Southern cuisine aficionado and creator of Southernplate.com, Christy Jordan, will speak at Athens State at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 17 in McCandless Hall. The event is offered free to the public and no reservations are required.

“We relate our experiences to what was served, what was prepared,” says Jordan. “Celebrations center around dishes steeped in tradition and memories of Great Granny preparing her special rolls or pie.”

Jordan spent her childhood hearing stories from her great-grandmother about a lifetime of sharecropping and her childhood filled with memories of wonderful food. These stories, born from the tradition of great Southern cooks, have been firmly embedded in the family root system generations earlier when they were among the first to settle the Tennessee Valley.

Now, the busy mom and wife, with the home economics degree, works from home with a laptop on the kitchen counter and her iPhone to her ear as she tries to build a business, which originally began purely as a hobby.

“My days are spent responding to hundreds of e-mails,” said Jordan. “I take photographs of food, write columns for newspapers and magazines, manage a Web site, film cooking segments for television spots, and try to wrangle in time to talk on the phone to food industry execs.”

Jordan’s Web site, SouthernPlate.com, is a rapidly growing site. During the first year alone SouthernPlate.com generated over 18 million page views. The site now averages over 6 million page views per month and has just begun its second year. Jordan also recently sealed a deal with Harper Collins for a book that is half stories and half recipes. The book should be out next year.

For more information about the event, or about the Livingston Concert Lecture Series at Athens State University, call (256) 233-8126.