Here Until I’m Not: A Memoir of a Culinary Life Journey

If we were sitting across from each other, this is what I’d share with you.

This isn’t a book about becoming a chef.

It’s about the moments that stay with us long after we’ve lived them.

At fifteen, I walked into a professional kitchen in New York City believing I had found a job. What began as an after-school shift became a lifetime of experiences worth writing about.

Here Until I’m Not follows my journey from entering a professional kitchen in New York City to building a life in Southern California. Spanning more than three decades, the memoir explores resilience, relationships, mistakes, second chances, and the reality that life is rarely only one thing at a time.

Some chapters aren’t meant to be solved.
They’re meant to be lived through.
This isn’t about having it all figured out.
It’s about telling the truth.

Our lives may be very different.

If somewhere in these pages you find a piece of your own story, then every mile of the journey was worth sharing.