Ironically, for the majority of my childhood I ate nothing but mayonnaise sandwiches on white crust-less bread, chicken nuggets and French fries. However, this 'I dislike almost every food' was only a one phase in an upcoming queue of foodie phases. By age 12, I moved into a baking phase with the company of my younger sister Kate. However, I found it difficult to 'color within the lines' of the recipes. I wanted to add a little more of this and a touch more of that and as you know, this does not create nicely baked goods. So, I moved out of that phase and into one where I developed my cooking skills, minus the pastry this time. Following my college years at Sewanee, I moved to Charleston, South Carolina to work in the world of fashion, but it was not clothes that I fell in love with, it was food. This time the phase was no longer a phase, and food became the love of my life.
I now reside in the small Southern town of Greensboro, Alabama where I still remain a passionate home chef although now a Director of Housing and Community Resources for a local non-profit that serves 52 out-of-school, at-risk youth each year. In 2009, our non-profit was awarded a grant to hire a hospitality manager that would teach the students nutrition, basic cooking techniques, develop a community garden and ultimately teach them to cook. The success of the current curriculum inspired me to develop another program that I hope to obtain funding for in 2012 that would attack the unhealthy eating habits of young pregnant girls, and as a result, their children. I named the program Table9.
- What is the strangest food you have ever eaten?
- Alligator
- What do you cook when home alone?
- Butternut Squash Soup with a topping of Goat Cheese
- Your most treasured kitchen possession:
- Le Creuset Dutch Oven in Blue
- The ideal number of guests for a dinner party is:
- 6 (including myself)
