About The Author

 

I’m Jessica Pendergrass…

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Welcome to Urban Sacred Garden! This little blogging project started in February 2011 out of my love for great food, gardening, travel, and spiritual pursuits. You can read more about my cooking and gardening class offerings on my personal website, and about my love and vision for food and gardening here. In addition to this blog, over the years I have written for local publications, taught cooking classes, developed and tested recipes for cookbooks, volunteered as a certified Master Gardener, and worked to implement urban gardens and food resources in my community. My recipes and writing have most recently been published in Southern Living, Kentucky Monthly, Edible Louisville, and Southern Cooking for Company.

By day, I work as general counsel for a bourbon and distilled spirits company in Kentucky. But after hours, you can find me wandering the streets on my latest travel adventure, in my kitchen cooking up a tasty meal for friends, or out in my yard prepping for the upcoming gardening season.

While I’ve finally settled in Kentucky, my original home state, I also spent many years in Portland, Oregon and Raleigh, North Carolina. I have a strong sense of wanderlust and love experiencing other cultures. I’ve traveled to 40 countries in 40 years, and have covered all continents except Antarctica (but it is on the list!).

 
 

I look for the best of culinary experiences wherever I go and have a great love for local foods, and am fed by culture and travel as much as I am food.

I am so lucky and blessed by wonderful people and the heavenly kismet of circumstances, and have friends in many places. When days aren’t as cheery, they’re the people who lift me up and keep me going. They’re my best partners in adventure and my guides through this life. I’ve also been told I’m a sheep dog, as I love herding up my friends into groups of all sorts. (And I occasionally dog sit one of my mom’s furry herding dogs to help me.) These are also some sweet and wild kitties in the house and some fluffy guinea pigs.

I host writing groups, book groups, dinner parties, game nights, and other creative circles in my home. I connect over long distances with friends through video but if you’re a lucky local part of my community you’re guaranteed a tasty home cooked meal and a bottle of wine (and maybe a tarot reading).

Her majesty, The Queen
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I created the Southern Food Bloggers Community with my online food friends years ago, and am crafting some plans to create broader networking opportunities for this amazing group of writers. I am always seeking out ways to build community.

I try to approach life with spiritual purpose and believe I’ve traveled through many lifetimes with the people who are in my life now. Sometimes you meet another soul for the first time in this life and they are already known to you. We’re all coming back around, helping each other out, and fulfilling our karmic contracts. It’s a big, beautiful world out there and I’m doing my best to live it to the fullest!

With the sheep on Dingle Peninsula in Ireland.

With the sheep on Dingle Peninsula in Ireland.