Michelle McKenzie

Michelle McKenzie is the program director and chef at 18 Reasons, a nonprofit community cooking school in San Francisco’s Mission District. She teaches cooking classes, curates the course calendar, and prepares the food for wine dinners and special events. She has a knack for making simple food seem special—at once healthy and hedonistic, elegant and effortless—and is full of amazing tips for making every meal both memorable and attainable.

Michelle graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in nutrition and a minor in biochemistry, giving her a deep under- standing of food properties and their complex implications within the human body. She later graduated from The Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts, where she immersed herself in health-supportive cuisine prepared from whole, organic, and seasonal foods. Michelle has worked at some of the best restaurants in the country, has been featured on the Cooking Channel, and has been a contributor to publications such as Sunset Magazine.

Michelle's second cookbook, THE MODERN LARDER, is due to arrive in Spring 2019 and will introduce home cooks to a raft of new, flavor-packed pantry staples -- e.g. shiso, ndjua, Job's Tears, and dozens of others -- and incorporate them into over 200 wholesome recipes.

To find out more, visit michellemckenzie.com.