
About Us
Welcome!
Laurey was the youngest daughter of Elsie and John Masterton who founded Blueberry Hill Inn, in Goshen, Vermont and who authored The Blueberry Hill Cookbooks.
After an interesting stint in New York, where she worked as a lighting designer off and on Broadway, Laurey visited Asheville for the first time in 1984 to take a course with the North Carolina Outward Bound School. In 1987 she moved to Asheville to work with that school and also started cooking in her tiny walk-up apartment.
Laurey started cooking on Biltmore Avenue in 1990, first alone and now with a regular bevy of cooks, shopsters, office mavens and delivery folks. This staff of “talented and interesting individuals” makes wonderful food, with a whole lot of fresh, local products and keeps life interesting with music, dancing, art, sport, and hilarity around the place.
Laurey was a practicing beekeeper, a hobby glassblower, and a long distance bike rider. She believed in the power of service to others and in being an active member of her community. Her passion was enlisting a Chef to work with each of the 30 elementary schools in the Asheville area as a part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move, a project to eliminate childhood obesity by 2015. Laurey served on the board of the national organization, Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, and was a national spokesperson for the National Honey Board.
Laurey was the author of Elsie’s Biscuits, simple stories of me, my mother, and food and The Fresh Honey Cookbook; 84 Recipes from a Beekeeper's Kitchen. Please see below for details about these books and where to find them!
The Fresh Honey Cookbook
"A poetic, pleasurable and very personal look into the beautiful world of bees, honey and hives. Laurey's passion, intelligence and culinary creativity make this a must read for anyone who wants to learn about the remarkable ways of the world in which bees work, and the amazing flavors of the varietal honeys they gift us with."
— Ari Weinzweig, Co-founding partner, Zingerman’s, and author of Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating