Calling All Chefs!
We're searching for African American chefs with unique recipes and a compelling story to be part of a groundbreaking cookbook collaboration. Is this you? Enter your name for more information.
Free Books
Participating authors will receive 5 free copies of the cookbook to use in any way they please.
Social Media Promotion
Participating authors will get a promotional interview & promotion to 10,000 social media followers.
Editing
All cookbook submissions will be professionally edited & reviewed at no additional cost.
Why this project?
I spent years in the culinary industry learning, working, teaching, and taking advantage of all experiences the profession has afforded me. I will always remember secretly attending college for culinary school because I didn’t want my family to know my major. How could I possibly tell them I was going to learn how to cook, become a chef, without the side eyes and all the questions asking “why?” I grew up in a family of great cooks, much like most of you. Our mamas and aunties know how to throw down in the kitchen. Quite naturally, that’s where I learned. However, being a chef is different. It's being more skilled, proficient, talented and knowledgeable so all that good cooking is not in vain.
Later, as I leveled up in my career and became an entrepreneur, I noticed not many chefs who look like me teaching culinary skills on TV. We weren’t in the history books. I realized that Black men and women are significantly underappreciated and acknowledged. It was very recently that I learned, as I was teaching my students and preparing a Black History-themed lesson plan, that I discovered Hercules and James Hemings — the enslaved chefs of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. They were the first cooks to feed and serve in the White House.
This anthology/cookbook collection is important because I want us to start a legacy that we can be proud to include in our amazing Black History. If we don’t tell our stories and share our food and culture, then who will? Let’s continue to shape and change the narrative of who we are and who we are becoming. We are our ancestors' wildest dreams. We are history! Food and culture were cultivated through slaves and traditions passed down generation after generation. You already know the stories of how okra became a staple of the south. I don’t have to tell you that. But what I will not know is how your story begins and ends. Let's tell it through your food and family traditions.
