Jaired Messing created the cover art for I’m Not Drunk, I’m Cooking by Mary Ann Kaylor-Griffiths

As an accomplished music publicist, Mary Ann Kaylor-Griffiths has no doubt witnessed plenty of nuttiness (a flavorful fact reinforced when applied to her well-known client Sister Hazel—the group refers to its fans as “Hazelnuts”). But she’s also found herself wanting to stir her creative talents, simmering just beneath the surface, into a slightly different mixture. I’m Not Drunk, I’m Cooking rises to the challenge and breaks the mold.

“I am a very busy girl. The book took me about three years to physically write,” the author writes in the book’s intro (invitingly headlined “Welcome to the Party!”). “I started writing it just for me. Then family and friends asked for recipes so I made a few extra copies for them. Then too much wine one night and watching cooking shows led to me deciding to post on social media that I was putting out a cookbook. The response when I woke up the next day was so overwhelming. I could not delete it. And here we are.”

With a pinch of excitement, a dash of hard work and a dollop of cooperation she shares just how meaningful her publishing experience has come to be.

“Cooking is therapeutic for me,” she shares. “It is a way to escape my thoughts and anxiety. Feeding others is my love language. At one point in my life, I was an extreme couponer and would donate all the food to the Little Pantry That Could in Nashville. My cooking is absolutely tied to music, because if I am in the kitchen, music is playing. Every time I make lasagna I turn up ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’ by Thin Lizzy. I tell you more about that story in my book.”

Football happens to be another commonly thrown-around therapy for many. Luckily, I’m Not Drunk, I’m Cooking includes a lot of party appetizer recipes for football season (“Go Blue Raiders!,” Kaylor-Griffiths interjects) like Buffalo Chicken Dip and Reuben Dip. There are also fall comfort foods like White Chicken Chili, Chicken and Biscuit Dumplings, and Sausage and Farro Soup. Kaylor-Griffiths swears by the Slow Cooker Mulled Wine, too.

She decided to serve up the collection on Cookbook Launch Day, an annual holiday observed on Oct. 12 (October is also National Cooking Month).

I’m Not Drunk, I’m Cooking is one book which is okay to judge by its cover; its illustrator, Jaired Messing, has designed album covers for Kaylor-Griffiths’ husband, Chris, and has worked on music videos and published comic books.

“When it came time to create the cover, I did not want anyone else to do it,” Kaylor-Griffiths said. “I am making my dad Randy’s famous pickles in the photo. He passed away suddenly a couple of years ago and I wanted to show something to honor him. The kitty in the background (also named Pickles) was added at the end. Jaired was finishing up the art and I felt something was missing. I have three kitties and of course they are always in and around the kitchen begging for a taste of what I am making. Pickles is actually a rescue from Rutherford County PAWS. Fun fact: the runner-up names for the book were My Cats Love These Recipes and Things I’ve Eaten Off My Apron.”

One would expect nothing less from a recipient of MTSU’s Outstanding Graduate Student Award.

“It was such an honor to be nominated and win that,” Kaylor-Griffiths said. “Just like with the cookbook, it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. I am lucky to have some amazing professors. I have been a student at MTSU for over eight years from my bachelor’s degree to now my master’s degree. There are many times I wanted to give up, but winning the award helped me remember I can do this! I love learning. I do not know what I want to be when I grow up. I am a professional college student at this point. There is just so much I do not know about the world and MTSU provides a home for me to learn these things. So, I will keep taking classes until they tell me I can’t anymore.

“When I started this [book] journey, I promised myself I would see it through to the end. As long as Amazon keeps printing, I will keep signing and delivering if I need to. It was a tough process being a self-publisher. I found editing and printing is really expensive. There were a lot of tears and test copies before I finally landed on Amazon . . . I hope people are so excited to get the book because they want to share in the memories. I feel like everyone has been on this journey with me via social media,” she passionately tells the Pulse. “I have posted updates and photos and shared a few recipes on my blog, Grubs and Grooves. I know a lot of people grew up with these recipes just like me. When I was researching what to include there was a lot of, ‘wow, I forgot about that recipe.’ I think people are excited to cook something they grew up with and maybe forgot about until now.”

When approaching the search for proper publishing, Kaylor-Griffiths begrudgingly began to wonder if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. But she powered through and now the proof is in the pudding. For that, we can all be thankful. What may have started as a half-baked premise is now fully thawed out—the book brought back many memories for Kaylor-Griffiths, as well as tears and laughter.

“My grandmother Ruth passed away while I was working on it and a lot of the recipes came from her. So that was pretty emotional. But I shared as much as I could remember about where each recipe came from and if I could not remember I told a random story,” the author said. “My little sister Cindy had a lot of input on the book, wrote the forward, and really pushed and inspired me to get it finished. We lived together in college and our culinary journey began at the same time. I am positive she has tried all the recipes and also references the book when cooking, just like me. I reference it several times a week and am still making edits to recipes I thought were perfected. That is what I want readers to do as well. Just use the book as a guideline and create from there. To me, food evokes a memory. I want this book to read more like a book of short stories. All the recipes have a meaning or story behind them. Some are sentimental and some are a hot mess.”

Kaylor-Griffiths also kept going because, as she tells the Pulse, “I got so annoyed of looking in a million places for this recipe or that recipe. I had gallon Ziploc bags full of recipes . . . it was really tough to edit down the recipes. It was actually over 200 pages and I had to scale back. It took several years because, one, I procrastinated, and two, it takes a long time to cook 200 recipes multiple times. Being quarantined last year helped because we stayed home and cooked a ton. I actually took the summer off from MTSU classes to finish it. As I got older and was able to afford better knives, pots and overall better culinary experiences my passion grew. I would eat something and think ‘Oh my God, I have to make this for my nephews or sisters.’ Like all things, cooking comes with practice. I still burn stuff, cut my hands and drop stuff on the floor. But I wanted to share those experiences. I have made roasted Brussels sprouts so many times and nailed it. When it came time to make it for the book photo I overcooked them, burned the honey and had to pick them apart to get a good picture. Then they went in the trash. I shared that story in the book, because failure is a part of the process.”

Stirring in so much heart and sprinkling memories into the recipes makes the book almost read like a scrapbook. Back to the aforementioned hot messes, one of her favorite Ruth anecdotes is included.

“She would say, ‘If you don’t like it, you can spit it out in my hand.’ When we were growing up, she wanted us to try new foods, but I do not recall ever actually spitting [anything] out. I say the same thing to my nephews now. I recently made the Chicken and Biscuit Dumpling recipe, but instead of chicken I used Lion’s Mane mushrooms from Henosis Mushrooms. My nephews supposedly do not like mushrooms, but neither one of them could tell a difference. I try to teach them about different cuisines and where they came from. We recently took them to The Clay Pit, my favorite Indian place in Murfreesboro, and they really enjoyed it.”

That said (and any way you slice it), Kaylor-Griffiths will likely never sour on learning, nor cooking. And it would be nuts not to try some of her recipes! She adds, with a smile, that she is actually pondering a second book.

Find I’m Not Drunk, I’m Cooking on Amazon, or contact Mary Ann Kaylor-Griffiths for autographed or hand-delivered ordering options.