Francine Spiering
Food and travel writer Francine Spiering loves to cook and eat and venture out and about to discover first hand where her food comes from.
As the editor of Edible Houston and board member of the Houston chapter of Slow Food, she is committed to the city's local community and actively promotes the regional gastronomy through her work.
It has taken her to amazing farms and meeting the people behind our food, including Shiner Pork & Beef where cattle roams happy and free; Blue Heron Farm where she held a baby goat for the first time; All We Need Farms where she helped milk a goat; 4E Dairy where she watched milk being piped straight from the milking parlor into the cheeseroom of Lira Rossa; Tejas Heritage Farms where she was met by loudly gobbling heritage breed turkeys and chased by hissing geese; Laughing Frog Farms where she cuddled with Gulf Coast native sheep and had the best persimmon cake to date; and Knopp Branch Farm where she and a team of Slow Food Houston regularly spend a working weekend pruning, shoveling mulch, building herb beds and eating beautifully fresh farm food at a long, convivial table.
She supports good, clean, fair food in her own kitchen and lifestyle. It's not that hard, and definitely not a sacrifice for a real food lover, she feels. Biodiversity, local and regional gastronomy, 'clean' grown and raised food are all key to good tasting and exciting food. Sourcing ingredients from a local farmer gives food a face, appreciating it even more. Francine is a member of Foodways Texas for the same reasons.
Having lived on four continents and traveled to over 40 countries, Francine is a global citizen at heart. Each country that she got to call 'home' for a couple of years had a profound impact on her appreciation for the diversity of food, culture and people.
In October 2019, after a year of interviewing with chefs and testing recipes and writing the manuscript, she launched Houston Cooks. Published by Canadian publisher Figure1 in their award-winning City Cooks series, Houston Cooks celebrates the city's vibrant dining scene by featuring the stories and recipes of some of the city's favorite chefs.
