Nomadic Kitchen is...
a Vermont-based confectionery specializing in small-batch, gourmet marshmallows (& the occasional sugary whim) founded by perpetually curious chef, writer, and Vermont-native, Alexx Shuman. This one-woman venture is a complete reinterpretation of the childhood delight. Alexx utilizes her extensive culinary background to strike a balance between global influence and local soil in her creations, elevating the humble treat to imaginative new levels. Flavors change with both the seasons and Alexx's own culinary discoveries, continuously surprising anyone who thinks a marshmallow is a marshmallow is a marshmallow.
Alexx is...
So glad you asked! After graduating from Smith College, I studied at Le Cordon Bleu Paris & the New England Culinary Institute, knowing with certainty that food was my passion. I worked up and down the east coast with James Beard Award acknowledged chefs, adoring every minute of the learning, and knowing almost immediately that the restaurant
industry wasn't for me. I "escaped" eventually, promising myself that down the line I'd find a more innovative way to make food the center of my life. A few years working in Boston start-ups, an MBA, and a stint living in Provence writing about food later, and I found myself back in my beloved home state of Vermont.
There is a T.S. Eliot poem that starts,
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
I'd said it a million times: "If I hadn't grown up in Vermont, I'd have moved there already." And at last, after 12 years away, all was new again. What was once an old stomping ground was now an opportunity to fulfill the promise I'd made to myself nearly a decade earlier. Once again comfortably cradled by the Adirondacks and the Green Mountains, I set out to tie all the threads of my 20s together into the beautiful bow that is Nomadic Kitchen: my hub for a lifetime of culinary excitement, exploration, and entrepreneurship.
When not gushing about food or travel, you can find me remembering dogs' names before peoples' and defending the Oxford comma. My written work has been featured on NPR, The Culture-ist, and Epicure & Culture.