I’m a food and travel writer, and I’ve been cooking since the age of three. I really took matters into my own hands in grad school, when money was tight and time was flexible. With a subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, a good international food market and three hungry housemates, I taught myself to cook everything from pasta to pea soup to biryani.

After grad school, I moved to New York City (as one must, after grad school…), specifically to Astoria, Queens, the only neighborhood I visited where the residents seemed to shop for fresh produce. Knowing how to cook meant I could live cheaply and extend my bohemian period well into my thirties.

I did some catering and worked the line at restaurants such Gabrielle Hamilton’s Prune. I also ran an itinerant supper club back in 2001 and 2002 called Roving Gastronome (which led to my blog of the same name). Later, I cohosted the Sunday Night Dinner supper club with Tamara Reynolds. Together we wrote the cookbook Forking Fantastic!, now available as an ebook, How to Throw a Dinner Party without Having a Nervous Breakdown.

I love home cooking, and I think it has made my life better in a thousand ways. I hope this podcast can help you learn and improve your own cooking too.