Island Senior: Cooking With Kate, The Mullis Center’s New Cook

Kate Stone - Gretchen Ganty photo

Island Senior is a reg­u­lar col­umn on the San Juan Update writ­ten by Peg­gy Sue McRae…

The Mullis Cen­ter has a new lead cook. I was delight­ed to learn the new cook is my friend Kate Stone.  Kate recent­ly returned to San Juan Island after mov­ing with her fam­i­ly to New Zealand for a 5‑year adven­ture that stretched into 13 years.

I can vouch for Kate’s cook­ing. I first met Kate when she had Katrina’s, where Mike’s Wine Bar is now. It was a favorite meet­ing place for a cir­cle of girl­friends and there was always some­thing tasty on the menu. Lat­er, I lived across the street from Kate and often enjoyed the joy­ful may­hem of her young fam­i­ly and always, there was some­thing good to eat at Kate’s.

Kate began her culi­nary stud­ies tak­ing omelet and crepe class­es at a depart­ment store in Port­land then becom­ing her family’s omelet mak­er. Her Grand­ma Cora had a chow­der house styled restau­rant on Hood’s Canal. Kate grew up eat­ing oys­ters and clam chow­der and on spe­cial occa­sions Oys­ters Rockefeller.

Lat­er, while work­ing as a deck­hand in Alas­ka she said, “I usu­al­ly was the cook, as well.” There she mar­ried a fish­er­man and start­ed a fam­i­ly, tak­ing on many cook­ing and bak­ing jobs along the way. After her first husband’s untime­ly death she returned to Ore­gon and pur­chased a con­vert­ed school bus that she even­tu­al­ly moved, with her then teenage daugh­ter, to San Juan Island.

It wasn’t just my girl­friends and I who enjoyed meet­ing at Katrina’s. Kate met her hus­band Jor­dan, “I mar­ried one of my favorite cus­tomers” at Katrina’s. Kate had two more chil­dren before tak­ing a fam­i­ly vaca­tion to New Zealand where they learned that their pro­fes­sions were in demand.

Return­ing to New Zealand for a longer stay, besides trad­ing baked goods with neigh­bors and teach­ing sour­dough bread-mak­ing class­es, Kate earned her Mas­ters Degree in Screen­writ­ing from Auck­land Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy. She has writ­ten 3 fea­ture length scripts and returned to San Juan Island to write. Work­ing 3 days a week at the Mullis Cen­ter she says, “is man­age­able with such aspi­ra­tions plus, it pro­vides social con­tact and heart­felt vol­un­teers to col­lab­o­rate with.” Wel­come back Kate!

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