Dinner Club
About three years ago when I was still living in Brooklyn, I got really interested in cooking. I have always been into food, but have been a traditionally picky eater (no fish, hate black pepper). Since then, I’ve cooked for pretty much all of my friends as a token of affection, including hosting Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people and cooking Frito Pie (beef texas chili and vegan chili) for 30 people.
Since moving back to Austin in October, I wanted to do a recurring, themed dinner party. The first dinner club is Texas themed, since that’s what I’m celebrating, and will be held on the last Thursday of every month going forward. My vision is to eventually have other folks host and show off their skills and inspiration in the kitchen and to build empathy and connection through food.
All art and design you see to the right was done by me, including hand letting the ‘Dinner Club’ logo, and printed using Moo. I had to print 50 sheets of stickers, so please reach out if you would like some!
Austin City Guide
People outside of Texas either love Austin or are already planning their first visit, so when I lived in New York City a lot of folks would ask me for recommendations. The thing is, I love talking about Austin and Texas. I can talk about my favorite BBQ places with confidence. After all, I grew up going to the original Cooper’s in Llano. So, I was always really excited for people to get to experience Texas and Austin for the first time, because it’s truly a wonderful experience.
My original guide lives here and has been used by at least 15 people from The Wall Street Journal alone. I sent a colleague to La Barbecue while he was in Austin for a wedding and he said it changed his entire outlook on what Brisket could be.
I created a web version while I was in a Javascript class with General Assembly, you can see the static screen to the right. All coding and design was done by me, from scratch.
To view the web app, click here.
Sourdough Baking
As mentioned above, I’ve been cooking for years, but, baking never interested me. I don’t really have a sweet tooth and generally knew that baking bread was an undertaking. That changed for me last Fall when I had the bread at Stellina, a restaurant in Marfa, TX. The bread was just… so good. We had just moved to Austin and had a full-size kitchen. So, I decided to make bread. I spent three weeks cultivating my own starter and have made about a half-dozen batches of this bread (about 12 loaves total) following the Tartine method.
You can see my process in this spreadsheet here. Yes, it does really take 9.5 hours. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
Film Photography
I started taking film photos as a way to use my phone less and to make my memories feel more intentional. I have 10,000 photos on my phone’s camera roll, but I find myself looking at my physical photos again and again. There’s something special about printing out a photograph. There’s also something extremely satisfying in clicking the shutter on a camera and hearing the film whirr.
See more photos here.
Other hobbies:
📝Fiction writing
🕺🏻Disco music
📚Reading books
🐶Hanging out with my dog, Georgia
Interested in talking about journalism, product management, sourdough or disco music?