Faith, family and food is how I live my life. I grew up on a farm in coastal Alabama, and almost everything we ate, we either grew, raised or caught in the Gulf of Mexico. Fish hooks, ocean nets and farming to table – was our simple way of life. After earning my BFA in Graphic Design with a minor in Photography from Mississippi University for Women.  I  traveled west to ski and paint. As fate would have it, I stumbled into a Thai restaurant in San Francisco.  After this meal, I knew culinary school was my destiny. I graduated from Johnson and Wales in Charleston, South Carolina. My Culinary education opened doors that enabled me to fulfill a lifelong dream of working with food, art and photography in the publishing industry. After leaving Samford University where I served as Catering Director, The Lord opened the door to my dream job at Southern Progress Corporation. I worked in the Oxmoor House Test Kitchens where I honed my skills in creating, developing, testing, writing about and editing recipes, did food-styling as well as prop-styling for Southern Living and Cooking Light cookbooks.  I learned the language of food in the test kitchen and at the editing desk. I learned the art of food in the photo studio.

I am a wife to Dr. John A. O’Brien III,  mother to four, (Ivey, Sage, Jack and Jorgia) and live in Birmingham Alabama.