Hey there, I’m Allie!
welcome to
parched around the world,
i’m so glad you’ve
found your way here.
A Juicy Georgia Peach Welcome!
Hi friends, I’m Allie!
And welcome to Parched Around the World, a lifestyle and travel website with storytelling at its heart.
From food and drink recipes to travel tips and guides to expert insights on a variety of subjects to so much more, my hope is that Parched is a place where you come to find stories about this big, beautiful world we live in and the amazing people doing amazing things in it.
But let’s back up a bit!
A Bit About Me
I’m a country girl turned city girl turned wanderer, with a bit of an off-the-beaten-path kind of life journey. My favorite place in the world is New Zealand. I’m obsessed with beautiful skies. I can’t live without an absurdly large supply of peanuts. And if I had the choice, I’d spend every bit of my time and money eating, drinking, and traveling the world with the people that I love.
But there’s a little more to this story!
I grew up down south in Georgia (aka “The Peach State”), where I acquired a proper southern drawl and learned the beauty of southern hospitality. After graduating from high school, I found my way to the Midwest to attend college, where I soaked up some good old-fashioned Missouri kindness while slinging drinks behind a bar to put myself through school. After earning a degree in Intercultural Communications, I headed back east to attend graduate school in Washington, D.C., where I studied journalism and public affairs followed by a stint in PR. After that, I made my way to the Big Apple, where I turned a lifelong dream into reality by making New York City my home.
I spent nearly 15 years working on Wall Street and living the big city life in NYC before packing it all in for small-town living in New Zealand. For almost two years I called beautiful Blenheim my home, where I worked as a cellar rat in a winery learning to make wine and helping produce back-to-back vintages of Marlborough Pinot Noir.
Now I’ve returned to my roots and have set up shop in Georgia, where I split my time between Atlanta and St. Simons Island. And in addition to being the founder of Parched, I own a small communications business with my passion for people, food, drinks, travel, and storytelling serving as the foundation for most of the work that I do.
What Is Parched Around The World?
Parched Around the World is a lifestyle and travel website with storytelling at its heart. It’s where I tell my own tales and where other people share theirs, and where our personal experiences, knowledge, and stories connect us.
Stories that teach and inspire.
Stories that offer insight into our similarities and our differences.
Stories that challenge us and ones that make us laugh.
And yes…lots of stories about food, drinks, and travel!
I believe that when we come together and share our experiences we become more compassionate and open-minded people, so my goal is for Parched to be a place of connection where we can teach each other, inspire one another, and have some fun along the way!
The Pillars of Parched Around the World
Parched is founded on four main pillars: EAT, DRINK, TRAVEL, and LEARN.
While on the surface these topics may seem unrelated, to me they go hand in hand!
Because everything we eat and drink comes from people or places full of culture and traditions.
When we travel, we’re exposed to things we’ve never seen, tasted, felt, or known before.
And within every one of these experiences, there’s an opportunity to learn and to broaden our perspectives.
So my hope is for Parched to be a gathering place to learn and tell stories about the people, places, and things that feed our minds, bodies, and souls!
EAT
As a Southerner growing up in an Italian-German household, food has always been central to my family and my experiences. Whether we’re mourning, celebrating, debating, pondering, ________(fill in the blank), full plates and hours spent around the dinner table are our norm. Simply put, food to me is a love language.
And the EAT pillar of Parched is dedicated to just that!
Thanks to more than a decade of learning from a Michelin-starred chef about ingredients, cooking techniques, and how to really taste and appreciate food, EAT is where I share my love of all things culinary and where I draw upon the skills and talents of chef and foodie friends to provide an adventurous and educational journey into the world of food.
From recipes to dining guides to restaurant spotlights to food history and more, the EAT section of Parched is for foodies who see food as an expression of love and who live to eat rather than eat to live!
DRINK
The DRINK pillar of Parched is an all-encompassing foray into the world of beverages! Be it cocktails and mocktails, wine and beer, coffee, tea, or any host of other non-alcoholic sips, DRINK is your hub for gulps of every kind.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love cocktails! I have nearly 20 years of mixology experience thanks to years working both as a bartender and as the General Manager of a high-volume bar, not to mention the fact that I’ve been following trends in the industry for most of my adult life. So my love of tipples runs very deep, and DRINK is where I share my own recipes and where I shine a spotlight on amazing cocktail creators and unique drinks tasted around the world.
When it comes to wine, as an Italian I consider it part of my identity. Much like food, wine is a big part of my personal story, so much so that it led me to study the subject formally. I became a Certified Sommelier through the Court of Master Sommeliers in 2013, earning the honor of being named the Walter Clore Certified Sommelier Exam Scholar, and have penned a wine column for a national publication in the years since. Wine is actually the reason I moved to New Zealand to work in a winery because I knew that in order to fully understand the subject I needed hands-on experience learning how to make it. And it is this combination of passion and knowledge – both of my own and of my incredible friends in the wine world – that I seek to share here on Parched.
On the beer front, this is admittedly one subject I know nothing about! However, I’m fortunate to have an amazing Certified Cicerone sister and several brewmaster friends who are helping me bring the subject of beer to life on Parched.
But DRINK isn’t only about booze! There are lots of people around the world who don’t drink alcohol – including a number of friends and family in my life who don’t – so my goal is for Parched to be chock full of booze-free sips as well.
TRAVEL
Although I’m a passionate traveler now, travel wasn’t a part of my childhood. Aside from a few trips as a teenager with my church youth group (which let’s face it, were more about hanging out with friends and flirting with boys than about culture and exploration!), my only understanding of travel was a hot and sweaty annual summer road trip to visit my cousins in St. Louis!
It wasn’t until a friend took me on a trip to Africa after I finished graduate school that my heart and soul opened to the joy, fulfillment, and broadened perspective that comes from exploring the world. And my life has never been the same since.
In the years since, I’ve been traveling the world, primarily as a solo traveler (thus, the obscene number of selfies you’re likely to find throughout my site!), and it’s been the greatest education I could have ever hoped for. Travel has that unique way of inspiring, teaching, bringing people together, and changing us for the better, so my hope is that the TRAVEL pillar of Parched will reflect exactly that.
LEARN
The fourth and final pillar of Parched Around the World is LEARN. Which may seem like the odd man out in the group, but I think it’s actually the one that binds them all together.
Because if you think about it, within everything we experience there’s something we can learn!
Whether it’s the cultural roots tied to a delicious plate of pasta you order.
Or the origin of the coffee beans that make that killer cup of coffee you love.
Or the history behind the winding road you choose for your road trip.
There’s always a story to be told and something to be learned, we just have to be open to it!
So that’s what the LEARN pillar is all about.
My goal for this section is not only to personally try and answer some of the “Whys?” in life, but also to tap into the experiences and expertise of others in order to offer insight into a skill, perspective, or opinion that’s different from my/our own.
Plus, I am constantly inspired by other people, so my aim is to take advantage of our interconnectedness and to really showcase the amazingness that others bring to the table. The hope is that LEARN will be hugely community-driven and represent lots of different voices from around the world.
Let’s Get Parched!
More than a decade ago I had a vision for Parched. A vision that began as a simple idea, only to radically evolve as the ups and downs and all arounds of life helped me define its greater purpose. And today that purpose is simply this: to bring people together through the magic of storytelling.
There’s a story at the heart of everyone and everything, and my hope is that Parched is a place where those stories are not only told but where they’re embraced and celebrated.
A place where we come together to learn from each other and to support one another.
Where we can talk about the hard things, but also where we can laugh and have heaps of fun!
I hope it’s a place where we create connections while stripping away the superficial to get to the heart of what really matters.
And where community, inclusivity, and authenticity serve as genuine threads throughout it all.
So welcome to Parched Around the World! I look forward to being Parched for Life with you as we explore the world together one bite, sip, and story at a time!
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