About us
Leslie was promoted in 2014 to Executive Chef at the University of Illinois at Chicago, overseeing the activities of more than 50 cooks at 3 campus locations, while managing student feeding, catering and retail restaurant food sales. She returned eventually to DePaul as acting Executive Chef, and also consulted at Miami University, Dominican University and Perdue Cal.
Leslie’s Lunchbox was founded in 2016 and focused on high end business lunches. She began writing Sexy Food in 2017 and it was completed in 2019. An important discovery came along with that…her love of food photography. She became a food photographer for restaurants in Chicago.
After enjoying visits to over 160 restaurants to photograph their dishes, it ended with the pandemic in 2020 and Leslie began writing and photographing “The Egg Book”, a project she had been turning over in her mind for a while.
I was delighted when I discovered I was a good food photographer. People love to look at food. I asked people when I was doing my first cookbook, “Do you ever make the recipes in a cookbook that don’t have a picture?” The answer 100% of the time was “No.”
I didn’t see the point of doing a cookbook if people didn’t feel inspired to dive in and make the dishes. To that end, my cookbooks are picture books as much as anything else.
In a past life, I was a singer, songwriter, and I had an original song I offered on Kickstarter. That’s the CD that will be free on all book orders. Hope you enjoy it!