Do you like to reverse engineer your entire meal based on dessert? Excellent. I think we’re going to be best friends.

I’m a native Torontonian (Yes! We do exist.) who’s an avid reader, runner, baker, yogi and lifter. I’m also one of the online book merchandisers at chapters.indigo.ca.

Literary influences: Metropolitan Life, The Tummy Trilogy, How to Cook Without a Book, Nobody’s Fool, The Man Who Ate Everything, On Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

Favourites things: peanut butter, caraway rye toast slathered with butter and ginger marmalade, fashion misfits, contrarians, the elusive perfect brownie (which you can find in THIS book or THIS one), Rocky 1-4, Tampopo, anything by John Lee Hooker, my ivory Kitchen-Aid mixer.

Little-known fact: As a 6-year-old, I had a severe stutter and was given books to read aloud as homework. While the speech impediment eventually disappeared, my deep love of storytelling and the power of words remains.