In the summer of 2009, with a baby girl and another child on the way, Shannon & Jon realized that, before we had children, we loved to cook delicious meals, go to great restaurants, and to frequent farmer’s markets.
Now that we have children, we still love to do all of those things, but now we use different criteria to decide what meals are delicious, what restaurants are great, and when to go to the farmer’s market!
We knew it would be much more effective to find the recipes, restaurants, and markets by working together and decided to start sharing ideas in a project that has become tastebudding.com. The simple goal of tastebudding.com is to make eating with our kids easier and more fun. In short, we want to create a resource that views the world of food through the eyes of a parent.
We recruited some of our closest friends to serve as sounding board, support, and key contributors. They are the Founding Members of tastebudding and we are overwhelmingly grateful to them…
Shannon & Jon
Shannon and Jon grew up in Georgia and North Carolina but currently live in Philadelphia, PA where Jon is in health care and Shannon works in executive search. Both love food – Jon has worked in a few restaurants and Shannon, well, Shannon just loves food.
We have a daughter, Maddie, and a new son, Alex (photo coming soon). Maddie is two, and is an increasingly adventurous eater. Her first food love was pesto, (what infant doesn’t love raw garlic??) Unfortunately for us, she seems to like anything expensive – prosciutto, fresh dates, berries, pesto. Unfortunately for her, we once sent mac-n-cheese to school with her for 6 months. She needs this site more than we do so she can have some new ideas for lunch!
Sondra & Ryan
I am from Asheville, NC and currently reside here with my husband and two kids, Gracyn and Griffin - 5 and 3, respectively. I went to Appalachian State and majored in Interior design. After having my daughter, I decided to focus on raising her. I just sent her to preschool for the first time about a little while ago, so I have been consumed with mommy-hood for the past five years (I really can't believe that it is already 5 years...it has been crazy fast!). In addition to being a full time mommy, I am also a photographer. I started my business unofficially in February 2008. It is part time and I hope that as my kids get a little older, I will be able to dedicate more time to building that. Check out my website at www.syhphotography.com.
Katie & Andy
I'm originally from Marietta, GA, and I graduated from Auburn University where I met my husband, Andy. I moved to NYC after school to do my graduate studies in Arts Administration. I worked for a few years at various galleries and art-related non-profits and then got a job as an art consultant with artnet.com. Andy and I moved to Richmond, VA 5 years ago and love it. We have lots of family near by, which has been a huge help since our daughter, Lucy James, was born. I work from home and I also own a small retail shop in town. openhouse is a home accessories shop that helps promote emerging and established indie product designers. Everything we carry is handmade and mostly environmentally conscious. www.openhouse-richmond.com is my online site and I also write a blog.
Andy and I are both HUGE live music fans. So we spend a lot of time traveling around to see shows. I love design, art and college football. I'm a lifelong Celtics fan. And I love cooking fresh, local, organic food. We eat as little processed food as possible in our house. With Lucy James getting into more foods I'm excited to get this site up. I have no time for extra meal prep, so my big focus wants to be on recipes for Mom and Dad that can translate in some way to the kid's dinner.
Laura & Brent
Brent and I have a 2 year old son named Colin. We moved here to Philly last year from San Francisco. Originally, I am from Texas and graduated from The University of Texas at Austin with a Bachelors of Science in Nursing. I went into nursing because I loved the health promotion aspect of it, but ended up working in the newborn intensive care unit for 9 years. The year before we had Colin, I worked in an outpatient surgery center. For 18 months after we had Colin, I was a stay-at-home mom, but recently started working in the Executive MBA Program office at Wharton as an admissions associate. I love Pilates, and riding my new cruiser bike with Colin on the back. I don't like running, but I'm trying to (years of high school swim coach punishing us with running have scarred me!) and I do like running 5K races.
I am very excited about tastebudding because Colin is going through an anti-veggie, anti-meat, anti-anything-nutritious phase. I am also interested in getting back to my love of health promotion.
