Kendra Bailey Morris
The Accidental Chef

Bio

Author photo Todd Wright

Kendra's culinary background is extensive. As a chef instructor, Kendra has created and taught over 350 cooking classes and performed public cooking demonstrations for client's including Sur La Table cooking schools, Williams-Sonoma, Country Music Television, The Learning Channel, WTVR Channel 6 News, Southern Women Shows, Philip Morris, U.S.A., Capital One, Dominion Resources, Virginia Housing Development Authority, and The Virginia Farm Bureau.

Additionally, Kendra is the former director of a hands-on cooking school which employed over 20 regional chefs and culinary personalities. She received her professional culinary training from Peter Kump's Culinary School in New York City and has participated in the Symposium for Professional Food Writers. Kendra also maintains a solid foundation in food and wine pairing, and is a member of the Association of Food Journalists, the Virginia Food and Wine Society and the Egullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters.

As a food writer, Kendra served as a restaurant critic for Style Weekly magazine and has created a cookbook with Hamilton Beach Proctor-Silex. Recent articles include, Preserving Our Past: One jar at a time, Beans and Cornbread: Feeding souls a mile deep and Fish Tales of the Other While Meat for National Public Radio where she also has appeared as a guest expert for several companion radio podcasts. Kendra is the author of White Trash Gatherings: From-Scratch Cooking for Down-Home Entertaining (Ten Speed Press, October 2006) which has since entered a second printing. Kendra is highly experienced with recipe development, recipe testing, food styling and photography. Currently, Kendra has a weekly food and recipe column, The Accidental Chef, which appears every Sunday in the Flair section of The Richmond Time Dispatch.

Kendra holds a master's degree in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University with supplementary graduate work at Trinity College, Oxford, U.K. She is a former instructor of writing at Virginia Commonwealth University where she taught composition and research writing for 8 years.

In regards to media experience, Kendra currently appears on The Learning Channel's weekly food and home show, Home Made Simple as a guest chef and culinary expert. She has also participated in a 30-plus city international radio tour, and performed televised cooking demonstrations for several clients including Country Music Television. Kendra has also executed culinary demonstrations for numerous large groups and organizations. Her cookbook has gained considerable press from The Boston Herald, The Napa Valley Register, Santa Cruz Sentinel, Northwest Indiana Times, and the Sarasota Herald Tribune, to name a few.