ABOUT

I started Biting at the Bits as a way to celebrate my Mama who passed from Brain Cancer in 2020. From the time I was a toddler, she made me feel magic in the kitchen --everything from teaching me how to cook and bake to later spending hours together on the phone talking about recipes when we lived thousands of miles apart. I owe her my endless love, curiosity, and passion for cooking, canning, vegetable gardening, and bread-making!

My career as a private chef has roots in Arkansas working as a pastry chef assistant in a local fine dining restaurant, but really got started and blossomed in NYC when I left a career in advertising to do what I love most (it's also where Luca and I first met...he's my guy and my favorite person on the planet).

Later on, it took me to Chengdu, Sichuan (Szechuan) China for four years to open a cooking school for kids and adults before settling here in beautiful Italy where Luca is from.

Everyone's Welcome (Cooking Nerds & Newbs Alike)

Whether you’re just learning how to cook or looking for a more natural approach to cooking, Biting at the Bits is the place for anyone who wants to eat healthier, less processed, better-tasting meals at home.

My goal is to help take the mystery out of the cooking and baking processes to cut through some of the unfamiliar (often intimidating) "technique-y stuff". Hopefully, this helps you enjoy being in your kitchen more often and gives you the confidence not to feel like you need to follow every single recipe to the letter!

Everything you'll find here are dishes we actually eat in real life. Along with these recipes, I share my best cooking tips and everything I've learned working in the food industry to help you navigate your own kitchen and meals with a little more ease.

Tell Us More About Those Recipes!

You'll find (mostly) made-from-scratch recipes that opt for 'old-school' over boxed mixes and pre-made ingredients because to put it plainly, it's just healthier. But let’s be real — life happens. That’s why I’ve also sprinkled in some store-bought shortcuts and alternatives because life’s too short for kitchen guilt (especially for you parents out there).

So let's cook, let's cheat a little when we need to, and let's enjoy the journey – no judgment, just delicious results!

Sometimes you'll find a recipe that was a client favorite, or maybe a vintage family dessert passed down a generation or three, something spicy I learned from the Sichuan chefs I worked and collaborated with, or one of the simplest and best-tasting lasagna recipes I learned from my family here in Italy. Anything goes as long as it tastes good!

Why I List All of My Ingredients in Metric and Gram Equivalents

I weigh and measure ingredients for every recipe which is why I write ALL metric equivalents in gram measurements only. It's easier to keep the scale on one measurement as opposed to switching back and forth between milliliters, fluid ounces, grams, etc. and it's more accurate.

For this reason, all ingredient amounts called for in a recipe are also provided in grams (even liquids).

How Did You Come Up With The Name For Your Blog?

Countless times throughout my life, sweet southern Mom would say, “Sugar, I bet you're just bitin' at the bits to…(fill in the blank)!”

It was her way of letting me know she knew how excited I was, or how much anticipation (or anxiety) I was experiencing for my next move or for a particular project or period to start or come to an end. She also thought that a food blog should be my next project. So this is the only name that made sense to me♡.

What You Won't Find Here (My Promise to You)

You will not find AI-generated recipes or images here. Every recipe is 100% mine or will include the proper recipe attribution for the person who made it, or the resource it comes from. I work hard to create, photograph, and edit every detail of the content I post (even when it's not perfect).

And I would never ask you to spend your money buying ingredients to make a dish that was based on fake food photos, or an auto-generated recipe. To me, that's just plain dishonest. Plus, I want you to know what to expect the dish to look like once you've made it! 

Lastly, I know many of you need to manage a monthly food budget, so you'll also never find a recipe here that was purchased from a recipe bank and slapped on the site just to make money from ads.

How Did You Get From Arkansas to NYC, to Chengdu, China, to Now Living in Northeast Italy?

In a previous life, I went to school for design and marketing, during which I took a sabbatical from school to work as the pastry chef assistant a little over one year in a prestigious local fine-dining restaurant.

Miraculously somehow I convinced them to hire me without any previous professional kitchen training. This is probably a testament to how passionate I was even then about cooking and food and how hard I was willing to work to prove I could rise to the challenge. I'm grateful Chef and the Executive Pastry Chef, Lori, recognized this because it was an invaluable culinary education that I've only added to as the years have passed).

After university, I had an advertising career in NYC that I mostly really loved for a long time (until I didn't). Years later, I eventually resigned because the idea of cooking (or somehow getting back into the food industry) for a living was visceral and unrelenting.

I resigned as an ad executive to work for myself cooking privately for families developing recipes and individual meal plans, teaching 1:1 and group cooking classes, catering events, etc. I loved this period of my life (especially developing menus with recipes to help kids eat healthier more nutritious meals). More on this down below...

Switching Careers to Follow My Heart

Deciding to take the risk and go after my passion opened up countless opportunities (some I never could have imagined). They've taken me to some amazing places and allowed me to collaborate and work on projects with extremely talented people. I'm grateful and humbled by every single one of them!

After Years of Private Chef & Catering Work in NYC...

I moved to China and opened a Western cooking school as part of an arts and education center for kids and adults in Chengdu (Sichuan province).

It was an amazing, super challenging, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that ended up being just as much an educational experience for me, as it was for all of my students!

Living La Dolce Vita (yep, I said it...this line is seriously as cheesy as it gets (especially coming from an American), but I can attest that Italy really does live up to its promise of 'the sweet life')

After a little over four (extremely hectic and intense) years in China and then a little over a year spent going home to take care of my Mom and ultimately getting stuck in there because of covid after she'd passed, it was time to rest. I needed tranquility, I needed Luca, and I needed to have the space and time to fully grieve everything we'd been through.

Italy is more relaxing in general and Luca was here waiting on me (I didn't really need more than that). 

But of course, it's easier to travel from here and there are endless delicious food and ingredients waiting around every corner in every region of this beautiful place! Since Luca is from Italy (and we both love it here so much), it's a move that made perfect sense for us as a couple.

Not to mention, it's a cook's dream (or anyone with a mouth) to travel around Italy and meet the makers who are keeping generational traditions alive for so many delicious, storied ingredients and dishes.

Everything from artisanal wine, tomato, olive oil, pasta, cheese, and salumi producers. It's one of the absolute loves of my life to have these opportunities with Italian family and friends to share these experiences with.

A Few Professional & Food Related Highlights With Photos (in no particular order)

Outside of private chef work, I've been fortunate to have worked on a few food-related projects and collaborated with some amazing companies, creative people in the food industry (way more talented than myself), and a handful of NYC icons! Thank you all!

AMPAS (Oscar's) Best Foreign Film Selection Event & NYC Russ & Daughters Annual Herring Festival

• Catered the 85th Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences (Oscar's) Best Foreign Film Selection Event. As part of an all-female chef team, we catered the annual 3-day event hosted at the Academy Theater Lighthouse International in Manhattan (where the "best foreign film" nominees are selected by a group of esteemed actors, directors, producers, and other industry people). I met Meryl Streep who asked me about the pecan pie I served and the chocolate cheesecake -- and yes, she was pretty cool.
• Catered The Russ & Daughters Annual Herring event (assisting the talented guest chef Linda Steen that year).

CAMPBELL'S SOUP COMPANY (Camp Campbell Food & Innovation Women Entrepreneur Event)

I was Invited by then CEO of Campbell's Soup Company, Denise Morrison (now The Campbell's Company), to participate in a Food + Innovation Women Entrepreneur (Camp Campbell) event at Campbell's Soup HQ to ideate and brainstorm about the future of food and the role that Campbell Soup could play (along with 3 other female entrepreneurs chosen from NYC (plus, a handful of talented women from around the tri-state area).

At the event, Denise sat spoke to us and then took time to sit with us at our table and garner our thoughts. She asked me to be candid about the pros and cons of Campbell's Soup products. I told her that their products had been a staple in our home growing up (like everyone else I knew growing up in the South), but that I didn't eat or use them anymore because of the high amounts of sodium and highly processed ingredients.

I recommended that Campbell's try to find a way to reduce the amount of sodium and processed ingredients to provide healthier (potentially) organic options to previous customers like me, or for a new generation looking for better, healthier convenience options.

(I'd like to think that I may have played a teeny tiny part in the new line of organic soups they introduced a year later, but they were probably already working on that project well before my comments♡). 

Kitchen Equipment & Cookware/Bakeware Tester & Regular Cooking Demonstrator For The Broadway Panhandler, NYC NY

I loved working with Norman and the entire team over at The Broadway Panhandler. It was like having a second scrappy NYC family where I interacted with like-minded people who were genuinely serious about food, cooking, baking, and learning how to cook for the first time or improve their skills.

BP stood as the crown jewel of cookware and equipment stores in NYC, boasting a legacy enriched by the patronage of culinary icons James Beard and Julia Child. These luminaries weren't just customers; they were friends of Norman and his father before him, adding to the store's prestige.

From renowned chefs to passionate home cooks like myself, BP drew in everyone who took their culinary pursuits seriously. It wasn't just a store; it was a mecca for anyone who found joy in cooking or baking.

I regularly tested new cookware (sometimes before it was on the market), bakeware, and kitchen equipment along with electrical appliances for national and international cookware and bakeware brands (including Kitchen Aid, Vitamix, WMF, Le Creuset, All-Clad, Kyocera, Cuisinart, Silit, Breville, Berndes, and Swiss Diamond, Hurom, Mauviel, Matfer Bourgeat, Pillivuyt, John Boos & Co., Silpat, USA Pan, Ateco, just to name a few). My favorite part was creating recipes and doing cooking demonstrations for people learning to cook.

Skillshare's First-Ever Online Cooking Class (Filmed In My Brooklyn, NY Kitchen)

I was invited by Skillshare to be their first online cooking class for their digital platform. I had been teaching in-person cooking classes at their HQ in NYC and catering some of their employee parties, but this was a real honor. My class (Southern Fried Chicken + Buttermilk Biscuits) is still active and running today and was filmed at my house in Brooklyn, NY (above).

They're a really fun, creative, and talented group of people over there. It was the first time I had ever been filmed doing a cooking demonstration and it was totally intimidating, scary, and nerve-racking, but I got through it. And we ate the fried chicken and biscuits afterward :).

Independent Cooking Demonstrations at West Elm Dumbo Brooklyn, NY

West Elm had seen my Skillshare class and what I was doing with The Broadway Panhandler and invited me to come to their Dumbo, Brooklyn store to do a few independent fried chicken and jam-making classes. This was a lot of fun and the team over there couldn't have been more amazing!

Teaching 1:1 Private Cooking Lessons

Teaching private one-on-one cooking lessons in NYC to people who had never cooked before or who have rarely cooked was incredibly rewarding!

Helping people go from timid and slightly (or even very) nervous in their own kitchens to gaining copious amounts of confidence is THE best feeling! The ultimate reward is seeing how proud they are of their new kitchen skills and hearing stories about them cooking for their friends and families!

I've been really fortunate to have had the very best clients that I can now call friends.

Designed an Immersive Cultural Learning Center Including Opening a Western Cooking School in Chengdu, (Sichuan) China

In 2014 I moved from NYC to Chengdu, Sichuan China to open a Western cooking school as part of a larger holistic English language center and to learn more about the amazing Sichuanese (Szechuan) cuisine and spend time with my family living there.

It was an amazing and rich experience that I will never forget. I spent four years in total designing and helping open up this venture which included an art studio, yoga studio, café, Sichuan restaurant, small boutique, movie theater, kid's play area, English classrooms, and my Western cooking classroom to teach kids of all ages and adults how to cook authentic Western cuisine.

This project was a design dream come true.

I poured all of my creativity into this place using every tool I had to design each space from the ground up (in a language I did not speak) with the help of so many talented local friends and artisans.

Thank goodness for great partners (thanks to all of my Sichuan family and friends for all your immense hard work (and your spicy chili oil wontons), none of this would have been possible without you!).

I had the opportunity to design everything from the cooking classroom workstations, and art room table and decorations, down to the seat cushions, pillows, the painted leather placemats, the boat for kids to read in, to the minibar, the dining table, and even the kitchen sink in my classroom. Everything was possible in China.

My favorite part was teaching adults and kids how to cook (look at those sweet faces!).

Getting to see how happy the kids (and adults) were while learning to cook or make something new, is one of the best feelings in the world. I'll treasure the people of Chengdu for their enormous warmth and kindness (and their delicious food).

I had the enormous privilege of learning so much about the complexity and vastness of Sichuan (Szechuan) cuisine from highly skilled local chefs who worked for us and with us and my local friends and family who are excellent cooks.

More About My Time as a Private Chef in NYC (including photos of actual dishes I cooked for clients)

When you're trusted with the keys to someone's home and full access to their refrigerator (which by all accounts is a pretty intimate space), they become more to you than just a client.

Each family's lifestyle, food preferences, and dietary needs ran the spectrum (sometimes even within the same family).  I've been very fortunate -- I LOVE the families I worked with and the cooking challenges it presented because it made me a much better cook and recipe developer♡.

Above and below are a few photos of some of the actual meals I prepared for my clients -- wholesome made-from-scratch dishes that catered to a healthy lifestyle with well-rounded meal plans that included the occasional comfort food craving and desserts!

Who Were Your Private Chef Clients?

All of my clients had high-profile careers and kids, with little to no time to cook for themselves which meant they were ordering takeout, eating out regularly, or often reaching for easy processed boxed, canned, or frozen meals and snacks.

Diverse Dietary Needs:

My clients' needs ranged from kosher meals and 100% organic vegan and gluten-free to comfort food made healthier, while another traveled back and forth to Europe for work each week and wanted to cut out unhealthy "travel food".

Services Provided:

• Created healthy meals and snacks the whole family could enjoy
• Meals and snacks that needed to travel well internationally 
• Developed anti-inflammatory and alkaline meal plans for:
  • Pre-surgery preparation
  • Optimum post-surgery recovery
  • General well-being
• Created completely organic-vegan-gluten-free meal plans
• Developed kid's meal plans for both picky eaters and typical eaters
• Developed meal plans to help clients lose unwanted pounds in a healthy and sustainable way while still enjoying meals and without ever feeling like they were on a hardcore tasteless cardboard kind of diet

Fun story -- I once made Passover Seder eggs (beitzah (ביצה) and a roasted leg of lamb that were used in a family dinner scene for a Broadway play. Of course, no one except me and my client (the producer) knew but it made me happy on the inside all the same.

Working with such a diverse client roster was both challenging and incredibly rewarding to see it pay dividends for them.

Helping Families Get Their Kids To Eat a Little Better

I can't talk about private chef work and not mention the kids. I loved cooking for them! Oftentimes, they'd be running in and out of the kitchen and asking me questions while the nannies got their lunch ready. So cute!

I was tasked with a few goals for creating kid's meals depending on the specific needs of each family:

• Creating whole recipes that would sneak more vegetables into each serving
• Develop meals that could help transition kids away from eating completely separate "kids meals" from that of their parents
• Adding yummy dishes and snacks to help transition some of them away from eating the highly processed, unhealthy foods they (and their developing brains) had grown to love (if you're a parent, you've probably been here at some point♡)

What Each Client Had In Common

Each family was different, but what they all shared in common (like most people I know) was a busy lifestyle and a desire for their family to eat better, more nutritious un-processed foods at home.

I think we can all relate to that. And while not everyone can afford their own private chef, everyone can cook, or learn how to cook a handful of tasty, quick, and simple meals they can be proud even if you're pretty much consistently time-starved.

I hope to help give you the tools and resources here to be successful in the kitchen so you and your family actually love the food you make even if it's as simple and easy as a better-than-average grilled cheese sandwich or just learning how to make a better salad without it feeling like a total chore.

Life as a Food Blogger and Recipe Developer

Biting at the Bits is a lot of work, but I really love it and I hope it shows in the quality of the recipes.  I invite you to come back from time to time to see the progress and to help us grow — and maybe find a new recipe while you're here.

Whether you're cooking for yourself, your family, or someone who needs to eat a little healthier, or you just need a really good pasta to make for a special date night, the ultimate goal is that you can find it here.

Kelly

What's The Inspiration for Biting at the Bits?

The brightest of all lights. This blog is a dedication to my most awesome Mama♡.  She nurtured and inspired my curiosity and passion for being in the kitchen and instilled in me an absolute love for gardening, canning, cooking, and baking (specifically her delicious bread).

As an adult, I’ve been able to use some of the same lessons she taught me as a child, as well as everything I'd been working on as a private chef to help give her the dignity and grace she was physically unable to give herself leading up to and throughout her brain cancer diagnosis and then ultimately to her untimely passing.

Knowing that the healthy food I was preparing and the care I was giving her all those months helped to give her a better quality of life (and a bit longer one too) is something tangible and wrapped up with more love than I'm able to express in words. Because it all meant just a little more time with us kids, her grandbabies (who she absolutely lived for), and her friends and family who loved her so. This is the power of food as medicine - and all the love she gave to us!