Many know Stephanie Alexander as a restauranteur, food writer, celebrated cook book author and Junior Masterchef judge. What makes this even more impressive is that she has done it with a significant hearing loss!

Every time a friend or neighbour gives me some beautiful produce from their vegetable garden (zucchinis, capsicums, chillis... mmmm), I go straight to my copy of Stephanie Alexander’s The Cook’s Companion to find the perfect meal to make with it.

Though we share a love of food (mine has more to do with eating than with cooking), I never realised we had another trait in common – a hearing loss.

Stephanie Alexander is well known for her bestselling recipe books, her iconic Melbourne restaurants (Jamaica House, Stephanie’s Restaurant and the Richmond Hill Café and Larder) and the ABC television series ‘A Shared Table’. She also devised a ‘Kitchen Garden Program’, originally for Collingwood College in Melbourne. The highly successful program, now embedded in the curriculum and implemented in 180 schools across Australia, teaches children about food and its connection between the garden, kitchen and table.

And amidst her busy lifestyle and the extraordinary career challenges she faces every day, she’s also coping with a hearing loss. Stephanie noticed a decline in her hearing when she reached her forties. ‘It became more of a strain to hear at meetings and in conversations in noisy environments,’ she says, admitting that she was at first disturbed by the prospect of a hearing aid. ‘I was a bit self-conscious and did not want to wear an aid that could be seen’. When she received her first hearing aid, she remembers everything sounding quite loud, though ‘just for a very short time’.

It didn’t take long for the benefits of the hearing aid to outweigh the disadvantages. She fondly speaks of ‘the relief of not having to strain so hard at meetings especially, and at the movies.’ Her life is now ‘easier, less stressful.’ As for becoming accustomed to wearing the two hearing aids she now has, she claims it’s ‘as automatic as putting on my clothes’.

Stephanie has trouble hearing tones in the middle frequencies, particularly ‘guttural male voices’. She’s unsure how she lost her hearing, but notes a possible connection with her father, who was very deaf. ‘I had to force him to get hearing aids.’

This is a common scenario in affected families - too often it is another family member who begs us to get an aid. One of the first things a hearing aid audiologist is likely to say is ‘however hard it is for you, it’s harder for your family’ and Stephanie agrees. ‘I observe how unacknowledged hearing loss is a great problem in many relationships. He won’t get a hearing aid. She won’t stop talking from another room. Tension all round.’ She’d noticed it in her own marriage at the time also. ‘It was a constant irritant … I realised that it was my problem and I had to make an effort to deal with it.’

So how has her work life been affected by her hearing troubles? Were her colleagues frequently repeating themselves? ‘Restaurant kitchens are very noisy places with lots of crashing and banging,’ she admits. ‘Many cooks found hearing difficult in such circumstances, so it was not that unusual.’ She recalls that her first hearing aids were ‘counter-productive because they did not filter the dreadful background noise’.

Technology has come a long way since then. As for public speaking engagements, she always makes sure there’s somebody present who can repeat any questions for her from the audience. ‘I think this should be standard procedure for a crowded auditorium,’ she says. ‘It is not easy for even the most acute hearers to hear a whispered question from the back row.’

Despite wearing hearing aids, Stephanie shares frustrations all too familiar for those of us with a hearing loss. Hearing aids don’t, after all, restore full hearing in the same way that glasses can restore full vision. ‘They are a fantastic help but there will still be stressful times.’ She might feel annoyed, even angry. Why must so many people mumble? Why do they turn their head away when she’s speaking to them? Or put their hand in front of their mouth?

‘I accept that it is my hearing loss,’ she says, ‘but many do not help even when you have explained the difficulty.’

She will always find noisy restaurants problematic. ‘The answer is not to go to them,’ she simply puts, a statement that saddened me, given her love of food and line of work. (But then I thought enviously of all those wonderful vegetables she grows, and her talent for cooking, and I think I personally wouldn’t mind eating at home if she was the chef).

Her advice for those considering hearing aids is to not delay!

‘Make sure they are comfortable. Buy the best there is. Go back to the audiologist over and over if the device is painful until they get the moulding right. Wear two.’

As for tackling hearing loss issues in general, she’s definitely an advocate for honesty and transparency. ‘I have no problems saying directly to people “I am deaf so I will need to sit where I can see your face” rather than ignoring the problem and having to guess what is being said.’

Definitely some sound advice, I think to myself, blaming my rumbling stomach for the terrible pun, and finding my gaze steering towards that cookbook I love.