Hello!
I’m glad you’re here.
Writing is a through-line in my life, food and cooking another, and travel the third thread that stitches it all together. I’m American, but a few years ago I relocated to Europe to live the life of an expat I always intended to live but never got around to doing.
I graduated from culinary school in New York before cooking at Jean-Georges and Tabla in Manhattan and The Fat Duck in Bray, England (where I spent A LOT of my time deconstructing grapefruit and shelling snails). I was the executive editor of Art Culinaire, a quarterly for professional chefs, and have written seven cookbooks.
The first was the James Beard nominated Come In, We’re Closed about the best restaurant tradition there is for overworked kitchen employees, the staff meal. The next was the IACP award winning North: The New Nordic Cuisine of Iceland profiling the traditional food producers of Iceland with Icelandic chef Gunnar Karl Gíslason. There was Cuba! followed by The Hygge Life, another book with Gunnar because he is the living embodiment of what it means to be all hygge all the time. I wrote a book in Ireland about The Wild Atlantic Way (mainly because I wanted an excuse to live on the west coast of Ireland for two years meeting its food producers). This was followed by the IACP award winning Chaat: Recipes From the Kitchens, Markets and Railways of India.
These past few years have not been easy for any of us (an understatement if ever there was one). For me, the challenges arrived a few years before the pandemic began when I unexpectedly lost my mom to an undiagnosed illness, followed by a two year slow burn of losing my grandmother, first her mind and then the rest of her, to Lewy body dementia, with my own breast cancer sandwiched in between the loss of my two greatest matriarchs.
In the muck of numbness, fear and sorrow, I returned to personal writing because it has always carried me through those ridiculous if it wasn’t so horrifying times when you start to wonder if you’ll survive. Writing’s safe and familiar harbor cleared out the gunk and decay of grief and illness, word by word, feeling by feeling, epiphany by epiphany, leading me to the calmer shore I now stand upon.
My next cookbook, The Elysian Kitchen, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2024. It profiles the food and traditions of monasteries, mosques, temples and synagogues throughout the world. The timing of researching it was serendipitous for two reasons: one, the photographer and I finished up our travels to nearly a dozen countries just before the pandemic started and two, there’s nothing more prescriptive than securing a book deal the month after your mom dies, affording you the opportunity to ask for advice from spiritual leaders throughout the world about how to process and live through grief. (Bonus: many of them also had practical, timeworn advice about not only surviving, but thriving in spite of it all).
I’m working on a novel. My ten year old self at writing camp would thank me because I always meant to be a novel writer and it feels good to return to that early, persistent dream.
I’ve written for The Wall Street Journal, Travel+Leisure, Saveur, VICE, Food & Wine, and a bunch of other places. I’ve organized food conferences, led culinary tours (to Iceland because I seriously cannot get enough of that place), taught cooking classes, led hygge workshops (because what better thing to explore during a raging pandemic than how to feel cozy at home), and a thousand and one other things related to food and writing that you do when you’re a freelancer in the culinary industry.
I started a food history and recipe blog during culinary school called Eddybles (if only I had known back then what this name would mean today). I kept it up throughout school and my cooking career but I couldn’t maintain it after I started my job at the magazine. It remains to this day one of the things I’ve most enjoyed working on in the food industry. I loved the community it created of like-minded people who loved writing, food, travel, history and quirky, esoteric facts as much as I did.
This newsletter represents a full circle moment because it feels like a cathartic return to where it all started, informed by more experience, kitchen know-how, relationships with inspiring food friends, and travel adventures.
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Thank you!
