As a child, Jody Eddy spent a lot of time with her grandparents. She enjoyed being outdoors, especially exploring at Saint John’s Abbey or at their cabin on Mille Lacs Lake, fishing, helping her grandpa in the garden and cooking with her grandma. Those early experiences — canning vegetables, preparing fresh fish and exploring new flavors — would eventually inspire her career as a chef and cookbook author.
Today, Eddy is the author of nine cookbooks, including “Elysian Kitchens: Recipes Inspired by the Traditions and Tastes of the World’s Sacred Spaces” and “Eat Like a Monk: A Plant-Based Guide to Conscious Cooking and Mindful Eating,” two projects that have profoundly influenced her spiritual journey, shaping the way she connects food with her faith.
“One of the main ideas behind Elysian Kitchens and one of the primary inspirations for writing it is that even when our beliefs and practices differ, so much of what matters looks remarkably similar across cultures — gathering at the table, cooking for one another, hospitality, gratitude and the steady work of community,” Eddy said. “Those were the threads I kept seeing everywhere, and they’re what I most wanted to celebrate.”
Eddy remembers her grandma as an incredible cook.
“We were always cooking and canning,” she said. “They had one of those Minnesota second freezers in the basement that was like a giant industrial freezer loaded with parchment-wrapped meat and fish.”
She describes her grandpa as a foodie — he once invited her to go on a last-minute trip to South Dakota because he had heard of something called a bison burger and wanted to try it.
Her grandma, she said, believed that his curiosity about food came from his early experiences during World War II in Japan and the Philippines.
“While his military service was challenging, the experience opened up for him a world of new ingredients, dishes and culinary adventures,” Eddy says. “The notion of, ‘will travel for food,’ that I live by, definitely started with my grandpa. He not only wanted to taste a dish’s flavor, he also loved learning about its origin, what made it taste the way it did and who were the people behind the recipe.”
Looking back, she says his love of food and willingness to dive into a new dish, taste a new ingredient and learn about cuisine that was unfamiliar to him, offered a roadmap for her career.
Growing up in St. Cloud, Eddy attended Sts. Peter and Paul School, now All Saints Academy in St. Cloud and then Tech High School. She earned a degree in English from the University of Minnesota before moving to Seattle for a job in marketing.
“That was my first job — totally unrelated to food,” she said.
But during her time in Seattle, Eddy began scuba diving, harvesting Dungeness crab, foraging for wild ingredients and salmon fishing. She credits her grandfather for sparking these food adventures and inspiring her love for fresh, local flavors.
After five years in the Pacific Northwest, Eddy was ready to follow her dream and moved to New York for culinary school. She graduated from The Institute of Culinary Education in Manhattan and cooked at Jean Georges and Tabla in New York, as well as Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck in Bray, England.
She cooked in restaurants for three years before a back injury forced Eddy to rethink her career. “I had this horrible injury, and I literally couldn’t stand,” she recalls. “So, I thought maybe I should transition out of this heavy-duty work and sit down at a desk.”
That decision led her to Art Culinaire, where she discovered her calling, traveling around the world writing about food — not just recipes, but old traditions, new trends and the people that are passionate about them.
During her time at the magazine, Eddy had the chance to write her first cookbook — a collaboration with a colleague celebrating one of their favorite traditions from restaurant life: the staff meal.
“It was our favorite thing about restaurants,” she said. “It’s the time you all sit down together — it’s the family meal and everybody gathers and eats together and it’s so nice because the dishwashers are there and the servers and the head chef and everybody’s together. That’s what we wrote our book about.”
For her recent book, “Elysian Kitchens: Recipes Inspired by the Traditions and Tastes of the World’s Sacred Spaces,” Eddy and her photographer, Kristen Teig, traveled to 11 monasteries around the world — including Saint John’s Abbey in Collegeville — over a two-year span.
“Saint John’s Abbey has always played an integral role in my life,” she said. “My grandpa and I used to walk around the lake at the start of every season to appreciate new fallen snow, the changing leaves, flowers emerging in the springtime and the forest in full bloom in the summer.”
Her mom also did stained glass as a hobby, so they would gather with other artisans to sell her creations at a fiddling contest and art sale that Saint John’s used to host each year.
“While I went to school at Sts. Peter and Paul and we attended Sunday Mass at St. Peter, for special occasions like midnight Mass or on holidays, we always went to Saint John’s because it felt so magical to be there,” she added.
Because of her deep roots at Saint John’s, it was not surprising that when the idea came about to host dinner events inspired by Elysian Kitchens, the first one was held there last fall.
“The idea for the event fit so well with the Benedictine way of being in the world. One of the things St. Benedict tells us in his Rule is that we should ‘greet all guests as if they were Christ himself,’” said Benedictine Brother Aelred Senna, a monk of Saint John’s Abbey, who is featured in Elysian Kitchens and helped plan the fall event.
“The guests are all seated at long tables, sitting with people they know and those they don’t know,” he said. “Everyone is gathered to share food, drink and each other’s stories — to get to know one another on a human level, regardless of background or beliefs.”
For the Nov. 1 event, they worked with award-winning chefs Mateo and Erin Mackbee of Krewe and Flour & Flower in St. Joseph to create a five-course harvest dinner for 140 guests crafted from peak-season ingredients and served in the Abbey’s Great Hall.
The evening was especially meaningful for Eddy, who was joined by many childhood friends. “This is what Saint John’s and its community has the power to do — bring people together to celebrate and honor lifelong relationships,” she said. “It’s a very special place for me and it always will be.”
Brother Aelred noted that Eddy’s work goes far beyond recipes.
“Jody has visited monasteries, temples, mosques and synagogues, and has connected with the people of faith that inhabit those diverse spaces,” he said. “While writing Elysian Kitchens, she not only researched the religions of the various places she was planning to visit, but she got to know the people — whether monks, nuns, imams, rabbis or what have you — who support each other in communities of faith with a goal of trying to make our world a better place.”
Eddy agrees, adding that the experience changed her perspective.
“What our monastery visits deepened for me was a broader appreciation for faith as something lived day-to-day,” she said. “Showing up, keeping a rhythm and preserving traditions, caring for others and finding meaning through service and community.”
Jody Eddy lives in Scotland and is currently working on her 10th cookbook, focusing on rewilding efforts taking place in the UK and Ireland. She has also just finished her first novel. For more information visit jodyeddy.com. For information about upcoming dinner events, visit storyfeast.co.
Pictured above: Guests gathered Nov. 1, 2025, at Saint John’s Abbey and University for the first dinner event inspired by one of Eddy’s cookbooks. (Photo by Bailey Bassen)
See our Lenten cooking videos featuring Brother Aelred.