BIOGRAPHY - Nancy Byal

My curiosity and love of gadgets grew as a young girl, the first time my mother handed me a potato ricer to help prepare potatoes for her German dumplings. Cooking with her also nurtured my culinary interests, which led me to choose food and nutrition as the focus of my career. I’ve never regretted it.

My first job out of college (I’m an alum of Iowa State University) occurred at General Mills, Inc. in Minneapolis, where I developed new food products at the company’s research center. When I married an Iowa apple orchardist and farmer, I moved back to Iowa and learned about food from the ground up. (I’d always been a city girl until then.)

My new-found Iowa roots led me to Meredith Corp., the parent company of Better Homes and Gardens publications. Their home base is in Des Moines, Iowa. For more than 32 years, I enjoyed working for a variety of the company’s publishing groups. As Executive Food Editor, I directed t all food and nutrition media, including BH&G magazine, television show, Test Kitchens, and the bhg.com web site. I also worked on cookbooks, special interest magazines, and custom publications, contributed food columns to the Associated Press, and authored several cookbooks.

These days, GadgetGals is my passion, working with friend and colleague Jan Hazard. I also am a trend researcher and conference speaker for FoodSolutions, my consulting business, with clients such as Better Homes and Gardens magazine, Meredith Corporation, and Watt Publishing. Memberships in professional organizations such as the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Association of Food Journalists, and Les Dames d’Escoffier and plenty of travel keep me up to date on all that is happening in the food world.