Bios
Cate O’Malley
For as long as I can remember, I have loved writing and yearned to be a freelance journalist when I grew up. When I moved out on my own for the first time, I discovered a second passion … cooking. Now, many years later, I still have a love for both and started my site, Sweetnicks, in an effort to combine them. I have a slight, ahem, obsession with cookbooks, food/cooking magazines, and, well, anything related to food. Joining the food blogging community, it’s great to be among others who get the obsession. My site’s name comes from my 5-year-old son, Nicholas, who loves to help me in the kitchen almost as much as he loves Dora, Spiderman and his girlfriend.
Solange Berchemin
Right from the beginning, I faced a dichotomous choice: born in Lyon, the French capital of gastronomy, my dad is an excellent cook; on the other end my mum could manage to burn boiling water.
I love words but as we do all I needed to work. So I started as a librarian who made strange cooking experiments on her friends…some never recovered and I gained local fame.
I moved to London (England), a fusion place par excellence, kept the cooking passion going and have found an happy medium. Writing on my blog: pebble soup and articles for magazines.
Amy Casey - Bio
My love of food has been lifelong. It began at an early age when I spent my lunchtime watching Julia Child on PBS. I learned to cook from the many fabulous cooks in my family and countless hours spent reading cookbooks, magazines, blogs, websites, and backs of every package of food I have purchased. After graduating from college, I worked in the business world before “retiring” to become a full time mom to my three kids. I devoted 10 years to being the CEO of my family and decided to jump into the food world as soon as the kids were in school full time. A 2-year stint at a gourmet café as cook, menu planner, waitress, and dishwasher fueled my food obsession, and I was hooked for life.
My fascination with food lead me to become a personal chef, and I am the chef/owner of EAT! A Personal Chef Service in northern New Jersey and am a member of the Personal Chefs Network. Always wanting to inflect my love of food on other people, I started my blog Dinners for a Year where I share my collection of recipes, comments, photos, and reviews of the meals I have prepared for my family and friends. I also write for various publications and am always looking to spread the good word about the world of food.
Kristen Doyle - Bio
I reside with my husband and three small children in a suburb of Kansas City. In addition to being a wife and mother, I work part-time from home as a recruiter for the staffing industry, as well as work as a freelance writer for a local magazine. Besides my family, my passions include cooking, entertaining, photography, reading, travel and shopping.
I grew up in a house where family dinner was a priority. We sat around the table almost every evening as a family and ate a nice meal together. With varying hectic schedules this wasn’t always convenient, but it is something that my parents felt was important. Those values are ones I am striving to implement in my own home. I am a firm believer that having families sit down at night to eat dinner together can help to solve a lot of the problems in the world today. Families that eat, play and pray together, stay together.
I have always loved to cook, but I have not always been good at it. There were many times when I was younger that I’d make cookies and forget to add the dry ingredients. My family still teases me to this day about the number of times I caught our kitchen stove on fire. I used the smoke alarm as my signal that things were done instead of the timer. I’ve come a long way…that’s for sure!
In addition to writing for The Well Fed Network, I maintain two blogs… Dine and Dish, where I chronicle my adventures in cooking and entertaining and Dishing it Up Family Style, where I document how our family is keeping us entertained.
Brilynn Ferguson
Brilynn Ferguson was born in a small town in rural Ontario where a large garden and farm fresh products helped to develop her love of food. She was fortunate to grow up in a household where both her mother and father cooked, the family sat down together to eat dinner and take out never appeared on the table. Brilynn didn’t really begin cooking on her own until she was forced to do so when she left home for the big city to pursue a degree in Health and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Her upbringing had introduced her to the merits of fresh products and Toronto subsequently introduced her to an infinite amount of food possibilities with the use of flavours from around the world. It wasn’t long before Brilynn discovered that she loved to cook and try new foods and recipes. Eager to taste foreign flavours directly from the source, travel has also been a favourite past time and an education in and of itself. Brilynn has spent time living in France and Australia while attending school. Since graduation she resides once again in the countryside; spending time cooking and writing for her blog, Jumbo Empanadas, where her motto is ‘Go Big or Go Home.’
Susan Filson - Bio
Susan is a professional musician, amateur chef, aspiring writer, wife, mother, daughter and sister, who used to be a lawyer in a previous life. She lives on the beautiful Gulf Coast of Florida with her handsome husband and lovely teen-aged daughter.
Her passion for food comes from a long line of wonderful and creative Italian home cooks who didn’t always have a lot, but knew how to make a lot out of what they had. Susan’s greatest inspiration was her father, an avid gardener, who grew almost all of the fruits, vegetables and herbs for her family’s table. He taught her the value of using only the freshest ingredients available, whenever possible. He advocated “going local” before it became the popular thing to do.As a busy working mom, Susan favors recipes that are healthy, delicious and easy to prepare. Never one to back down from a challenge, she also loves to compose “edible symphonies” in her kitchen, when time permits.
In addition to writing for The Well Fed Network, Susan can also be found cooking and writing for her blog, Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy.
Alisa Fleming
Alisa is the founder and editor of the informational website, Go Dairy Free, and author of the guidebook, “Dairy Free Made Easy.” Her mission to make special diets and healthy eating enjoyable prompts hours of recipe experiments, product trials, and restaurant hopping each week.
Born and raised in Portland, Oregon, Alisa traded in her webfeet for sunny (high) desert living several years ago. Though she misses the fresh produce from local farms, visits to the Northwest quickly remind her that she doesn’t miss the rain. Aside from food, her favorite pastimes include women’s soccer, international travel, quality time with her cat Rosie, and very long walks with her husband.
Faith Kramer
Faith Kramer finds herself reading about food sometimes even more often than cooking it. “After all,” she says “it’s hard to grill chicken in bed.” In addition to the many American food magazines she reads, Faith also enjoys “translating” into American some of the best food magazines of England and Australia. She’s been even known to try recipes from Spanish, Mexican and French food magazines. The French ones are particularly challenging since she doesn’t know any French. Good thing the language of food is universal.
When she is not reading about cooking food, she is writing about it in her blog, Blog Appetit, and as a contributor to other Well Fed Network sites, including Sugar Savvy.
Madeline Miller
I began cooking out of pure desperation. I simply could not eat fast food any more. And, I was getting married and cooking seemed like something a grown up should know how to do. The first recipe I ever tried that did not involve microwaving for five minutes on high or opening Styrofoam boxes was by Rachael Ray. I have been cooking her recipes ever since, as my personal blog Everything Rachael Ray evidences.
Combine my love of cooking with my love of writing and you end up reading my Bio on Paper Palate.
Alex Prichard
Alex grew up in Adelaide, South Australia and, given her parents’ principal past-times are food and drink, it was a short hop from making a cup of tea to baking a cake. Now living in Leeds, West Yorkshire, she spends her time cooking and eating, and reading and writing about food. And worrying about what to drink with her next meal!
Sandy Smith, editor
Although I’ve been a full-time freelance writer and editor for almost fifteen years, I’ve been eating and cooking for quite a bit longer than that. I enjoy artisanal baking, and I work with publishers to develop and test recipes as a technical editor for cookbooks. I also write regularly on culinary and other topics for various print and online media. My own blog, Eat Real, features recipes for and articles on eating seasonally, locally, sustainably, enjoyably, and doably — even for busy families. Here on the Well Fed Network, I write for Kids Cuisine, Just Baking, Paper Palate, Sugar Savvy, A Nice Cuppa, and Growers and Grocers. Elsewhere, I write the LocalFoodBlog.com, on local and sustainable foods.
I love every aspect of food—from growing herbs to grocery shopping to cooking, baking, and writing about obscure Colonial dishes and cave-aged farmhouse cheeses. I grew up in a home where the preparing and sharing of food was an expression of love, and the kitchen and dining rooms are still the “living rooms” in our family. I’m deeply grateful for the abundance of excellent food we have so readily available to us in the United States, so I try to be a good steward of that resource, and my husband and I are teaching our kids to do the same. At our family’s table, we eat as seasonally, and enjoyably, as possible.
Robin Wheeler-Barber
Robin lives in an Illinois suburb of St. Louis, where she drinks far too much coffee, raises her daughter, blogs at Poppymom and Frigidare Pair.
In a previous life Robin owned and operated a small catering company, wrote a monthly column for a local food magazine, and taught culinary classes for adults and children. These days she’s attempting to turn her families into localvores and considers her day a success if she’s able to convince her daughter to eat a vegetable.
