Palisadian Dorothy Reinhold’s ‘Shockingly Delicious’ Recipes

Whenever Pacific Palisades resident Dorothy Reinhold brought a dish or dessert to a potluck, everyone would ask: ‘Can I have that recipe?’ Instead of sending out mass e-mails, Reinhold decided to start a food blog, shockinglydelicious.com, to share her scrumptious secrets. She launched the site in April and has received more than 19,000 page views to date. ‘I’ve always loved to cook, starting from my childhood,’ said Reinhold, whose mother taught her recipes from her Italian heritage. Reinhold, a former newspaper editor who lives in the Sunset Mesa neighborhood, has written a food column, ‘Tried and True,’ for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group since 1993 and her recipes have been featured in Taste of Home and Sunset Magazine. Currently, her recipes appear on ThisWeekInThePalisades.com. Especially known for her pies, Reinhold has received 16 ribbons from pie contests in Malibu and Pacific Palisades. Her blueberry pie was recently featured on chef Evan Kleiman’s KCRW’s ‘Good Food’ blog and is also the most popular on her Web site. Other favorites on her blog this summer include recipes for agua fresca watermelon lemonade, strawberry sherbet and grilled Mexican street corn (similar to what is served at Caf’ Habana in Malibu). Since April, she has posted more than 40 recipes to her blog, which she promotes through other food Web sites. People can subscribe to her blog and receive e-mail alerts whenever she posts a new recipe. ‘Some of my recipes are original and others are inspired from someone else’s recipe,’ said Reinhold, who doesn’t anticipate making any money from her blog; it is purely to share her passion and knowledge of cooking. She features seasonal recipes from different ethnic traditions. Her only criteria: The recipe has to result in food that tastes ‘shockingly delicious’ or another one of her favorite phrases, ‘scary good.’ ‘I really think we ought to enjoy what we eat,’ Reinhold said, adding that she likes explosive flavors. Her recipes are not time-consuming, and she writes them so that people can double up on bowls and cooking utensils to reduce clean-up time. ‘With the pace of everyone’s life, time is crucial,’ said Reinhold, a stay-at-home mom who is busy raising her two children, Katie, 13, who attends Malibu Middle School, and Nick, 8, who attends Webster Elementary in Malibu. Through her children, she is active in Theatre Palisades Youth and has served as president of Webster’s PTA for a couple years. Her husband, Andrew Shaner, is a psychiatrist with the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. To further help her blog readers, she often provides pictures of the entire cooking process. ‘I had a reader thank me for the step-by-step photos because she is a visual learner,’ Reinhold said. Reinhold finds inspiration for her recipes from magazines, dining out at restaurants, friends and the more than 400 cookbooks that she owns. Sometimes, she creates a new recipe using whatever ingredients are in her kitchen. ‘I am a voracious reader of all things food,’ she added. A graduate of USC with a degree in journalism, Reinhold landed her first job out of college as a reporter at the Santa Monica Evening Outlook. ‘It was super fun; I loved it,’ she said, noting that she covered city council and school board meetings. After the Outlook, she worked as managing editor of features for the L.A. Daily News for 10 years. She then spent the next seven years of her career as executive editor for the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group. After accepting that job, she began writing her food column. ‘I was looking for something to link me to the original reason that I got into newspapers ‘ writing,’ Reinhold said. ‘As I moved into management positions, I got further away from writing.’ After 25 years working in journalism, Reinhold decided in 2000 to stay at home to raise her daughter, then two years old.   ’It was an extremely hard decision,’ said Reinhold, who commuted to work from Pacific Palisades. ‘Working at a newspaper was the only thing I wanted to do, but I would leave for work and my daughter was asleep, and I would get home, and she would be asleep’I didn’t want to miss her life.’ Ten years later, Reinhold feels content with her choice as she spends time with her children and pursues her joy of cooking. In 2005, Reinhold won a national ‘Peak Rewards’ recipe contest sponsored by the Colorado Potato Administrative Committee for her oven-parmesan fries. Several years ago, she developed more than 100 recipes for Cut ‘N Clean Greens, a grower/packager of cooking greens in Oxnard. While working on that project, she admits her children grew tired of eating so many greens. ‘My son wants me to get a job with Haagen-Dazs next,’ Reinhold said, laughing.