How I got here

I was born and raised in Thessaloniki, in the north of Greece — a port city most people outside Greece have never heard of, but that anyone who’s visited never stops talking about. It’s widely considered the food capital of the country, and growing up there meant farmers markets, open-air spice stalls, and neighborhood bakeries weren’t a lifestyle choice. They were just Tuesday.

My mother, Despina, never used a measuring cup in her life and somehow produced the most perfectly balanced dishes you’ve ever tasted. My father’s side of the family is Neapolitan, so every summer we crossed the Adriatic to Naples, where my grandmother, Nonna Rosa, introduced me to a whole other branch of the same beautiful tree. Two grandmothers, two kitchens, one philosophy: real food, made with love, shared with everyone.

That upbringing is what led me to study nutrition. I wanted to understand the science behind why the food I grew up on — olive oil, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, fish, a little of everything and not too much of anything — made people feel so good. My degree gave me the language for what my grandmothers already knew by instinct.

My background

• Degree in Nutrition Science — the academic half of a lifetime spent cooking
• A lifetime of Mediterranean home cooking, learned across two family kitchens — one Greek, one Neapolitan
• Every recipe on this site tested in my own home kitchen, on weeknights, with two kids underfoot

What “Mediterranean” means on this site

Not olive-oil-drizzled quinoa bowls dressed up with a Greek accent. On The Meal Medley, “Mediterranean” means the actual home cooking of the region — Greek, Italian, and their neighbors — adapted for a real kitchen on a real weeknight, not a photo shoot.

• Real ingredients, ordinary shops. If a recipe calls for something you can’t find at a normal grocery store, I’ll tell you what to use instead.
• Tradition first, then adapted. I start from how my grandmothers actually made a dish, then adjust only what a modern kitchen and a modern schedule genuinely require.
• Nutrition as a fact, not a sales pitch. No dish here is dressed up as a miracle cure — just food that happens to be good for you because that’s how it was always made.
• Weeknight-honest timing. If a recipe takes an hour, I say an hour. I keep our family recipes free of pork and alcohol, since that’s how we cook at home — and I’ll always tell you if a dish traditionally includes either.

How I test recipes

Every recipe on The Meal Medley is cooked in my own kitchen — usually several times — before it goes live. I’ve written out the full process, including what I do when a recipe fails.

Read my recipe testing process

Beyond the kitchen

When I’m not testing recipes, I’m usually at the elementary school where I teach, or negotiating with my two-year-old, William, about which vegetables are allowed on his plate. My daughter Eleni already has strong opinions about which olives belong on a mezze board — she’s right more often than I’d like to admit. My husband Daniel and I moved from Athens to Austin, Texas in 2018, and we’re still figuring out where to find good feta in this city.

Questions People Ask Me

Cook With Me on Sundays

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