Food Network recipe developer lends talents to centennial events

COLUMBIA — It's been nine years since Sarah Copeland picked up supper at a fast-food window.

These days, she prepares most of her meals at home using eggs and meats from a local farm, as well as tomatoes and beans from her garden. But as an MU journalism student in the late '90s, Copeland, now a Food Network recipe developer, didn't cook or buy organic ingredients.

She ate in the campus dining halls and downtown restaurants. She didn't even know Columbia had a farmers market.

"If I would have known about the Columbia Farmers' Market, I would have been there every Saturday," Copeland said, "and I would probably have weighed 25 pounds less."

Asked to be the consulting chef for the opening and closing meal events of the Missouri School of Journalism Centennial, Copeland headed straight to the farmers market for inspiration. The Taste of Missouri Mixer, the celebration's finale at 8 p.m. Friday, will feature a tasting menu of local and regional catfish, vegetables, sauces, cheeses, breads, wines, brews and candies.

"The most important thing happening in food trends is that people are realizing that local, seasonal food is best for them, the environment, the food system and the economy," she said.

Journalism and agriculture industries are struggling, Copeland said, but both have a number of strong, dedicated professionals with integrity who are focused on telling the truth. For journalists, the truth might mean digging deeper to tell the "real story." For farmers, it's being honest about the use of pesticides.

Copeland, an Illinois native, said she wanted to highlight the best in agriculture and journalism through the menu, layout and service at the two dining events.

Her original vision for the celebrations was grandiose. All guests would sit at one extra-long table in Francis Quadrangle. All ingredients would be fresh and local.

"I was the big dreamer," she said. "I just came with ideas, passion and energy."

Daniel Pliska, executive chef for the University Club of Missouri, and Suzette Heiman, director of the centennial, had to be the realists. The quadrangle is not level, and weather is unpredictable. Also, early on, event organizers didn't know whether to expect 400 or 4,000 guests.

Although they didn't quite meet Copeland's pie-in-the-sky goals, the organizers reached out to many local purveyors, such as Uprise Bakery, Troutdale Farms and Ozark Forest Mushrooms.

Copeland acknowledges that even she has struggled to maintain a diet of only regional, seasonal foods.

"At one time in my life, I was striving to eat 100 percent local and organic foods," Copeland said. "You'll kill yourself (trying to do so). Be thoughtful about food but enjoy what you're eating."

Although her mother's parents were pork farmers in Iowa and her father's parents ran a family farm in southern Missouri, Copeland once considered herself no more than a "good eater." She didn't begin cooking until her junior year at MU, when she prepared American "treats" like pancakes and chocolate chip cookies for her international roommates and neighbors.

After graduation, Copeland moved to New York where she was a photo editor, researcher and writer for Glamour and O, the Oprah Magazine. For fun, she enrolled in night classes at the Institute for Culinary Education. Her culinary knowledge led to stints as a cooking school instructor and private chef in France, as well as a recipe tester for national magazines.

Copeland started freelancing in 2004 for the Food Network and contributed to the network's cookbook "How to Boil Water" the next year. Her journalistic abilities to work on deadline and question people in high-pressure situations were required once she was hired full .time as a recipe developer, food writer and photographer.

During tapings of "Iron Chef America," Copeland was stationed off-camera to ask the competing chefs about the ingredients they were using. She relayed the details to the show's host, who provided viewers with a play-by-play of the culinary action.

"It really called upon my Missourian skills because these chefs are under the gun," she said. "They have cameras in their face, only have 40 minutes left on the clock and still have 10 to 15 tasks to do. They really don't want to talk to you."

Since she always intended to work in print journalism, Copeland is particularly excited about developing recipes for a magazine the Food Network will launch in October.

Yet, she still thinks of herself as a writer first.

"I don't think of my whole career as being about food," she said. "I see it as a phase in my life as a writer. People who you can't get to talk about anything else will share stories about food. Food is the window into people and culture."

Copeland's workday in the Food Network kitchens begins with a discussion about the last thing she and her co-workers cooked at home or ate in a restaurant. One meal or flavor combination may be used to spin off a recipe to create a slightly different and perhaps better one.

"The way we cook at home is intuitive, natural, simple and healthy," she said. "What I cook at home, I then develop at work."

Of course, her home kitchen includes unconventional products. She makes organic yogurt using a live mushroom culture from India. Her cabinet includes Hawaiian pink sea salt and Elder flour syrup from Hungary.

When she's not cooking, Copeland volunteers regularly with Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to fighting hunger. She was integral in the formation of Good Food Gardens, a partnership to bring gardens to community centers where access to local products is limited.

"I want to help people learn that food is not the enemy but the thing that gets us back to our optimal health," said Copeland, who started as a pre-med major at MU.

But in the meantime, she's busy planning another celebration, her wedding, just four weeks away.

"My finance proposed in the Hungarian hills near his grandmother's farm," she said. "Within two or three days, I knew exactly what would be on the menu."