Healthy homemade meals fuel Reno physician, Bayo Curry-Winchell.
Growing up in Reno, Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell never missed breakfast. Her father, Bill Curry, a three-war veteran-turned-special-education-teacher, made sure of it.
“Breakfast was always at home, and he put so much love and care into cooking it. It was oatmeal and fruit and eggs that he made in his own special way,” Curry-Winchell recalls. “He passed away in August [2022] at 99 years old, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to eat oatmeal since then. Food can really carry intense emotions.”
Following Dad’s Footsteps
Though Curry-Winchell’s husband is responsible for lunch and dinner — he’s also an accomplished bread maker — breakfast is where the physician and mother of two steps in every day.
“My daughters will tell you that ‘Mommy makes the best eggs!’ It warms my heart,” Curry-Winchell says, adding that to this day, and even during the grueling hours of her residency, she’s never missed breakfast.
But when it came to dinner, her father had a different approach: The family ate out every night of the week. Wednesdays and Fridays were at The Nugget in Sparks, Sunday was for a buffet meal at another casino, and the remaining days of the week they rotated through other local eateries.
It wasn’t until she was older that Curry-Winchell realized this wasn’t the norm for other families — and the reason wasn’t just a commitment to the local economy.
“When he moved here, my dad couldn’t even go into Harrah’s. He couldn’t go into any of the casinos as a Black man,” she explained, noting that when her father enlisted in the army to fight in World War II, it was still segregated. “I now know why we did what we did. It was because it was celebratory that he could do it.”
In addition to his beloved scrambled-egg recipe, Curry-Winchell inherited her father’s drive to give back to the community. Growing up volunteering and attending rallies paved the way for Curry-Winchell to enter the medical field, where she now works as the medical director for Saint Mary’s urgent care centers and Washoe County’s Sexual Assault Response Team at the Child Advocacy Center. She also is the founder of Beyond Clinical Walls, where she shares health care information in a digestible way through her podcast and social media platforms. On TikTok and Instagram (at Dr_bcw), she has amassed a combined following of nearly 76,000.
Her 2022 TEDx Reno talk explored how history and race-based medical practices have shaped a distrust of the health care system among Black Americans.
“I believe in delivering health care in a non-traditional way and in a new way that reaches more people,” she says.
Claire McArthur is a freelance writer who also believes breakfast should not be missed (and you probably wouldn’t want to be in her company if she skipped it). Like any good millennial, she starts the day with avocado toast.
Bill Curry’s Scrambled Eggs
(courtesy of Dr. Bayo Curry-Winchell, medical director for Saint Mary’s urgent care centers and Washoe County’s Sexual Assault Response Team at the Child Advocacy Center in Reno. Serves 1)
2 eggs
Morton Season-All Seasoned Salt
Olive oil
Crack 2 eggs into a bowl and whisk with a fork for 2 to 3 minutes. Add a pinch or 2 of seasoned salt. Stir another 2 to 3 minutes. Heat a nonstick pan over low-medium heat and lightly grease with olive oil. Spread the eggs evenly over the pan. Using a spatula, whip the eggs in a circular motion and cook 1 to 2 minutes until they form a soft scramble.
