Posted on: Wednesday, July 9, 2003

FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Maili Yardley added joy to job of cooking

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

When word reached me on June 28 that longtime Advertiser food columnist Maili Yardley had died, I found myself in a familiar place: saddened by the questions I hadn't asked, the time I hadn't taken.

I remembered how long I had waited to ask my grandmother for her recipes, how disappointed we had been to find that, sometime in the early stages of Alzheimer's, she had thrown out the stained and battered school tablet where she recorded her recipes.

Last March, I visited Maili at her home in Lawai while I was on Kaua'i to do some travel pieces. A diminutive woman with a welcoming smile, she greeted me in a crisp, blue-and-white-striped button-down blouse and well-cut slacks, looking ready for anything from a bridge club meeting to chutney-making. She'd had a busy week, and my stories were taking me across the island, so we had just an hour or so.

I ooohed and aaahed over her cookbooks, and she invited me to come back and look through them on my next visit. That follow-up visit will never happen now, and I wish I had made notes, or tape-recorded our little chat. I did ask her about her most requested recipes: She mentioned Kinau Wilder's baked chutney and anything to do with poi suppers, a Yardley specialty.

I thought there would be time to interview her later, for a cookbook project I'm working on. She was eager to help.

This was typical: Maili was more interested in others than in herself. While I was rifling through 17 years of her columns, preparing to write Maili's obituary, I noticed that she had that rare gift in a columnist of revealing herself and her life without overuse of the word "I." She enjoyed turning the spotlight on good cooks, and on her readers, who would write to request a lost recipe or to respond to a query from her.

You knew what was on her mind or where she and her husband, Paul, had been traveling, because she'd share anecdotes and recipes. She might begin a column with childhood memories but would quickly move on to what she considered her proper business: helping busy homemakers with the daily job (or joy) of cooking.

Gifted with a memory for fragrance, flavor and telling detail, Maili brought back memories for older people and opened younger people's eyes to the days before microwave ovens and food processors. She enjoyed new ideas and techniques, but her column was a time warp in which Mom was always in the kitchen making school lunches and planning dinner, holidays were always celebrated with homemade meals, and no one ever had enough recipes.

I count it a privilege to have known someone who so thoroughly loved the cooking life. Through her books and columns, she will remain one of my best kitchen friends.