About the Author

I’m a Southerner living in New York City–a city girl with a Dixie heart. (Or, would that be a Dixie girl with a city heart? Put it this way–I’ll always choose a plate of collards over pastrami on rye.)                                                                                      

My Manhattan began seven years ago when I moved from North Carolina to a shoebox south of Houston (pronounced nothing like the Texas city I knew). My plan was to drink French martinis at Raoul’s and to become a television journalist (yes, in that order). Quickly, however, I realized that the trenches of a 24-hour newsroom weren’t for me and that a girl can only consume so much Chambord.

Early one Sunday morning, standing at the corner of Minetta and 6th Avenue after one particularly painful overnight shift (misidentifying a terrorist on a national morning show is never a good thing), I decided to quit the journalese gig, write a book, dig into my mother’s recipe files and start getting serious about my love life.

Between that moment, looking down winding Minetta Lane, and now, writing from my daughter’s nursery, there have been temp jobs, lonely summer weekends, writing seminars, long distance Birmingham/New York love, three cutting boards set aflame, pregnancy, elopement (yes, in that order), two book deals, and one perfect cherry clafouti recipe (you can find it on page 78 of my book).

Now, I’m a 29 year-old author, wife, new mother, foodie and home cook par excellence. My debut novel with recipes, Belle in the Big Apple (Scribner), hit the shelves in September 2008. It features a small town Southern girl who moves to New York City in search of a career–and a good meal. Sound familiar?

My online column for the New York Daily News (September, 2009), “Full Plate,” features my Carrie Bradshaw-cum-June Cleaver existence. Because, somewhere along the way, this fine dining, free-wheeling single girl went domestic… and decided to eat in. The column chronicles my cooking adventures as a new mom, new wife and working girl who tries to make sense of her New York City life through food.

Currently, my husband, Jamie, and I are working on our first cookbook, Just Married and Cooking (Scribner, 2011), where we act as the cooking and lifestyle gurus for the “uninitiated, newly married and kitchen challenged.” We also write a cooking column for MyScoop Media. In the fall of 2009, we will teach the Date Night Couples Cooking Class Series at the Institute of Culinary Education. (Think gourmet breakfast in bed, cocktail party nibbles, throwing your first dinner party as a couple…)

In addition to the book writing and baby-making, I hosted ABC’s internet and digital cable food series, “Eat & Greet.” I also acted as the lifestyle/cooking correspondent for Conde Nast’s debut web network. My thoughts on cooking and city life have been featured in such national and international media outlets as the BBC, Donny Deutsch, New York Times, New York Daily News and New York Post.

Our little family lives and works in the West Village, dangerously close to Murray’s Cheese and Patisserie Claude.