Peter Barrett earned a BFA and MFA in painting, and spent 20 years in the art world showing his work around the U.S. and the world. After moving from New York City to the Hudson Valley, he began growing, foraging, fermenting, and pickling food in earnest, delving into many traditions and techniques for preservation, flavor boosting, and food waste reduction. He documented these experiments on his blog, and quickly branched out into writing for magazines, including profiles of gifted farmers, producers, and chefs, and then a book (which he also photographed and illustrated).
Barrett has been teaching cooking for over a dozen years, through classes in his home and other venues including immersive culinary tours that he led in Italy and France. He sees his many pursuits — cooking, gardening, fermenting, writing, ceramics, photography, teaching, and more — as part of one practice, a continuation of the same creative process that fueled his painting career. He believes that an informed, continual, hands-on relationship with your food is an essential component of wellbeing.
