Two university friends who embarked on a lifelong journey of food and exploration, Phyllis Hinz and Lamont Mackay have for years travelled the highways and low roads of Canada and America, covering over 300,000 kilometres in their 40-foot motor home while sampling, learning, and sharing the best of North American cuisine and culture. Together they have been restaurant owners, food columnists, caterers, TV personalities, event speakers, and recipe consultants, but to the world at large they are best described simply as "The Cooking Ladies"!
Let's Get Grilling is the newest adventure by Phyllis and Lamont, a collection of grilling recipes and travel anecdotes spanning Halifax to San Diego. Having surveyed a wide world of grilling ideas, the Cooking Ladies encourage readers to traverse new horizons with recipes for Peachy Country-Style Pork Ribs, Chicken Breasts with North Alabama White BBQ Sauce, and West Coast Cedar Plank Salmon. Presented alongside fascinating food histories and an inspiring narrative of life on the road, Let's Get Grilling is a go-to guide for getting the best from your grill. So catch a ride with the Cooking Ladies and Let's Get Grilling!
Go to www.thecookingladies.com if you want to follow the Cooking Ladies online.

There is something magical about returning to a familiar place. A place where you were born and where your relatives have always lived. A place you move back to after many years away. The magic happens when you realize it's the same place but delightfully different.Phyllis was born in Stratford and grew up in Perth County. As a child, she watched moving picture shows at the Avon, shopped at Shapiro's Ladies Wear and Hudson's, studied Shakespeare in school, and went to plays at the Festival Theatre. Recently, Phyllis attended an alternative theatre production -- the story is in the book -- at the Stratford Masonic Concert Hall. It was a trip down memory lane for her because she tap danced there when she was twelve.After high school, and a short career in banking -- with a stint as a teller in Stratford -- she groomed racehorses, worked at Disney World, attended Wilfrid Laurier University, and earned a degree in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, where she met Lamont Mackay in a writing course. Together, they travelled throughout Europe for nine months, owned five restaurants in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, explored Canada and the United States in a motorhome for nine years, and owned a test kitchen on the north shore of Lake Erie. Phyllis moved back to Stratford in 2018.Phyllis suggests you read Lamont's bio for more details, to include them here would mean you'd read them twice. Lamont provides the particulars because she is the note-taker.

Phyllis Hinz's profile page

Lamont is known as the note-taker. You will recognize her around Stratford as the person with the notepad and pen. With her travel-writer's perspective and passion for adventure, she is astounded by the volume of things to see and do in her city.While teaching high school English in Surrey, British Columbia, Lamont was bitten by two life-altering bugs: food and travel. Travels in Europe with Phyllis Hinz led to an exciting culinary partnership, with restaurants and a catering company in St. Jacobs and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. Short drives to Stratford to attend the Festival Theatre or to dine at the Church or Old Prune were escapes from the demands of entrepreneurship.After the sudden death of a business partner, Lamont and Phyllis were so devastated they sold their businesses and everything they owned to travel North America in a motorhome. During their nine-year vagabond lifestyle, they visited every state in the United States and every province and territory in Canada except Nunavut. Side trips included appearances on TV and a contract as Home Hardware's Kitchen Experts.Lamont and Phyllis were branded "The Cooking Ladies" by the editor of a magazine in which they would write a culinary-travel column for twenty-five years. They have also coauthored ten cookbooks and have been published in newspapers and magazines across Canada and the United States.Lamont views life as an adventure whether panning for gold in the Yukon, tasting cod cheeks in Newfoundland and Labrador, judging World Food Championships in Alabama, or living in downtown Stratford.

Lamont Mackay's profile page