My name is Michelle Gusic and I live in Pittsburgh and I love it...but I'm a firm believer that absence makes the heart grow fonder. I love to travel everywhere except the United States Southwest. I've been to a few places down that way and I'm not so sure it's for me. But.... I'll definitely always take an opportunity to be proven wrong!
The best part about traveling? The food. Hands down. My best memories come from things I ate while traveling: Cherries & pistachios for two days straight while driving up highway 1, the first steak I ever ate and liked! in the hilly part of Ohio, fresh raspberries in the middle of a Farmer's Market in Portland, Oregon, meatballs at my favorite restaurant in Boston's North End.....
Now if I only could add fish & chips in London, croissants in Paris, couscous in Morocco, pasta in Italy......
and then write all about it! I've had a few opportunities to combine food, travel and writing all in one and I am planning on doing more of it. I try to stay away from the stiff writing style prevalent in a lot of different types of travel media and keep things simple, interesting and most importantly real. When I can't travel, I like to share what I'm baking and cooking and talk about some of the great restaurants and cafes around Pittsburgh.
A little bit more...
I'm a bit obsessive in the kitchen and at the keyboard. I finished my first novel (80% of it completed in various coffee shops and the other 20% in between loaves of bread) and have been trying to find a home for it ever since. It's not something that fits neatly into one genre as it is written in a memoir style but would fit into women's lit and a touch of the risque.
I bake and I bake and I bake. And it's still not enough. I often force people to eat baked goods when they come to my house and I share them as often as I can with some of my neighbors (but not too much, because they will think I'm weird). Why do I do that? So I can bake some more, of course.
Also, I have had the extreme honor to work as one of the recipe testers for one of my culinary idols, Peter Reinhart when he was working on his book "Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day' and if you ever see a woman in the bookstore enthusing about this particular book, you'll know it's me. Say hello, and if you'd drop a hint to the staff of Barnes & Noble that I wouldn't mind a sales commission....that would be great!
Contact me at Michelle Gusic : [email protected]
