Diana Kennedy
| Diana Kennedy | |
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Kennedy at the 2016 Texas Book Festival
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| Born | Diana Southwood 3 March 1923 Loughton, Essex, United Kingdom |
| Occupation | author, researcher and cook |
| Nationality | British |
| Genre | Cookbooks, works on Mexican cooking |
| Notable awards | Order of the Aztec Eagle, Order of the British Empire |
| Years active | 1967-present |
| Spouse | Paul P. Kennedy (d. 1967) |
| Website | |
| dianakennedycenter |
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Diana Kennedy (born 3 March 1923) is a Mexican cooking authority known for her 9 books on the subject, including The Cuisines of Mexico, which started changing how Americans view Mexican cooking. Her work is the basis of much of the work of Mexican chefs in the United States. Her cookbooks are distinctive because they are based on her fifty years of traveling Mexico, interviewing and learning from cooks of all kinds in the country, and from just about every region. Her work has also documented native edible plants, which has been digitized by National Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity. Kennedy has received numerous awards for her work, including the Order of the Aztec Eagle from the Mexican government and membership in the Order of the British Empire.
Kennedy was born Diana Southwood in Loughton, Essex in the southeast of England. Her father was a salesman, and her mother was a schoolteacher who loved nature and wanted to live quietly in the countryside.
Kennedy did not attend college because of World War II, instead joining the Women’s Timber Corps at age 19. The Corps were a British civilian organization which took over forestry duties from men who had gone off to fight. Kennedy did not like cutting down trees, so she was delegated to measuring tree trunks instead.
In 1953, Kennedy migrated to Canada, living there for three years doing a number of jobs, including running a film library and selling Wedgewood china.
On a last-minute decision, Kennedy decided to visit revolutionary Haiti in 1957. There she met Paul P. Kennedy, a correspondent for The New York Times in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean. The two moved to Mexico in 1957, and there they married some time later. Kennedy has had no children, but she does have two step-daughters, Dr. Moira Kennedy-Simms and Brigid Kennedy, daughters of Paul P. Kennedy and his first wife, Martha Combs Kennedy.
In Mexico, Kennedy became enamored of the food, and has since dedicated her career to its preservation and promotion. However, she still maintains her British accent and takes tea each day. She has worked all her life and cannot imagine not working. When she is not teaching, she is either writing of working in the kitchen on recipes. She is noted for her brusque, no-nonsense demeanor, having pulled out tape recorders when police have tried to get bribes from her on her Mexican travels.
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Wikipedia