Food is a means of communication; it is nostalgic. 
It is what connects us, often with our past, and sometimes with what we are hungry for. 

My mother was a recipe developer for Kraft Foods in the early 1960s.  She was key in developing the Fantasy Fudge recipe that is still present on the back of Kraft's marshmallow cream jars. Her experience in the test kitchens of Chicago bore a tradition that is still present in my family today - the making of fudge to share with friends and family at Christmas.
 
However, all things change with time. The jars are now plastic whereas they once were glass.  The recipe has changed as well. Food traditions and memories are in perpetual jeopardy of being revised, adulterated, or simply erased.
 
As a child I was not in to food as much as I am today. While I have never met a vegetable I do not like and have an extraordinarily extensive pallet, as a young girl food was not the center of my world. My horses were. All girls love horses, right? "Of course" my mother would say, describing how I uttered "horse" as my very first word rather than "mom" or "dad" much to their emotional (and financial) chagrin. The 1960s television show "Mister Ed" (that I watched incessantly via re-runs) was "of course" my favorite. I would prance (or trot or canter) around the house singing, "A horse is a horse, of course, of course, and no one can talk to a horse, of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed." As I grew up, the teenage girls of my cohort were focused on boys; I was focused on boys as well, just that of the equine species. But, I was definitively aware of who Jacques Pepin and Justin Wilson were during those formative years.
 
Beyond the equally intense competitive and compassionate nature that grew from my life as a "horse girl", I developed a sense of wonder around food that I attribute to my familial experiences; wonder that has now transformed to an indescribable feeling of culture and community bound through the heritage, practice, and power of food. From hot summer days fishing off the coast with my father and brother, to pulling up crab traps and digging for clams and scallops at my grandmothers home on Bogue Sound, to shucking oysters happily for hours at Rotary Club roasts, all of these childhood Coastal Carolina memories are tied to where I am from and who I am. And "of course", there were the pig pickins'...
 
Over the years, my professional life has taken a somewhat similar path to that of my mother’s.  I have written and tested recipes that were demonstrated in classes throughout communities to increase knowledge of food safety, food science, chronic disease prevention, nutrition, or often simply to provide people with skills to cook so that they may show love and shared community practices through food. Today I increasingly find enjoyment in serving multi-course dinners as an expression of love for those around me. 
 
Working as a university Extension faculty member afforded wonderful culinary and community development opportunities, from honing my leadership skills, to discovering my talent for hand crafting sausages.  I taught numerous youth how to make traditional French omelettes in the same manner as Julia Child.  I held countless “jam sessions”, explaining the difference in high and low acid foods, and left people fearful of all things that might even sound remotely like botulism. In a most paradoxical and MacGyver type fashion, I once even hosted an Earth Day cooking expo, demonstrating the importance of mitigating food waste in the parking lot of my Northwestern Georgia office by executing a delightful presentation of “dual purpose” vegetables - a recipe of roasted carrots and burrata with carrot top pesto. 
 
Communicating the various facets of agriculture and its importance in our society has been essential throughout my career, whether through teaching, print, or broadcast media. The most memorable aspect of spending nearly two decades in university education was hosting a weekly cooking show in North Carolina highlighting fresh, local, in-season ingredients.  I was grateful to partner with area producers, demonstrating how supporting local agriculture, and eating seasonally, is smart on a variety of levels. I later drew from that experience when I took part in a nationally televised show that became Emmy nominated. Through these media, I expressed my passion for the connections (and disparities) that intermingle food and culture.

I was, still do, and forever will, communicate with and through food. Because, in order to know where you come from, you most know where you've been.
 
While I will never forget returning from Italy as a teenager and replicating a breathtakingly simple yet elegant pasta dish so many times for my parents and brother that I think they refused to eat basil for months, my foray into truly analyzing and operationalizing "culinary diplomacy" began in 2014. It was during that summer that I traveled to the Balkans to explore the attitudinal effects of political change on Croatia’s agricultural economy. I found that many producers experienced difficulties navigating the marketplace after the economy abruptly shifted to capitalism in the early 1990s.  Intriguingly, I also discovered that there is a presence of “gustatory nostalgia” (defined so eloquently by Holtzman, 2006) among those seeking to preserve their national and regional identity.

Nearly a decade later, I held on to those stories, realizing more and more how food connects the past, present and future. I have always remained true to my original research, but now I more critically (and theoretically) examine the discourse that occurs both within and between food and culture, and how aspects of heritage, power, and practice are dynamically integrated.
 
So, how does a Ph.D. in Agricultural Science Communications, with a research focus in food and culture (and agricultural innovations), transfer their skills to areas outside of the often siloed walls of academia with writing, speaking, and consulting about food? 

It is quite simple really...

                                                               Agri-culture = Food-culture
 
When my brother was very young he used to say that he was full of something on his plate but not full of something else.  
 
I know that type of hunger...
 
While I have been fortunate to have been exposed to multiple experiences with great food and those who crafted the dishes (as I like to say, from Michelin stars to dive bars), each day I of course wake up with a gnawing in my stomach, constantly searching to satiate my appetite through understanding the enticing world of food and its place in culture and communities.