I was born in Germany and grew up in the Bavarian countryside until age 15, when my parents immigrated to South Africa. I went to high school at Kingswood College in Grahamstown and then went on to study a BA in Philosophy and German Literature at the University of Cape Town. After graduating, I decided to leave South Africa and spent one year in Amsterdam, where I completed an internship at interior design magazine FRAME. This saw me not just learn the basics of magazine publishing but also allowed me to travel across Europe to attend all the great furniture and interior design shows like the Milan Furniture Fair, IMM in Cologne and Maison & Objet in Paris. In 2003 I relocated to London, where after a two-year stint at Design Week magazine, I spent seven years working for hospitality industry bible The Caterer as restaurant and chef editor. This was honestly the best job in the world – I got to travel everywhere, from the UK and Europe to Dubai, South Africa and the US, stay in amazing hotels, meet incredibly talented chefs and, best of all, eat at their restaurants. 

Then in 2013, I moved to California after my husband Adam’s advertising agency relocated him to head up their new office in Downtown Los Angeles. It was then that I began freelancing for a variety of food and travel focused publications across the world, including Restaurant Magazine, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants, FOUR Magazine, Spinney’s Food, MCA Insight and Supper Magazine. Over the years I have interviewed countless chefs including Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, Dominique Crenn, José Andrés, Nancy Silverton, Daniel Humm, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, David Kinch, Grant Achatz and Wolfgang Puck in the US, as well as Heston Blumenthal, Jamie Oliver, Massimo Bottura, the Roca Brothers, René Redzepi and Yannick Alléno in Europe, just to name a few.

At the end of 2014 our little baby girl was born. She inspired me to launch a baby food company called Little Foodie Club, which was focused on early palate development and teaching babies to love healthy food right from the start. I wanted to change the way babies learn about food from the first mouthful, move parents away from unhealthy processed and overly sweet baby purées and encourage them to feed their babies fresh, wholesome and tasty food made from real ingredients. Little Foodie Club was pretty successful - we rapidly grew from a small local service to offer deliveries nationally and we picked up awards and celebrity endorsements along the way. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 and the challenges the pandemic presented to the business as well as my family, I made the difficult decision to close Little Foodie Club in 2020. 

But there was a silver lining: The closure of the business led me and Adam to really think about what we wanted to do next with our lives and living in a big smelly city like Los Angeles was not it. So we decided to make our big move and life change and made Ojai our home. We bought a house with six acres of land located in a beautiful canyon surrounded by pixie farms and with the Ventura River running through it. I can’t tell you exactly why we ended up in this place, Ojai hadn’t even been on our list of places to consider, but that is just the beauty of the Ojai Valley: Its mystic energy draws you in without you even realizing it!

Since moving to Ojai, I have returned to my writing work and I am freelancing as a journalist and copywriter for publications and brands in the food and drinks, hospitality, lifestyle and wellness sectors. I’ve launched an Airbnb guesthouse and am offering catered meals and a class on how to cook with fresh herbs.

What’s more I have met some truly wonderful people here in Ojai, whose lives and work have really inspired me. And so I started this blog to tell their stories and showcase my writing. I hope you enjoy this website and thank you for reading.