Recipes for a successful hobby

Kira Bottles (’15 Apparel, Merch., Des. & Tex.) has always been a home cook and baker.

“I grew up in the kitchen with my mom,” she notes.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, a work opportunity led her to do something she always wanted to do: write a recipe book. The Guide to Zero-Proof Cocktails was published in 2020 by Seattle’s Chatwin Books.

That experience inspired her to do more food photography and recipe development, launch her own “Wine Country Kitchen” brand and Instagram, and start working on another book with planned publication at the end of 2025. Her latest is a cookbook of original recipes featuring foods and products made by WSU and alumni, and paired with wine produced by Cougs.

Courtesy Kira Bottles

“I want people to look at the photos and recipes and go, ‘I can do this,’ and be really proud of themselves when they’re done,” says Bottles, who works as a senior program manager for a small public relations and marketing firm in Seattle. “I also want to be an advocate for shopping at local businesses in Washington state and the Pacific Northwest.”

Mocktails

Bottles had just started working at Seattle’s DRY Soda Company when the pandemic hit. “Within two weeks, everything shut down,” she says.

DRY is known for its single-flavor sodas featuring very few ingredients. Its sophisticated sodas inspired the mocktail book, which Bottles co-wrote with DRY founder and CEO Sharelle Klaus.

“One of the things we had been planning was to switch from being known as a cocktail mixer to being known as a sans-alcohol alternative,” says Bottles, who was coordinating the company’s content and social media. Every day for eight weeks, she created and shared mocktail recipes to post online. “It was a lot of work. I would work on them the entire weekend, then put them out the following week.”

The guide to zero-proof cocktails grew from there. “I got to do something I love, which is be in the kitchen,” says Bottles, who managed the project, wrote many of the recipes, and styled drinks for photo shoots. “I got to be the creative director and the writer.”

The book published just in time for the 2020 holiday season. It was a positive experience for Bottles, who had been playing around with the idea of doing a cookbook for several years. The publisher encouraged her. “And that’s where it started,” she says.

Wine Country Kitchen

Bottles lives in Issaquah, but grew up in Woodinville, the west side of the state’s wine country. Not only is Woodinville a destination for wine enthusiasts, but, Bottles says, “you have farmers markets and farm-to-table grocery stores. Food brings people together. And I’m hoping that my recipes also bring them closer to the local farms and food producers in the area. Our farmers markets and little local grocery stores make the community more vibrant.”

In addition to farm-fresh produce, they often carry wine and food products made by Cougs. “I want to work with as many alumni brands as possible,” Bottles says. “My goal is to create recipes that highlight those foods and pair well with those wines.”

She created a brand and Instagram account, then she began her research and recipe development. “I really mastered sourdough and macarons,” she says, noting work on her cookbook really started at the end of 2021, about a year after the mocktail book published. “I’m really excited about it.”

The theme is recipes and pairings from the Puget Sound to the Palouse. “It really is Washington or Pacific Northwest-based foods. It’s ingredients you can get here: local mushrooms, local fish, local wine.”

Bottles self-funded the recipe testing and made her own sets for photoshoots on her ironing board in front of her kitchen window. “I had to get really creative with my photo-shoot surfaces,” she says. “I was in my tiny apartment, trying to figure out how to make my own little photo studio with the space that I had and the light that I had.”

Friends bought some of the dishes from the shoots to help her recoup some of the costs. The pandemic was ongoing, and Bottles would leave dishes on friends’ doorsteps. Squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and Aleppo pepper. Wine-braised lamb shanks with potato purée. A tomato-cornmeal tart. Local mushroom fall focaccia.

“I think of this as a pandemic project,” she says. “But also so much of this is because of WSU.”

Bottles, a board member for Ol’ Crimson Booster Club, created her sourdough starter while still a student in Pullman, using peels from Cosmic Crisp apples she got from a friend in the horticulture club to kick-start fermentation. “I still use it every week,” she says, noting she plans to include the recipe for her Pullman sourdough loaf in the book.

Other WSU-inspired recipes include macarons stuffed with Cosmic Crisp apple pie filling and “gameday” buttermilk biscuits topped with Cougar Gold.

Today, she has most of the recipes written and is finishing up some recipe testing and additional photography. “I shot the cover about a year and a half ago,” she says, noting her publication goal is “right before Christmas 2025.”

Weekends, when she’s not working on her cookbook, she does the social media, public relations, and marketing for Ol’ Crimson, volunteering Saturday mornings during ESPN’s College GameDay.

And she already has plans for additional books: a baking book and a holiday-themed cookbook. “I hope this is one in a series,” she says.

 

Read about other pandemic hobbies of WSU alumni.