Fiona Avery

Fiona Avery grew up in a modest farmhouse on the outskirts of Dayton, Ohio, where the kitchen was the family’s unofficial living room. Her mother, a schoolteacher with a penchant for canning, taught her to measure flour by feel and to trust the scent of a simmering pot more than any recipe card. The house was always filled with the hum of a 1960s radio and the clatter of cast‑iron pans, a backdrop that still echoes in the rhythm of her dishes today.

At sixteen, Fiona spent a summer working at her grandmother’s diner, a modest eatery known for its “just‑right” meatloaf and biscuits that could soften the hardest day. It was there she learned that comfort food isn’t about extravagance; it’s about the memory it evokes—a warm hug on a cold night. She recalls one night when a regular, a truck driver with a weary smile, asked for “the kind of meal that feels like home.” The dish she served—a slow‑braised short rib with rosemary‑infused gravy—became the blueprint for her later work: simple, honest, and deeply rooted in nostalgia.

Today, as the founder of mealsbyday, Fiona channels that same ethos into a digital kitchen, curating more than two hundred recipes that marry classic American comfort with a modern twist. What drives her now is the belief that every family, no matter how busy, deserves a seat at the table where the food tells a story. She continues to chase that elusive moment when a spoonful of soup can pause time and bring strangers together, one recipe at a time.