Virginia Martinez Dabdoub
I am a 53-year-old native New Orleanian. I earned a BS in Nutrition from LSU and a Masters in Applied Nutrition from Canisius. I am blessed to be the busy wife/mother/stepmother/grandmother of six. The title of my book is really how we live in New Orleans, we live to eat! As the wife of a retired NOPD police commander of the French Quarter; our daughters grew up believing that Antoine’s prepared omelets and puffed potatoes for every seven year old when they came home from school. During the time my husband was with NOPD (and assigned to the quarter for a time), I spent 16 years as a nutrition services manager/cater at Touro Infirmary and inner-city Jewish hospital located in uptown New Orleans. I should expound on the “catering” aspect of my career based out of a hospital. The cooks at the hospital were so talented that I actually developed a catering business outside of Touro, focusing on the uptown Jewish community. We were becoming very successful, catering weddings at Gallier Hall, Bar Mitzvahs at the Board of Trade; in fact, in 2003 we generated over $300,000 in outside catering sales for the hospital. However, in 2005, like so many of our friends and family, we lost our single-story home in Lakeview. It was at this midlife junction; I decided it was time for a career/life change and enrolled in Our Lady of Holy Cross College to complete my certification in high school biology education.
For the past twelve years, I have taught biology and advanced nutrition at my high school alma mater. I served as the science department co-chairperson for Mt. Carmel Academy. I developed and continue to direct a healthy cooking camp as well as a CSI/Stem camp tween girls. Which brings me to this, my newest endeavor, finally completing a collection of family recipes compiled in a cookbook I am offering on this site as well as starting this website/blog.
My cookbook venture actually started decades ago. While at LSU in the ’80s, pursuing my nutrition degree, I worked on a project, testing recipes for a cookbook LouAna foods was developing. This is where I began to appreciate the importance of precise, easy to follow recipes that turn out a quality product every time. This was a labor of love recalling all of the wonderful family vacations on 30A, the everyday Sunday supers, and the holiday gathering of friends and family. I created this cookbook online at hertiagecookbook.com for my daughters and grandchildren to preserve the recipes of their childhood. My motivation was to provide my family with the opportunity to recreate the meals they loved when I am no longer.
I am pleased with the final product. In fact, I would have been content if it just remained a family treasure. However, family, friends, and students asked for me to make the book available to the public…..so here it is! I feel it was very apropos to launch on Thanksgiving day which happens to be my 53rd birthday.