Sherrie Mahoney has spent a career teaching nutrition and foood safety

By GORDON D. FIEDLER JR.

Salina Journal

Sherrie Mahoney has been the face and voice of nutrition for Saline County since 1980, fielding all manner of questions about food preparation and safety for a generation of home chefs, but come Thursday, she'll be managing only her own kitchen.

Mahoney, whose official title is family and consumer sciences agent for Kansas State University Research and Extension, will retire this week.

"It was time," she said of her decision to leave a 38-year career as a university extension agent. "You just know."

She came to the profession serendipitously.

She was studying secondary education at Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, with her sights set on a teaching career.

"I graduated in December, (but) there weren't many teaching opportunities."

There was, however, an opening in the Nodaway County university extension office as a home economics agent.

"I found out I was much more suited (to extension work)," she said.

Her sister was a teacher, and Mahoney occasionally received an earful about her experiences.

"Hearing her stories made me appreciate the work I do here," she said.

The classroom's loss was Saline County's gain. Her duties, along with the other agents, expanded to include Ottawa County when the two agencies merged a few years ago. The two-county area is now an extension district.

Her charge for nearly four decades has been to teach people how to eat a more healthy diet and to correctly prepare what they eat.

It made for a secure employment, particularly in the early years, when the general public was lackadaisical about food-borne illnesses.

"Food safety is a bigger issue today than when I started," she said. "You couldn't sell food safety to people."

All that began to change when E. coli, salmonella, campylobacter and other nasty bugs started creeping into food and killing people.

Now, the dining public is more savvy, she said.

"People are not bashful. If they see something that's questionable, they're outspoken."

And there are a lot of people downing food in restaurants these days.

"Forty-six percent of the food dollars are spent away from home," she said.

One myth associated with eating out that she tries to dispel involves the quality of commercial food preparation.

"The perception is restaurants are more unsafe than (home) kitchens. That's really not the case," she said.

Fortunately, Mahoney has help in spreading the food safety gospel: master food volunteers.

Patterned after the master gardener program, her volunteers must pass a 40-hour course on food preparation and then dispense that wisdom to anyone who will listen: civic organizations, church groups and the like. This was one of the programs Mahoney started. Another was the Book Cooks program.

The goal was to teach simple recipes to families with small children using picture books as a way to launch into menu items.

"The idea was it should be a food activity for the child to do," she said.

For instance, creating alphabet soup was pared with the book, "Farm Alphabet."

Attempting to emphasize the importance of eating a good breakfast combined the book "Noisy Breakfast" with a recipe for picture frame eggs.

The books, picture directions for the recipes, equipment and non-perishable foods are contained in plastic totes that Head Start family counselors can take into homes.

Besides educating families about nutrition, the program also attempts to show children where their food comes from.

"They need to be aware there are farmers behind what they eat."

She was reminded of the story, perhaps an urban legend, about a child who thought fish sticks grew on trees.

Another of her innovations is the Making Time to Eat feature that appears weekly in the Salina Journal.

This was prompted by a comment she heard that people are too busy to cook.

When Mahoney's not thinking up such programs, she's sometimes fielding food-related calls from concerned individuals.

With some, she has to be part diplomat.

"I try to remember people's questions are not silly. If they don't know, they need to know," she said.

One caller wanted advice on the best way to ice a cupcake: should it be dipped it in the frosting or should the frosting be spread over the top.

"There's no rule about that," Mahoney told the caller.

There is a rule about this question: A caller who left the remains of a cooked turkey in garage for a weekend wanted Mahoney to put her stamp of approval on the leftovers.

Cooked meat should be promptly refrigerated. No exceptions.

"A roast left on the counter overnight, it's compost," she said.

Mahoney, an avid reader, quilter, and cat lover, has specific plans for her retirement: "I want to quilt, read and play with my cat," she said. "My standard answer is I want to finish a book while I still remember how it started."

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