Jodi Spindel hosted her first dinner party at age 10, with a menu that included lobster bisque, duck a la orange, and wild rice, but she had “apprenticed” with her grandmother at a much younger age. “My grandmother was an incredible cook. I come from a really big family, and we all gathered at her house to celebrate special occasions. I loved to get up on a stool to help stir the carrot cake batter.”
Jodi remember watching “The Galloping Gourmet” on television when other kids were watching cartoons. “That’s how I learned to carve a turkey!”
Her family encouraged her cooking adventures. “Even when the timing was way off on my first dinner, and they had to wait a long time between courses,” she laughs. “But no one ever asked me if I wanted to be a chef. I guess it was considered a man’s occupation at the time.”
At the University of California, both Davis and San Diego, Jodi’s education focused on business management, and her love of food influenced her career with a food broker and a food producer in Southern California.
In1994 she and her husband moved into a house in Ventura country that had beautiful trees in the back yard. “Our first year there we had 300-400 softball sized pomegranates! A friend who’s a Martha Stewart type suggested that we make vinegar. We harvested around October – November, made the vinegar and gave it away at the holidays.”
Then Jodi started a cooking business, The Culinary Experience, to do cooking classes and cooking parties in private homes. Since she had plenty of pomegranate vinegar on hand, she developed a lot of recipes using it.
The next step was to enter the food competition at the Ventura County Fair, where she won first prize. “People started encouraging me to get it into stores, and the timing was right. I partnered with Nancy Phillips, who is ‘an extreme vinegar fan,’ and that’s been great.”
Now Jodi especially enjoys encouraging children to cook. She still makes time to do the occasional private cooking party for them. “I may go a bit overboard on the “food is life” concept,” she smiles, but the things we remember the most about family times are when food was present. The community aspect of food is so central to our lives.”
In 2006, Jodi formed a partnership with Nancy Phillips, friend and fan of the product. “Our business is all about helping people to understand that the kitchen is a bonding place — and that cooking is not brain surgery! They can relax in the kitchen and have fun. Even if what you’re making doesn’t turn out perfectly, it’s fine.”
“We can help people be creative with an ingredient that they may not have used before. Pomegranate vinegar is a fun product and it has a lot of uses. It changes the color of a dish, adds eye appeal – and zing!”
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