This week, Cheryl Alters Jamison expands her culinary storytelling in Santa Fe to include weekly stories on SantaFe.com. You probably know her as the radio host, for more than five years, of Heating It Up, airing Saturday afternoons on Hutton Broadcasting’s KTRC. If you’ve listened to the show, you also know that there’s very little that happens in the food world that she didn’t find out before — and in much more detail — than the rest of us. What you might not know is that our Cheryl Alters Jamison is among the most lauded culinary professionals in the country.
Hanging on her walls are four — FOUR — of those Oscars of the food world, James Beard Foundation Book Awards, along with an International Association of Culinary Professionals Award, the University of Illinois Alumni Achievement Award, an award from the International Regional Magazine Association, a pair of Edible New Mexico Best Food Writer Awards, a slew of Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards, and numerous other honors.
With her late husband Bill, and on her own, she’s penned enough books on food and travel to endow a small library, all the while living out nearly everyone’s dreams about traveling the globe in search of great meals and adventure. Among her 20 cookbooks is the classic Smoke & Spice, on real American barbecue, which has sold some million-and-a-half copies and has remained in print for three decades.
Cheryl is always, always, excited about food, which happens to be the name of her website too. In addition to digging into the culinary world’s hottest topics weekly as host of Heating It Up on KTRC 1260/103.7, and streamed and podcast here at SantaFe.com, she’s appeared on television regularly from the U.K. to China. Cheryl has instructed NBC’s Today Show staff on grilling chicken, smoking brisket, and making French toast, and has been a judge for the Food Network as well as hosted its star Bobby Flay for local episodes including a grilled breakfast and a Thanksgiving meal. She’s been featured on numerous New Mexico television shows, most recently on KOAT’s Celebrate New Mexico with Todd Kurtz and KNME’s Report from Santa Fe with Lorene Mills. She’s also narrator on a soon-to-be-released television docuseries, Santa Fe Foods, with Windmill Winds Entertainment, and is co-host and co-producer on another TV series about cookbooks, currently in development. 
Cheryl has written about Southwestern cooking for publications such as Bon Appétit, Saveur, and Cooking Light, for eater.com, and in books including The Border Cookbook, Texas Q, Texas Slow Cooker, American Home Cooking, and Tasting New Mexico: Recipes Celebrating 100 Years of Distinctive Home Cooking. She loves to help tell other peoples’ stories too and has collaborated with James Beard Best Southwest Chef nominee Martín Rios on The Restaurant Martín Cookbook and with James Beard Award America’s Classic recipients Florence Jaramillo on the The 50th Anniversary Rancho De Chimayó Cookbook and Tom and Lisa Perini on Perini Ranch Steakhouse.
Cheryl was culinary editor for New Mexico Magazine, where she remains a contributor. She has consulted with the New Mexico Tourism Department too, where she developed the cuisine section for NewMexico.org, one of the state’s most visited websites, and created the widely recognized Green Chile Cheeseburger Trail. Cheryl teaches cooking classes internationally, but often at the Santa Fe School of Cooking.
She’s a four-decade resident of the village of Tesuque on the outskirts of Santa Fe, where she lives in a century-old, converted adobe dairy barn. She raises a small flock of chickens with out-sized personalities and all hues of eggs.
This article was posted by Cheryl Fallstead
