Amelia grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There she experienced a wide range of foods, from the traditional cuisine of Santa Fe to her parents’ Texan comfort foods like pimiento cheese and pecan pie and an unusually diverse restaurant scene. When she left home she lived in D.C. and went to art school at SUNY Purchase before settling in Brooklyn. Her days are filled with food. Amelia started a cookie company called Sugarbuilt and works as a pastry cook. She loves cooking for others, in supperclub-style dinners or for her neighborhood soup kitchen. She compulsively does research and happily goes though phases of intense interest in one edible item at a time, such as olive paste. She loves grocery stores and junk stores where she is highly stimulated by the many layers of information she can sift through. Amelia also keeps a food blog: Marinationwide.
Danielle’s culinary interest was initially piqued on a whirlwind trip to South America five years ago. As she sat in a boutique café in Buenos Aires nibbling on venisen carpaccio drizzled with a balsamic redux and savory granola she thought, ‘whoa. This is delicious and beautiful, I want to learn to make things like this…’
As a summer time waitress starting at fifteen, she gained exceptional ‘front of the house’ experience, and learned early on in life that she loves to play hostess. — Cut to twelve years later, where Danielle and her roommates run and host the Whisk & Ladle supperclub within the walls of their loft. This is where she’s really been able to hone her culinary skills. With absolutely no prior culinary experience, she works by trial and error, using a variety of cookbooks and friends as guides, consultants…and taste testers. Her insatiable sweet tooth led her to the take-over of their dessert course, even trying her hand at homemade ice creams–which is now one of her specialties. Throwing five course dinners for 25+ people roughly twice a month for the last 3 years has refined both her palate and technique.
Collaborative cooking and bringing people together – friends, family & strangers - is one of the things Danielle’s most passionate about.
When she’s not cooking and entertaining 25 of her closest friends, Danielle is teaching or studying the fine curriculum of mathematics. She’s the co-founder of a small tutoring company called City Smarts.
At age 5, Erin made her first creative dish by combining a spoonful of ketchup, a packet of Sugar in the Raw, 3 shakes of pepper, a squirt of mustard, a splash of leftover coffee, a strawful of her Shirley Temple and stirring wildly. She called it Zortich, a dish she hasn’t made in years but is pretty sure is still a NJ diner classic for anyone in the single digit age range. Today she lives in New York City and spends most of her time enjoying the culinary gems the city has to offer and the rest of her time thinking about what she’s going to make for her next meal. As a former bartender (and born Texan) she can make a mean margarita and as a current control freak has a bad habit of throwing people out of the kitchen while she’s cooking. Some of her favorite things in the world are (in no particular order): milkshakes, avocados, perusing an outdoor farmer’s market on a sunny day, wine & cheese, traveling around the world, trying new things, heavy hands of garlic and making an awesome meal out of a barren cupboard and fridge. This is a girl who truly appreciates moderation and delicate flavors but isn’t afraid to devour a greasy hamburger, French fries and wash it all down with a beer!
Erin is a freelance Website editor and writer of all genres, but her favorite things to write about/work with are wine, food & entertaining.
Gwen is a full-time urban farmer based in Brooklyn, NY. She’s got a passion for eating and cooking with healthy food from sustainable farms, and she’s worked in almost every segment of the food industry, from planting seeds on the farm to cooking and serving meals in restaurants. These days she’s spending a lot of time on community food projects in her neighborhood, including the establishment of a food cooperative and a rooftop vegetable farm. She’s co-creator of Saucy Little Dish and its Saucy Little logo, and is excited to share her kitchen adventures with our Saucy Little Readers.
Jodi is originally from Chicago – land of Deep Dish Pizza and Sweet Corn – transplanted into L.A.: city of Taco Trucks, Korean BBQ and Farmer’s Markets. She’s a film production executive by day, and a wanna-be pastry chef by night. Jodi and her fiance try to eat locally and seasonally, but they sometimes cave and eat pasta with sauce from a jar or canned soup. She may or may not have gotten married in order to register for a Kitchen-Aid Mixer and All-Clad. (Oh, and maybe for that LOVE thing…)
Born and raised in upstate New York, Nicole was dubbed a picky eater at an early age. Most of her life she would pick things out of dishes rather than enjoy them. As a freshman in College she met people from exotic places like California and ate interesting foods like avocado that she once avoided. This was the change that turned her palate around. Now years later, Nicole lives in Greenpoint, Brooklyn where she has a vegetable garden and entertains and cooks up meals for friends and family. Hosting, entertaining and creative cooking is a passion for the once picky eater. When she isn’t hosting dinner parties, Nicole works for Honora Pearls. The 28-year-old went to school for fashion merchandising and moved to NYC directly after graduation. In addition to her “account” work for Honora, she also does a weekly pearl pick on Honora’s facebook page called “Nic’s pick of the week”.
Paige! has been cooking/baking on and off for the last ten years. Her culinary adventures have taken her in diverse directions including vegan & vegetarian fare at the co-op on Vassar’s campus, cupcake & cookie making for a coffee shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn, quiche-ing it up at a cafe in Berlin and contributing recipes to BushwickBK.com, her neighborhood’s blog. She spends her days immersed in the under-30 consumer’s world at a trend forecasting/consumer research company, The Zandl Group, and by night can be found either tooling around Bushwick & Williamsburg on her bike, attempting some sort of confection that requires a candy thermometer, or enjoying drinks with friends.
Rachelle is the editor and co-creator of Saucy Little Dish. A freelance fashion, food and beauty writer, she also works part-time as an in-house editor at a literary agency. Growing up Jewish and Italian in Northern New Jersey, food was always a focus; she was raised in two households where her mother roasted root vegetables and her father drank Yoohoo and ordered nightly Chinese. Her taste in food – much like everything else – is highbrow/lowbrow (favorites include heirloom tomatoes, artichokes, chocolate, anything with peanut butter, and Asian dumplings). She has worked as a waitress for a handful of NYC spots and recently spent two influential months eating and cooking in New Orleans. Rachelle has her B.A. in English from Vassar College and currently lives in Brooklyn.
Past Dishes:
Jessica is originally from a cute green suburb of New York City. She first became interested in food & nutrition as an AmeriCorps volunteer in Austin, Texas. There, among other educational endeavors, she designed and implemented a nutrition-focused art project with students at the Dove Springs Recreation Center summer program. She also began cooking extensively there with produce from the Austin Organic Farm, and became intent on eating organically, locally, seasonally, and mindfully as much as possible. She received her Bachelor’s of Science in Dietetics from Montclair State University, and is currently working on a Master’s of Science in Agriculture, Food and Environment at Tufts University’s Friedman School of Nutrition Science & Policy in Boston, Massachusetts. She has volunteered extensively in after-school meal programs, food banks and pantries in several NJ inner-cities, and worked in clinical dietetics and in test kitchens doing recipe writing, testing, and development. Jessica has also studied cuisine, artisanal food production, viticulture and organic agriculture in Tuscany, Italy and in a variety of regions in France.
