Hi there, I’m Casey Morgan, a 42-year-old home chef living in Asheville, North Carolina. I wasn’t raised in a restaurant kitchen or trained in a fancy culinary school. I grew up in a small town in Indiana, where potlucks were sacred and recipes were often scrawled on the back of church bulletins. My earliest memories of food are of my grandmother kneading dough on the old kitchen counter and my dad slow-cooking ribs in the backyard with a radio playing baseball games in the background.

For a long time, cooking was just something I did when friends came over or when I had a craving that nothing store-bought could satisfy. But over the years, something shifted. I began to find joy not just in eating but in the whole process—planning meals, sourcing ingredients, experimenting with flavors, even cleaning up. (Okay, maybe not so much cleaning up, but you get the idea.)

My kitchen is my happy place. It’s where I unwind, where I celebrate, where I fail and try again. I’ve had my fair share of culinary flops—like the time I tried to make homemade pasta and ended up with a doughy disaster that looked like it had been through a paper shredder. But every misstep taught me something new. And that’s the heart of my cooking philosophy: learn by doing, don’t be afraid to mess up, and always taste as you go.

I’m passionate about making food approachable for everyone. You don’t need a sous vide machine or a blowtorch to make a great meal. You just need a willingness to try and a bit of curiosity. I love sharing recipes that are forgiving and adaptable—the kind that welcome substitutions and don’t demand perfection.

These days, I share my kitchen adventures online and with neighbors, always hoping to inspire someone else to pick up a spatula and start their own journey. Cooking, to me, is an act of love and creativity. It’s a way of connecting with people, of telling stories without words.

So if you’re a fellow home cook looking for a bit of inspiration, know this: if I can do it, so can you. Let’s keep our ovens warm, our minds open, and our meals made with heart.