Food Writer Marion Cunningham Dies

Marion Cunningham, 90, a legendary food writer who lived in an assisted care home in Walnut Creek, succumbed to complications from Alzheimer's disease Wednesday.

 “She took what many people would say was housewife food and really gave it respect by force of her own personality,” said Michael Bauer, the executive food editor of the San Francisco Chronicle, as quoted in the New York Times.

Cunningham, a native of Southern California, rewrote The Fannie Farmer Cookbook for a new edition in 1990, according to SFgate.com.

In the preface to the cookbook, she was an advocate for the dwindling family dinner: "Food is more than fodder. It is an act of giving and receiving because the experience at table is a communal sharing; talk begins to flow, feelings are expressed, and a sense of well-being takes over.”

Cunningham was a protege of renowned food writer James Beard, whom she introduced to a quaint Berkeley restaurant called Chez Panisse in 1974. Owner Alice Waters grew Chez Panisse and its style into "California cuisine" and an engine of the organic food movement.

In addition to kitchens, she knew her way around a car engine, as she worked at a gas station in San Diego in her youth, according to the Insatiable Critic blog. She suffered from agoraphobia, a fear of public places, so that crossing the Bay Bridge to San Francisco was a trial for her, the New York Times reported.