About the authors

My name is Daktari.  My great passions in life are plants, teaching, and food.  You might say that cooking is my mid-life crisis.  I only discovered the joy of cooking in middle age.  I grew up in the foothills of the Appalachians where there wasn't much ethnic or culinary diversity.  I had my first Mexican meal in college.  When I moved to Chicago as a young adult, I was blown away by the different types of food I had available to me.  Now that I live far from a major urban area, I must create these tastes for myself.  So on any given weekend, you can find me drooling over moussaka, various salsas, Thai food, anything containing coconut and curry, and bread.  I love bread.  I love everything about bread.  When I die, if there's a heaven, it smells like baking bread and the texture is that of yeast rolls.