About this site

I started The Bountiful Harvest (then located here) in 2007, after my family and I moved from Los Angeles to Columbia County, New York.  My husband, a native Angeleno, very quickly realized that his whole life, he’d been brainwashed to believe that the best produce in the country was grown in California.  Once he tasted a local summer tomato, that all changed.

I’ve always been an avid cook (my mother coached me through roasting my first chicken when I was six) but moving to this region really inspired my cooking and, in particular, a passion for sourcing ingredients locally. I had heard of CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) programs before I moved, but participating in one in Los Angeles was neither practical nor necessary–even there, I bought most of our produce at a wonderful weekly farmers’ market.  But here, I found myself living down the road from farms that could provide our produce, and I leapt in to CSA participation.  This blog was started to chronicle my adventures cooking the bounty I received from my farm share, and mostly, that’s what I still do here.

But I’ve also broadened the content a bit as my freelance writing work has expanded.  I wanted to write my whole life–but didn’t.  Go figure. Instead I worked with writers, mostly screenwriters, helping them find their stories. When I quit my day job in Hollywood five years ago, I started to dream of writing again myself.  Something–I still don’t know what–led me to take a journalism class from the fine folks at MediaBistro.  My amazing teacher, Anna David, made me believe that I could actually do this.  I met my first editor in that class, and mostly, I haven’t looked back. (Though if you want to derail a nascent career change, moving cross country with two small children and a recuperating-from-back-surgery husband is an excellent obstacle to productivity.)

I got my start in freelancing at the Santa Barbara Independent.  For a time, I edited the Food and Wine and Book Review sections for a sadly-now-defunct online community, CultureCloud.  I now write a weekly food column for a local website, Rural Intelligence, and I am working on a cookbook and a memoir.  I wrote a profile of the old-school Student Prince restaurant, in Springfield, MA for the October, 2008 issue of Gourmet magazine.  And this month, I began blogging regularly and working as the Food Editor at The Sister Project, a new website created by Margaret Roach, former Editorial Director for Martha Stewart Omnimedia (and current star of the horticultural blogosphere.)  Stay tuned!