Georgia Magazine - September 2023 - 38

GEORGIA Cooks
By H.M. Cauley
Cookbook author
and TV-show host
Vera Stewart prepares
pimento cheesestuff
ed fried okra in
one of her Season 11
episodes featuring
popular Southern
ingredients.
Meet Vera Stewart
Her 'VeryVera' brand inspires a love of cooking, other life skills
T
heir names and stories are similar: Macon-born Vera
Stewart launched her catering and culinary career in
1984. Superstar Martha Stewart had become a household
name two years before that with the publication of her first
guide to entertaining. The two women share a last name (no
relation) and a love of entertaining, cooking and educating
people about making their lives better.
Intrigued by Martha Stewart's first book, Southerner
Stewart spent part of her savings in 1985 to take a two-week
course on fall appetizers, desserts and entrees with Martha
Stewart in Connecticut. Like her counterpart, Vera Stewart has
written cookbooks (albeit two to Martha's 99). She also hosts
" The VeryVera Show " on TV. Produced in Augusta, the show is
in its 11th season, airs in 42 markets and often spotlights some
of her most popular recipes, such as bourbon pecan bread
pudding and chicken and wild rice casserole.
" I really wanted to get on the Food Network, so I sent cakes
and videos, and [I] wound up on 'Throwdown with Bobby Flay.'
That's how I got my own show, " Stewart says. " I have my own
production company, and we shoot in a little white cottage that
looks like a dollhouse. People think it's my home because it's so
comfortable and has a Sub-Zero and Wolf kitchen with lots of
natural light. "
Stewart, 70, started what became her empire after
majoring in home economics at the University of Georgia
(UGA) in Athens in the '70s.
38 Georgia Magazine September 2023
" I was so fascinated, I found myself getting to school early, "
she says. " I taught [at] high schools in Atlanta and Madison,
but when we relocated to Augusta, I started a home catering
business. But I soon realized there wasn't a wedding or a grand
opening every week, and I had to diversify to have a constant
income flow. "
In the 1990s, Stewart decided to ship pound cakes in tins.
" Other companies put a cake in a can, but they weren't a
pound cake from my grandmother's original recipe. My box
weighed 7 pounds; it was truly a pound cake, " she says.
Stewart was soon branching off into layer cakes that
were picked up by Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and
Bloomingdale's. But another realization quickly struck:
No one ships cakes in the summer heat.
" That's when I came up with the idea to be back in the
classroom, and it's been one of the best decisions I ever
made, " she says.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the VeryVera
Cooking Camp in Augusta. What began as a program to teach
kids to cook has mushroomed to include lessons she learned at
UGA while living in the university's home management house,
where students studying home ec lived for several weeks to
get hands-on practice handling all the responsibilities, such as
budgeting for expenses, cooking and doing laundry.
" I had to live in the house for a semester, and one week you
were the housekeeper; the next, in charge of the budget, " she
DUSTY JACKSON
Georgia Magazine - September 2023

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