About Us

We love food. We love it so much we constantly found ourselves talking to each other about it, and writing to each other about it. So it only made sense that we’d come together on the web to write and talk about food in a slightly more official and organized capacity. Here’s who “we” are:

JEFF AKIN
Publisher, Contributor (a.k.a. Chief Creep)

Jeff likes food, finding the calories to be a useful source of energy and the act of consumption an often-pleasant experience. Kansas City born and bred, Jeff graduated from the University of Kansas twice (the state has decreed him to be a Master of Science) and flunked out of culinary school once.

He worked as a chef, line cook, and prep bitch in some pretty swank places — with knife wounds and a mighty mean addiction problem to prove it — before realizing that his real passion is middle management. Today he’s living that dream in Ye Olde Leawoode with wife Emily (a different Emily) and dog Huxley (yes, that Huxley).

Jeff’s favorite thing to eat in the whole wide world is a peanut butter (chunky) and jelly (strawberry preserves) sandwich (whole-wheat bread, crust removed) studded with Ruffles potato chips (for they have ridges) and served with a pint glass of cold skim milk.

EMILY FARRIS
Editor-in-Chief, Contributor (a.k.a. Goddess of Gluttony)

Emily has been writing about food just about as long as she’s been eating it.  She’s contributed to Gourmet.com, FoodandWine.com, CountryLiving.com, Urban Farm Magazine, ELLEDECOR.com, BUST, Nerve.com, Women’s Wear Daily, CNN.com, My Midwest, The Kansas City Star, The Pitch, The Daily Beast, The Huffington Post, Slashfood.com, Edible Brooklyn and many publications and websites you’ve probably never heard of. Her first cookbook, “Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven,” was published by Penguin in 2008 and her essay on finding affordable health care appeared in “The Bust DIY Guide to Life.”

Emily is a regular panelist on the Food Critics edition of Central Standard Friday on KCUR.

 In 2009, Emily returned to her hometown of Kansas City after nine years in Brooklyn, NY. She and her husband Kyle (yes, the Kyle listed below) recently bought a house in a neighborhood they like to call “East Brookside,” with their dog, Jack, and her cat, Eve. They plan to farm their extra lot (chickens and all) and write all about it on feedmekc.com. When she’s not eating or writing about food, she’s trying to counteract her hoarding genes (it’s on both sides of the family) by selling her vintage housewares on Etsy.

KYLE HOPKINS
Contributor (a.k.a. The Meat Man)

Kyle has worked in many kitchens, some professional and some quite unprofessional.

He generally steers towards meat-centric items and sweets when he is experimenting in the kitchen (or ordering in a restaurant), but he is willing to cook most anything when the challenge presents itself. To give you an idea of the kind of cooking Kyle enjoys, you should know that for Thanksgiving he cooked a 16-pound turkey inside a homemade grill — made out of a store-bought hibachi, 20 yards of tin foil, and a large bird cage he bought from a street vendor — when he lived in Seoul, Korea.

Kyle currently teaches high school English in Kansas City and spends his free time folfing, golfing, seeing live music, cooking for Emily (yes, the Emily listed above, not to be confused with Jeff’s wife Emily, though he’s cooked for her a few times, too), eating, and making himself available to receive free promotional items from kitchen supply companies, big-green egg makers, breweries, charcuterists, chocolate makers and the like.

Photos by Jennifer Wetzel.