Gail Hummel is a transplanted Midwesterner. She started cooking when she was barely tall enough to reach the stove.

Trained by the great chefs of Auburn, Ill. - her mother Mary Hummel and maternal grandmother Faye Quisenberry - she left her hometown in 1973 to diversify her culinary talents (and attend college) in Decatur and Chicago, Illinois. It was in Chicago that she learned the truth of the old adage, "the way to a man's heart is through his stomach". In 1984, Gail married the man who brought her to California.

Gail has always had a passion for eating and talking. She insists that she learned them about the same time - the evening of March 7, 1955, about one minute after her birth - and has yet to stop either. Since cooking is a natural extension of eating and writing is a natural extension of talking, it was only a matter of time before the two collided and became Gail's Galley.

Gail believes that life is too short to eat bad food or read boring columns. She hopes you agree. She promises to combine her award winning culinary and public speaking skills in each Gail's Galley - providing you with recipes enjoyed by her, her family and her friends and an entertaining glimpse of her life and the lives of those around her.

Gail lives in Montara, Calif. with her husband, Bob, their Old English Sheep-dog, Polo, and a cantankerous Chicago alleycat named Fletcher.