Jeffrey Alford is the author, along with Naomi Duguid, of six award-winning books on food and travel: Flatbreads & Flavors, HomeBaking, Seductions of Rice, Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Mangoes and Curry Leaves, and Beyond the Great Wall. In stories, recipes, and photographs, the books explore daily home-cooked foods in their cultural context.

Alford now lives in northeastern Thailand, just near the Cambodian border. He plants rice in May each year, and harvests by hand in late November. He writes, gardens, grows orchids, and cooks, and he's learned to love the taste of red ant eggs, crickets, grasshoppers, and leguminous tree leaves. Nowadays, Jeffrey seldom photographs a person he doesn't know.