Lady of the Commercial Drive Licorice Parlour

(The outline of the following article was in my "drafts" file since late October of 2013, when I first made contact with Mary Jean Dunsdon aka "Watermelon" and "Weed Diva" [and I'll show you here how she got both of those nicknames], the owner of Commercial Drive Licorice Parlour in Vancouver, Canada. 

While doing research on Tristan Risk for her July 2013 interview, I learned that her "day job" at that time, was as a sexy sugar baker at the Commercial Drive Licorice Parlour. Seeing the shop is/was owned and operated by an all-female staff, I made note of it at the time for a future article to be entitled "Ladies of the Commercial Drive Licorice Parlour." When I first proposed the idea Mary Jean, she said it sounded like a "sweet & salty idea."

Initially, I got answers from Mary Jean to a couple of my questions for her, but I had more, for her as well as Tristan and the other ladies who worked at her shop. So, I again contacted Mary Jean, keeping Tristan in the loop, in January of 2014 for a follow-up Q&A session. Hopefully, one that would include some of her colleagues. In short; it didn't happen and this article sat in the "drafts" file, which I don't intend to be a permanent home for any article I start. I contacted Mary Jean again in June of this year, to try to get together with her and complete this piece, but that again, ended up not happening. So, what follows is what I got from Mary Jean and what I dug up myself.)

Vancouver's locally-famous Commercial Drive Licorice Parlour is owned by the equally locally-famous Mary Jean Dunsdon. Also know as "Watermelon" and "Weed Diva," (and I'll show you why here) Mary Jean employs an all-female staff. She jokingly told me she considers herself a criminal mastermind because she read somewhere it was illegal to only hire smart, gorgeous, and reliable girls. The ladies creating the goodies at her shop include burlesque queen Tristan Risk, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing for this site in July of 2013.

Marisa Churchill

Celebrity chef Marisa Churchill is well-known for the low-cal pastries and desserts she creates that don't taste low-cal. Her best-selling book, Sweet & Skinny: 100 Recipes for Enjoying Life's Sweeter Side Without Tipping the Scales will tell you how she does it.

A graduate of the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, and  the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone (in the Northern California city of St. Helena, where some of the region's finest wine is made), Marisa has worked at some of San Francisco's premiere restaurants, including Rubicon, which, unfortunately and despite having several celebrity investors including the late Robin Williams, shut its doors in 2008. Marisa's TV appearances include her being a contestant on the second season of Top Chef. She's also whipped up some of her specialties on The Talk, Access Hollywood as well as a few TV shows in Greece, a country she often visits, where she also enjoys culinary celeb status. When she's not in the kitchen, Marisa, an avid swimmer, can usually be found at wherever the nearest pool or beach is.

I first contacted Marisa for an interview back in July of 2012, a few months after I caught her on the show Eye on the Bay and making note of her name. She promptly replied, stating she'd be happy to do an interview with me, but it just didn't pan out. In January of this year, I decided to forward my original e-mail back to her, to see if we could then make an interview happen. She replied, it seemed like it might happen, but after a while, it still didn't look like it was going to be, so I told her I'd settle for a "one question interview" if she's just pick one of my questions to answer. So, citing her busy scheduled for not having the time to reply to all of my questions, she seemed to like that idea and answered one of my questions, and, for my patience, she said, answered a second. The above photo of Marisa was taken outside of the Kifissia flower show in northern Athens, Greece last month, where Marisa was on hand to whip up some of her famous Sweet & Skinny desserts for those in attendance.