About the Author

I come from a long line of great cooks.

These cooks were great women who were brave enough not to measure out ingredients for their seafood gumbo or their German Chocolate Cakes. These women, my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my mother, tried to teach me how to cook at a young age with patience, sincerity, and most of all, care.

Though I barely knew my great-grandmother, I grew up hearing epic stories about her amazing Cajun cuisine that she would make from almost nothing. My grandmother could bake cakes and pies like a professional pastry chef and would always provide me with small portions of gumbo or tomato sauce when I would visit her from college. My mother’s Sunday-night dinners are what brought all of our friends to our house for amazing conversations, laughs and warmth. But, instead of learning how to cook from these three, talents women, what did I do?

Nothing.

I just ate the food, and washed the dishes. I took no interest in cooking at all.

By the time I graduated college, all I could make in the kitchen was a few plain sandwiches, pasta with semi-melted cheese, and the occasional egg. Pretty shameful since my Cajun great-grandmother could make dirty rice, a cake, and knit a sweater in the time it would take me to watch a Lifetime movie.

What’s worse: I spent my college years in New Orleans, a town known for it’s great food and drink. So, when I moved to Austin, TX almost two years ago, and I was out on my own again, I figured I would try a thing or two in the kitchen to see what would happen. Sure I made messes, overcooked things, and maybe set my stove on fire once or twice, but the more I cooked and read about cooking, the more I wanted to create yummy, healthy meals in the kitchen.

Long gone are the days of melted cheese pasta bowls in the microwave. I’m happy to whip up a batch of baked macaroni and cheese, baked ziti with grilled eggplant and zucchini, fried green tomatoes, pan seared salmon with ginger and garlic, baked apples and pears in a red wine, honey reduction….ok you get the picture.

Not only do I cook, but I also write. I write poetry, creative non-fiction and late night oddities to friends over IM. I’m also a teacher, an advocate for adult literacy and AIDS prevention, a daughter, a step-sister, a girlfriend and sometimes, after a few drinks, a true comedian.