on a career in clinical psychology and cheesemaking and where to get a desert-island chocolate chip cookie
reality bites with cheesemaker, farmer, and clinical psychologist tamara jo hicks
Cheesemaker, farmer, and clinical psychologist Tamara Hicks is likely to be spotted in the small town of Tomales in West Marin, 60 miles north of San Fransisco’s Bay Bridge. She and her husband restored and now run the beautiful 160-acre Toluma Farms & Tomales Farmstead Creamery, where they raise the sheep and goats that produce their delicious cheese. Across the Bay, they run Daily Driver, a beloved local bagel business with an on-site creamery.
When she’s not selling cheese at a local farmer’s market, she might be at one of her favorite local restaurants, or spending time on the East Coast in Brooklyn or in Hudson, NY. We talked to Tamara about growing up in Oklahoma, her great-grandmother’s chocolate cake, and the fine art of making cheeseboards.
My earliest food memories are with my great-grandmother Opal, in Oklahoma. Although I was born in rural San Diego, I was raised in Oklahoma from the time I was a week old until 3rd grade. Opal and my grandpa Joe were tenant farmers and also had a magical homestead of their own. I remember sitting on the back porch with her and shelling beans from the garden, and I remember collecting eggs from the chickens and her showing me how to make deviled eggs. Mine were a mess. I was too afraid to cut through the yolk, so I cut around it, making my edges really crazy. One of my earliest memories of kindness and support was her looking at that mess and saying they were the most beautiful deviled eggs she’d ever seen.
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