Diana Rattray

Diana Rattray is an avid home cook and food lover with a passion for culinary history and Southern and regional cooking.

Contact Diana:  southernfood@dianaskitchen.com

Highlights

• 20+ years experience writing about food
• Published more than 5,000 recipes and articles
• Author of "Guide to Southern Cooking" and "The Everything Southern Cookbook"
• Member of Southern Foodways Alliance

Experience

Diana has had a lifelong love affair with cooking. She was introduced to the culinary arts by her grandfather, a baker and chef who cooked for farms, restaurants, and resorts. Her interest in Southern food began more than 20 years ago when she moved to Mississippi. Diana has been developing new recipes and writing about food since 1996. She has been a contributor for About.com and Dotdash, focusing on Southern cuisine since 1997, and many of her recipes and articles have been featured in online and print publications, including national publications such as Reader's Digest and Epicurious, in addition to local newspapers like the Memphis Commercial Appeal, Atlanta Journal Constitution, Deseret News, The Erie Times-News, Columbia Star, Press (Newport News ), Times Free Press (Chattanooga), and many more.

Diana's knowledge of food comes from her vast array of cookbooks and food references. Additionally, she is an avid baker and enjoys creating rustic artisan breads. Other culinary interests range from home preserving to making fresh pasta.

Education

She has attended cooking classes at the Viking Cooking School in Greenwood, MS, and has taken online courses on photography. She has also completed a few college writing courses.

Publications

Diana's cookbook, "Guide to Southern Cooking," was published in 2006, followed by "The Everything Southern Cookbook" in 2015.​

About The Spruce

The Spruce, a Dotdash brand, is a new kind of home website offering practical, real-life tips and inspiration to help you create your best home. The Spruce family of brands, including The Spruce, The Spruce Eats, The Spruce Pets, and The Spruce Crafts collectively reach 30 million people each month.

For more than 20 years, Dotdash brands have been helping people find answers, solve problems, and get inspired. We are one of the top-20 largest content publishers on the Internet according to comScore, a leading Internet measurement company, and reach more than 30% of the U.S. population every month. Our brands collectively have won more than 20 industry awards in the last year alone and, most recently, Dotdash was named Publisher of the Year by Digiday, a leading industry publication.