My name is Darby Doyle, and I spent my formative drinking years in Kentucky and Tennessee.  Since then, I’ve lived on both coasts and all over the Western US.  Since 2005, I’ve lived in Salt Lake City, Utah with my husband (who we call The Macallan), two sons (Tim Collins and Sprite), and a couple of Labradors.  I’m an avant gardener, recovering archaeologist, urban chicken wrangler, pickled canner, novice butcher, sporadic angler, boozemonger, creative user of profanity (when children aren’t present- especially yours), and a Bourbon Ambassador.  My beverage profile?  Sometimes I’m a Mint Julep, sometimes I’m a Hot Toddy, but mostly I’m just A Bourbon Gal.

Some of my earliest memories are of standing on top of a chair so I could reach the counter in my grandma’s Indiana farmhouse kitchen:  eating more mushrooms than cleaning them, paring apples, and rolling pie crusts.  Our family lived in rural southern Ohio and later east of Louisville, Kentucky.  I learned about home preservation and old-fashioned home economics from my mother, who was a prodigious canner, and still is a wonderful cook and amazing hostess.  During college, I worked the front and back of the house at a couple of restaurants, and slung my fair share of cocktails.  Since my Kentucky days, I’ve had the pleasure of working all over the country in some amazing jobs:  wildland firefighter, backcountry forest ranger, archaeologist, museum collections consultant, historian, and arts advocate.  I’d like to think my approach to all of this moving and job changing is similar to my passion for great food and drink:  dive in, revel in it, and get the best out of everything that you find.

When my boys were babies, I wrote a food and recipe column for a parenting newsletter in Phoenix called “A Bun in the Oven: Simple Meals for Busy Parents.”  There may have been a instance or two where condensed cream of something soup was mentioned; sue me, I was sleep deprived.  More recently, my recipes have been independently posted, including a contribution to Utah’s Beehive Cheese recipe index.  I’m a lucky gal to also be a contributing writer for SLC’s own CityHomeCOLLECTIVE.

I hold a B.A. in Anthropology/Sociology from Rhodes College in Memphis (Go Lynx!), and an M.A. in Public History from Arizona State University (Fear the Fork!).  I was working on my PhD in Public History through ASU when we found out we were moving to Utah about eight years ago.  Needless to say, I got distracted by life, kids, and whatnot and am malingering in my ABD status.  Currently, I am an independent historical archaeology and curatorial consultant, and have some lovely gigs as a cocktails creator, food writer, and canning consultant.  Long story short: I’m a Utah housewife whose approach to life, food, and drink may not be what you’d traditionally expect from the Beehive state, and I try to integrate as much booze and coffee into my subversive cookery experiments as possible.   I hope you’ll stick around to see what we think up next.