I was born and raised as Rhonda Gail Hanks in Vicksburg, Miss.  My mother was the daughter of Vicksburg cotton farmers; my father, the son of German immigrant chefs and bakery owners.  

My great-grandparents, Michael Schlosser and Anna Koestler Schlosser flank my grandmother, Marguerite Schlosser Hanks and my uncle, Dr. Frank Schlosser

My great-grandparents Maggie Sue Whitehouse Bliss and Willie Bliss are holding my mother’s cousin Carla (left) and me (right). Maggie and Willie raised 13 children. Their youngest was born about the time my mother was born.

Each side of my family brought visionary cooking traditions to the table.  Both of my grandmothers took me under their culinary wings from a young age. They were each phenomenal cooks.

I baked my first recipe at the age of eight, the same year I began keeping a journal. By the age of twelve, I was writing my own recipes and nearly ruining my mother’s nerves with the messes I made in the kitchen.

At twenty-one, while attending the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), I began cooking and serving at Chesterfield’s restaurant in Hattiesburg, Miss. After having received an offer, I moved west and took a job at McArthur Park restaurant in Palo Alto, Cal.  After three years there, I returned to Hattiesburg and finished a B. A. in English and Journalism with a minor in Marketing and Education at USM. 

During the latter part of my college education, I wrote freelance for local and on-campus newspapers. After graduation, I married David Brasseal from Columbia, Miss., and began work as an English teacher and grant writer.  

After my daughter, Anna, was born, I switched to working at home.

In 2005 I began writing “Ten Pots” food column for the Columbian-Progress. Soon after, two other newspapers – the McComb Enterprise-Journal and the Hattiesburg American picked up the column. In 2006, I completed my first cookbook, “Ten Pots.” The cookbook contains excerpts from my columns and all of the recipes my family and I hold dear through five generations.

Today I continue to write the “Ten Pots” food column, teach cooking classes, and to work on a new cookbook to be released near Mother’s Day, 2008.  I am completed in taking care of my wonderful husband, David, and my beautiful daughter, Anna.