I remember that day in 1970 when I tried to enroll in the Art Department at the University of Hawaii. A huge gymnasium of hundreds of students flowed among the tables and teachers of different departments like ocean currents. I was a transfer student who had started in summer school but was now befuddled and lost among the plywood islands and stacks of forms. I had just found out that I should have submitted a portfolio the previous semester when I arrived, so I was prohibited from enrolling in any art classes. At 19, my life seemed ruined, and I was dramatically crushed. Or so it seemed. I had no idea what would lie ahead.
Just then, a bright smile turned on me like a light across the chaos and called out, “Kathryn!” Wearing his habitual white short-sleeved shirt and khaki trousers, Doug Kaya, one of my summer school teachers at UH, quickly diverted through the crowd toward me. “How are you?” His excitement washed over me and kept me from bursting into tears. I had so wanted to be an artist. Now, what would I do? The path would unfold from there…
I don’t ever remember us calling Doug “Mr. Kaya.” He was only 11 years older than most of us in class, not quite thirty, and full of energy for the puppetry and storytelling for children’s theatre classes he taught. Puppetry. How weird is that I was drawn to this, first in high school in an art class and later in that University of Hawaii summer school session? Puppetry in the morning and Waikiki Beach in the afternoon was a perfect 1970s solution to life.
After Doug Kaya listened to my woeful tale, he clapped his hands and said in a way-too-excited voice, “Hurrah! Now you can come with me!” And so I listened to his story about moving to the newly opened Leeward Community College campus of UH in nearby Pearl City to create a two-year Children’s Theatre degree program. He lacked just one student to make it official. That lucky student would be me.
Doug Kaya was not the first teacher who generously guided me, but he was the most enthusiastic, and that enthusiasm was infectious. Before that, there was Mrs. Cherry at Pearl Harbor Elementary, who taught us to make butter, act like trees, and read; Mrs Hansen, who, in 4th grade (11 years old?), read Mark Twain out loud to us during lunchtime- voices and all; Miss Hildegarde Steffes opened the art world to me as a terrified teen; and ultimately Mr. Gleason encouraged me to carve, paint, and sew my first wooden head marionette. Who was named Hildegarde, and which I still have!
So, what does this have to do with learning to cook in France?
I didn’t know it then, but the skills that Doug Kaya would teach me would become the foundation of all my work for the next 50 years: storytelling. In every job I have ever had, I have used the first skills I learned from him in the storytelling and puppet theatre troupe he established.
“To get everyone’s attention, be still and talk quietly.”
“Make sure there is a hump in the middle of your story.”
“Make things jiggle to keep children’s attention.”
“Use all of your funny voices.”
“Open your eyes wide when you really want to see better.”
Doug Kaya
After graduating with that degree in Children’s Theatre, I moved from Hawaii and continued to make puppets and perform for several more years across the western United States. In addition to writing scripts and dialogue mostly based on mythology and folk tales, I perfected my ability to whisper across vast school auditoriums packed with 600 children at a time. My career path would change across many disciplines—from baking, restaurant service, chef, art dealer, barge captain, host, and tour guide to teaching and, finally, writing. But those first storytelling lessons at 19 years old have stayed with me like a most faithful companion.
And so here I am, still storytelling and playing with inanimate objects—vegetables and fruit—still performing in cooking classes and using all my voices on scores of videos and Zoom calls. So before I tell you more about my French market cooking teachers, I want you to think about how your first teachers affected your life. Give them a call. Look them up. Go have dinner with them like I did 3 years ago when I turned 70. Here are a couple of photographs of Doug Kaya and me from 27 years ago when I published my first book, A Culinary Journey in Gascony, and taught a cooking class in Honolulu, and two years ago, meeting up in Hawaii for a 50-year celebration of teacher and student. Mahalo Nui Loa Doug!
Stay tuned for Part 2 of “Who Are Your Teachers?” and some recipes from the Markets of Rural France.
Finding France: A Memoir in Small Bites is an edible tale of a young traveling cook who gets stuck on a barge in France and stays to become a wise old woman with a head full of ideas on French food and cooking. Kate Hill—cook, teacher, mentor, and author—invites you into her world of French food as she learned over three dozen years of practice in the rural farmlands of Gascony. Read more here.
Kate Hill is the author of over a dozen cookbooks, including A Culinary Journey in Gascony, Cassoulet: A French Obsession, and A Gascon Year Series of 12 recipe and story volumes (available here). Published in America’s Best Food Writing 2019, curated by Samin Nosrat, Kate Hill has written for Saveur Magazine and The Los Angeles Times. Kate and her cooking, butchery, and charcuterie programs have been featured in Bon Appétit, Food and Wine, Condé Nast Traveler, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Boston Globe, Faire magazine, My French Country Home, and countless websites.
Love this, Kate!
Doug’s lessons are fabulous. Love the photos, the older ones and the reunions. Lush.