November 5, 2008

Rick McDaniel is a food historian, chef and writer who specializes in Southern food.

A working journalist for more than 30 years, he is a Senior Contributing Writer for the Asheville Citizen-Times and writes for several regional magazines. He also wrote a weekly syndicated column on Southern cooking for eight years.

McDaniel learned his love of Southern food from “four generations of “small women who were giants in the kitchen.” Coconut cakes made from scratch, church picnics and abundant Sunday dinners flavored his upbringing in a small town in North Carolina during the 1960s.

A member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, he is dedicated to preserving the region’s culinary heritage by collecting and preserving traditional recipes from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and teaching classes on classical southern foods and their preparation.  His Web site, chefrick.com, has been featured in The New York Times and voted one of the best Internet resources for American Cookery by the University of Oregon, the New York City Public Library System and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.

McDaniel lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and son.