Taste for Adventure
Writing an intro for Sophie Hollingsworth has proven to be no easy feat. Her list of accomplishments is so astounding, I don’t quite know where to begin and I’m not certain this article can contain all that she’s achieved. Even a Navy SEAL would lack the lung capacity to recite all of Sophie’s accolades without pausing to take a breath. Or four.
Sophie, a native-born Sarasotan, is a former ballerina turned avid sailor, the youngest female to ever obtain a 200-ton MCA Yacht-master Captains License, a Fulbright Scholar turned environmental consultant, the founder of AquaAid who has worked with some of the world’s most remote villages, and an award-winning sustainability speaker who delivers talks around the world. She is an International Fellow of The Explorers Club, the 2017 New Explorer of the Year, and a Post-Graduate Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental science and global public health from New York University, a master’s in health security from the University of Sydney, and a certificate in global health and security from Harvard University.
Her National Geographic special with David Attenborough aired in early October; she is an environmental consultant whose expeditions have taken her from Managua to Madagascar and everywhere in between. She gets paid to advise giant corporations like Procter & Gamble on how to reduce their ecological footprint, and her day job includes addressing the UN General Assembly. And that’s just a small smattering of her successes.
And get this: She’s only 25 years old. 25! At 25, my claim to fame was that I could legally rent a Dodge Neon if I wanted to and yet here’s Sophie making Tony Robbins look downright lethargic. But here’s the real kicker: I haven’t even gotten to the good part.
“Imagine if Indiana Jones and Martha Stewart threw a dinner party,” says Sophie in reference to a niche of cooking she carved out for herself, aptly labeled “adventure cooking,” which is gaining a broad audience and giving Sophie the chance to turn her survival skills into the dinner party of a lifetime. If you’re imagining a cool hat and beautiful tablescape, you aren’t wrong. But if you forgot to envision snapper strung up on sticks, pineapples tethered to a tree, scallops in their shells soaking in seawood butter, and all manner of surf, turf, carbs, grains, greens, bread, and beans cooked over the embers of an open fire in the most unexpected of ways, like dough around a stick to bake into break-apart bites or whole fish nestled atop a bed of herbs and onions and nailed to a log, then you didn’t paint the full picture. And when it comes to this picture, you’re going to need every crayon in the box.
“In 2017, I began my Fulbright Scholarship in Australia doing counterterrorism research,” says Sophie, who you may have picked up by now is anything but boring. “I decided the best way to see Australia would be to buy an old Land Cruiser and drive off-road across the country. I was struggling wondering how I would eat well on this long trip as I didn’t want to survive on heaps of ramen,” she says. “Over there, it’s pretty standard to have a freezer in the back of those cars, so I thought, ‘How can I make the best use of this thing?’ especially since the way you buy food in the outback isn’t remotely how you’d buy food at Publix. I would stop at a cattle station for meat—they don’t offer petit filet; your option is a quarter of a cow. I had no internet access, no space for cookbooks, and a lot of time alone in the wilderness at night. I was thrust into situations where I had to get creative if I wanted to eat. It was a steep learning curve in the beginning, figuring out how to cook kangaroo and other meals without a cooktop, but out of it all stemmed adventure cooking!”
Now, how does a woman with a resume longer than the Lord of the Rings trilogy add “adventure cook” to her list of offerings?
“It started accidentally, I didn’t set out to do this,” Sophie says with a friendly laugh. “I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life and show my work and travels on social media. People couldn’t care less. Suddenly, I post a picture of me cooking bacon over a stick to show my family I wasn’t starving and people went nuts, they came out of the woodwork and wanted to know all about it. I think it just struck a chord with folks who want to connect with their food systems,” she says. “There’s something primal about fire. It goes back to our ancestors.”
That picture sparked the idea for a whole new entrepreneurial venture as people all over the world reached out to request that Sophie turn their parties into something far more memorable than a four-course meal, giving her the chance to bring her passion for sustainability and eco-consciousness to a new type of dinner plate. Her offerings combine the best of both worlds: the ruggedness of cooking with natural elements and the beauty of highly curated details, hence the Indiana Jones meets Martha Stewart reference, while inviting the partygoers to get interactive. Guests can create their meals alongside Sophie, doing everything from stoking the fire to dramatically smashing charred pumpkins with a shovel and smothering them with homemade lemon tahini herb dressing.
“I love that I get to help reinvent the way we think about cooking over fire,” she says. “It’s not like a camping trip. It’s so important in this modern day where we have an overly disconnected nature with food. It takes people out of their comfort zones as you are inextricably tied to the cooking experience.”
“There’s no sort of cut-and-paste,” Sophie explains. “Each party is curated specifically for the parameters of what the host wants to convey to their guests.”
And though that sounds incredibly fancy—and it can be—Sophie assures me that the average home can partake in the fun and beauty of adventure cooking. “I started sharing recipes and how to build a fire on my site so anyone could re-create the experience in their yard. You just need a small firepit. You can cook bacon or hot cheese in cast iron. Or buy seashells at Bed, Bath & Beyond and cook scallops in them,” she says. “It seems intimidating at first, but once you realize how basic fire is, you’ll see it’s not rocket science.”
At 25, with already an entire lifetime of travels and experiences under her belt, I can’t help but wonder what comes next for her. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’ll take it as it comes.” But I have the feeling that she doesn’t wait for life to come to her. Instead life looks out for Sophie.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
Hear straight from Sophie herself at this year’s PINC Experience on Thursday, December 12, at the Sarasota Opera House.
What is PINC?
PINC is People, Ideas, Nature, and Creativity. It’s a one-day experience delivered by a cascade of international speakers from every imaginable discipline, skill, and talent. Past speakers have included Iditarod champions, the founder of Vertical Farming, a famous felt artist, Nobel Prize winners, perfume virtuosos, and the doctor who performed the first hand transplant.
PINC attracts creative thinkers, entrepreneurs, specialists, designers, artists, scientists, and anyone looking to stimulate their mind and soul. It’s an opportunity to participate in an eclectic mix of fundamental pieces that create the human experience. Some elements are inspired by nature; others are made possible by technology; all are motivated by an unyielding passion. PINC is about what is possible when we allow wonder to drive innovation and empathy to steer creativity.
PINC turns everyday information on its head, forcing the viewer to look at objects and outcomes through a kaleidoscope of possibility, reminding all who attend just how amazing our world really is and how they can create an impact of their own. It is a powerful day, unlike any other, with its inspirational effects lasting long beyond the event itself, lending a new vantage point to see the world or create a new one, and how to take it all in or give it all back.
> For tickets and information visit PINCexperience.com.
