#MediaMonday – Taryn Jeffries
This morning’s #MediaMonday profile is making us hungry – as it should!
Today, we are happy to profile Taryn Jeffries of Phoenix Bites.
For those of you new to the column, each Monday, we are posting a blog to help our readers get to know the media just a little bit better. (For a full list of profilees, please click here.)
No, we aren’t posting story pitch tips or media lists, but instead great stories from the media themselves about their lives, their work and other little known facts! Think of it as your first “networking” opportunity of the week!
So, Taryn, time to share!
What do you want to tell the blogosphere about yourself today?
I have always seen myself as a pretty simple girl. I don’t have extravagant tastes or require weekly spa visits or $1,000 shoes. I try to find the silver lining in just about everything, believing that there is a greater amount of good in all around me than bad and try to live by the “it could always be worse” adage.
Thanks to my fantastic friend Amy Martin and the Social Media world, the last 12 months of my life have been nothing but silver linings. I am living the proverbial dream with PhoenixBites.com. We write about the thing that brings everyone joy – food. The majority of our greatest life events at some point include food. What did you eat on your first date with your partner? What was the one thing your mother always made you when you were young that made you feel loved? The flavor of your wedding cake? When a certain food can conjure up a memory that warms your heart or gives you goose bumps you know it was something to talk about.
The best part of my job is getting to meet local chefs that I truly admire. I love to find out where their passion comes from and to see their eyes light up at a question I present to them. I am, by no means, a chef or a culinary powerhouse – but I do feel that I have gained a great amount of confidence and wisdom sometimes by being in these great artists’ presence.
I do not claim to be a ‘journalist,’ I am an accountant at heart, but I have opinions and a desire to share them with people in the hopes that it gets someone interested in expanding their dining experiences, trying something new or getting out to a place they had never heard of before.
When I am not out and about interviewing chefs or trying new menu items, I spend my time with my hysterically funny husband and two terribly colorful little boys. We cook together and eat together every night that we are all together. It doesn’t get better than this!
Five random things about me:
1. I was born and grew up on farm in a town of about 3,000 people.
2. I didn’t have my first taste of pork or shellfish until the age of 29.
3. I made up my current first name based on my original first and middle name (legally changed).
4. My musical hero is Elton John.
5. Birds freak me out.
