: Down Home Cooking from a Wayward Southern Belle.” (Photo by Kim Sayre Photography)
In her new cookbook and memoir, “Gaynell’s Kitchen: Down Home Cooking from a Wayward Southern Belle,” Gaynell Rogers writes about a dinner she once hosted at her hillside Novato home for Bonnie Raitt, Taj Mahal and Charlie Musselwhite.
Everyone gathered in the dining room — painted in warm Tuscan colors inspired by her trips to cooking schools in Italy — for a meal of seafood gumbo, buttermilk cornbread, orange almond salad and cheesecake.
“I’m proud to say that I think we created places for people to check their celebrity at the door and just have a good time,” she said when I spoke to her recently.
She recalled that after that dinner, her husband of 42 years, the celebrated blues slide guitarist Roy Rogers, played an obscure 78 rpm recording of blues legend Howlin’ Wolf that none of these famed roots musicians had heard before.
“That was just a really magical night, a great evening,” she said. “It was one of many historic parties and dinners we had at that house.”
The recipes for that dinner are featured with many other Southern-style dishes in “Gaynell’s Kitchen,” available for $45 through her website, gaynellskitchen.com.
She will also be on hand to talk about her book when her husband and his band, the Delta Rhythm Kings, play an acoustic outdoor dinner show featuring songs from his new album, “The Sky’s the Limit,” at 7 p.m. June 19 at Rancho Nicasio. Tickets are $40 at ranchonicasio.com.
It will be the first in a series of joint appearances the couple is billing as “The Wayward Sessions: Gaynell Rogers and Roy Rogers, Stories from the Kitchen and the Stage.” They plan a tour of the Northwest later this summer and fall.
“To both have a project out at the same time — her book and my album — is awesome, and it’s been fun,” Roy Rogers said. “We’re fortunate that we can do this. It’s serendipity.”
Born in New Orleans and raised in Florida, Gaynell Rogers, 75, discovered a talent for cooking for artist and musician friends while living in the South. After moving to the Bay Area in the 1970s, she became a well-known publicist, artist manager, marketing consultant and entrepreneur. In “Gaynell’s Kitchen,” she recounts a wealth of stories from her 30 years in the trenches of the music business and film industry.
In a section titled “Wayward Stories,” she writes about cooking fried chicken and collard greens for blues legend Big Mama Thornton, serving Wynton Marsalis organic jambalaya, managing the irrepressible Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and fending off the velvety and very busy hands of bluesman John Lee Hooker, among other juicy tales and anecdotes.
“The fact she’s written a memoir as well as a cookbook is great,” Roy Rogers said, “because all those stories are true.”
She acknowledges that traditional Southern cooking, delicious as it is, isn’t as healthy as it could be, noting that the South leads the nation in heart disease, diabetes and obesity. So she’s modified her recipes to contain less salt, fat and sugar. In fact, the idea for the book was sparked when she took a yearlong course in healthy cooking at Bauman College: Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts. For her thesis, she took 10 traditional Southern recipes and modified them to make them all organic and natural.
“You’ll find recipes here that try to keep the soul of the South intact,” she writes, adding, “’Healthy’ and ‘Southern’ don’t have to be an oxymoron.”
Before she gets into her recipes, though, there’s a chapter devoted to the most serious challenge and greatest accomplishment in her fascinating life — surviving four different cancers and five surgeries over the past 28 years.
After beating breast cancer, colon cancer and uterine tumors, she was diagnosed in 2023 with stage 4 metastatic leiomyosarcoma, an extremely rare disease that accounts for just 1% of all adult cancers.
“Looking back, it’s hard to believe I’m still standing, but I am,” she writes. “Feeding people at my tables and kitchen counter while fighting cancer has brought me joy, grounded me and kept me feeling alive and connected to the ones I love.”
Her current regimen includes traveling several times a week from Marin to Palo Alto for treatments in Stanford Medicine’s pioneering linear accelerator radiation oncology program.
“Boy, it’s so high tech,” she said. “It’s like walking into a spaceship.”
She also gets a 24-hour chemotherapy infusion every 21 days and a scan every three months — she calls it her “Scanapalooza” — to see how the treatments are going.
While seeking out the most cutting-edge science at Stanford and MD Anderson, a major cancer clinic in Houston, Texas, she has also been an advocate for cannabis as part of her cancer treatment.
“Cannabis helped me to sleep; it eased my anxiety and took the edge off the wicked mood swings those cancer drugs unleashed,” she writes in a chapter that includes advice for the newly diagnosed.
“It’s an earth-shaking moment,” she said. “And what I’ve learned in the 28 years of fighting cancer is that the lens has changed for advanced cancer. And now there’s a new term: living with cancer. It’s possible and it’s probable more now than ever because of health sciences and AI (artificial intelligence), which have affected cancer care in a very positive way.”
After 20 years in Marin, raising two children, the couple moved to a rustic home with high ceilings and a big front porch in the Tahoe National Forest near Nevada City, where they have lived since 2007. They are now back in the North Bay to be closer to her doctors, their daughter and their 2 ½-year-old granddaughter.
With the new book, she suddenly finds herself in the spotlight, talking about a cookbook/memoir that’s more than just a collection of recipes.
“I’ve always been a behind-the-scenes person, so I’m outing myself with this book because my cancer journey made me feel that I had a story to tell and I needed to tell it,” she said. “I thought this could bring value and lessons to people. And, hopefully, a little joy.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at [email protected]
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.marinij.com ’
