The Winning Recipe
From the moment Bette Sullivan hopped on our Zoom call, her warmth and humor made our interview feel more like chatting with a family friend over coffee. With a red bandana tied around her hair à la Rosie the Riveter, a cheeky “I’ll Bake Love to You” apron, and a stack of vintage cookbooks behind her, it was clear that cooking is woven into the DNA of this 73-year-old great-grandmother with six sons, six grandchildren, and two great-grands.
For more than 20 years, Sullivan has lived in Sumner, Washington, a small city south of Seattle that proudly calls itself “The Rhubarb Pie Capital of the World.” But her life there is just one chapter in a long, colorful journey. As the daughter of an Air Force dad, Sullivan moved frequently, living in more cities than many people ever visit. One short stay in El Paso in 1964 proved formative. “I was 12 years old, and that was the first time I ever had a taco,” she recalls. At the time, tacos weren’t yet mainstream in the U.S. “I don’t even know if you could buy cumin to spice it up or stuff like cilantro.” While her Filipino mother mostly cooked traditional Filipino food, Sullivan’s short stints with her family in the South gave her an enduring love of Southern flavors.
