Biography

  - An exerpt by Signy from Signy and her sister, Bethany Coleman-Atherton's book:

  Snaggin' the Stag: Luring the Hart from Forest
  Memoirs with Recipes

  As a child, the back of my horse, the branches of the eucalyptus trees and the shore of the Pacific Ocean were my classrooms of choice. Hours spent in nature exploring stretches of beach with their tide pools, the “Big Mesa” and the “Creek,” formed the foundation of my culinary education. Blackberries, ripe and juicy from the sun; Miners lettuce, cool and damp from the shade of the willow trees that grew along the banks of the creek; Pippin apples, golden green, plucked from their branches as I passed underneath them on the back of my beautiful palomino, Amarilla; wild sweet peas, nasturtiums, honeysuckle, baby carrots from my mother’s kitchen garden wiped clean on my sleeve and eaten with as much enthusiasm as a rabbit from a Beatrix Potter story; all mine to harvest with the change of seasons. Mother Nature was my guide, her garden, my church. Blissfully unaware, my culinary teeth were being cut as I charted courses for unexplored territory and something “new” to eat. My appetite for the extraordinary in its most fundamental form was evolving with each foray.
  As I grew and began expanding the area of my pond, my years as a ballerina and sheer determination earned me a ticket to Paris and the chance to strut the catwalks of high fashion. Forget about becoming Christian Dior’s muse, or being splashed across the glossy pages of fashion magazines, Paris was like waking up in a dream, the golden ticket firmly in hand, into a realm of food far exceeding anything I had ever experienced. Enough has been written about Paris by people far more qualified than myself - Paris is Paris, the city of light and love. For this 19 year old tomboy, who had never been further then the mountains north of San Francisco, it was rapture. It was a world of food that had been waiting in the remote corner of my imagination. It was as though it had been there all along, but I would only catch a glimpse of it out of the corner of my eye and when I turned to face it, it proved elusive. The city where food not only feeds and nourishes body and soul, but sparks the imagination, captures the heart, and coins the phrase, “all bets are off!” The farmers markets became my new playground, the iron horse of the metro replacing Amarilla. The never ending source of beauty, smells, colors, tastes, (began the next chapter of my love affair with food). As I was learning how to make my first garlic vinaigrette, Bethany was perfecting her rhubarb tart. As I was perfecting my tart au citron, Bethany was making her cherries eau de vie. And so it went, and so it goes…a bond between two sisters, a shared core, a passion for creating and all the kitchens out there just waiting to be explored.