Agriculture + Lifestyle

Entertaining like a Southerner

Posted on February 23, 2026 6:22 AM

Growing up in the small town of Moultrie, Ivy Odom always wanted to be a home economics teacher. But following your dreams is never a straight path, and the ending is often found in an unexpected place.

“I was super involved in home economics in high school. I had such a positive experience there. Those teachers shaped me and really inspired me to be the best version of myself. I was a super shy child, but I came out of my shell when I became involved with home economics programs,” said Odom, now 32.

Odom went to the University of Georgia and majored in home economics education until her junior year. 

“I loved the art of teaching, but I just I didn’t see myself in a classroom every day,” she said. “I thought, there’s got to be a better way to teach that doesn’t involve me in a classroom.” 

So, she did some soul searching and discovered Rebecca Lang, who grew up in McRae, lived in Athens and is a cookbook author, cooking instructor, television personality and a former editor at Southern Living. 

“I looked her up and thought her job sounded really cool. I emailed her and asked if we could meet so that I could learn about her job,” Odom said. “I left that information session with the offer for an internship. She took me under her wing and helped me learn about food media. She saw potential in me and for that I’m forever thankful.”

Odom switched her major to consumer journalism. After graduating with her bachelor’s degree, she attended the culinary arts program at L’Academie de Cuisine, where she graduated first in her class. That led to a job with the Southern Living Test Kitchen in 2016. Her experience there in recipe testing led to making food video content, after which she was asked to host the “Hey Y’all’’ video series for Southern Living. 

As it turns out, Odom is a natural at teaching others through sharing her love for cooking Southern food.

“Southern cooking is all about the love that you put into it. I know everyone puts a little love in their food, but the South does it in a special way. We find humble ingredients and make the most out of them. It doesn’t matter how much you have, because with ingenuity and love, something delicious happens,” she said. “I love it when I can open the fridge and grab something and cook it on the fly. I got that from my mom, and I aspire to be as good as her one day.”

While her mom, Sabrina, taught her the joys of Southern cooking, Odom learned how to garden from her dad, Wayne.

“Everything I know about gardening, I learned from him. He’s an experimental gardener, and it’s fun for him to learn new things and teach me what to do. Each year we work on refining our gardens to make them bigger and better. I love to get new seeds and to try growing something new every year,” she said.

As Odom’s skills grew, so did her role at Southern Living. She was the host of the nationally syndicated television series, “The Southern Living Show,” and has represented the brand on national television shows as well as local news and radio stations. In her current role as Senior Lifestyle Editor and based in Birmingham, Alabama, Odom attends events around the Southeast and pens the bi-monthly print column, “Ivy’s Kitchen.”

“My job is different every day. Two days a week I’m on a video set making content for social platforms. I usually shoot four to five videos per week, and then I spend three days a week in the office. We do a lot of brainstorming for columns and videos, and I work on recipe development in my home kitchen. It’s a team effort here and I get a lot of inspiration from my fellow editors,” she said. “I’m on the road a lot, which I enjoy. I get to celebrate best of the South at events that Southern Living hosts, or at which I represent Southern Living.”

When you talk about the best of the South, for Odom, that always comes back to growing up in Moultrie.

“It was a special place to grow up. Growing up in an agriculture-based community, where the economy of the town centered around the success of the harvest, everyone rallied around farmers in that way. Even if you didn’t have a farm, you had gardens, which kept farming at the forefront of our lives. I’m so honored to have grown up somewhere like that, and my hometown community has rallied around me throughout my life,” she said.

In her column, “Ivy’s Kitchen,” Odom gets to share recipes that feature ingredients she grew up around. 

“I get inspired by what I ate in my momma’s kitchen. The ingredients themselves tend to be local to Georgia and the South,” she said. “Through that column and on my social platforms, I talk a lot about my heritage and how my mom cooked things. It’s important to infuse that into everything I do, creating that sense of place about where I come from. People from Georgia identify with my videos, and it’s cool that people from other states resonate with the stories I tell. It may be different ingredients, but it’s similar experiences, and that helps to bridge the gap over state and regional lines. Food makes us all come together in a cool way.”

One of the biggest successes of Odom’s career has been her cookbook, “My Southern Kitchen,” which came out in October 2025. It includes recipes that were inspired by her childhood and focuses on helping readers know what to cook for different occasions, like what to bring a new mom for dinner, and what to bring to a football tailgate or a Master’s party. 

“I poured my heart and soul into it, and it’s heart-warming to see it resonate with people across the South,” she said.

 What’s coming next for Odom is perhaps her most uncharted journey yet. She and her husband of four years, Luis Aponte, are expecting their first child this spring.

“The coolest part of my job is that I never know what comes next. I just take the reins and go with the flow, and I’m so excited for this next life-altering chapter as a mom. I had a working mom, and I want to show my daughter that she can do whatever she sets her mind to as well,” Odom said.

That includes getting her hands dirty. Having just moved into a new house, Odom said she’s itching to get a garden built and excited for her daughter to be out there with her.

“I want to share gardening with my daughter the way my dad shared it with me. I want to cook the comfort foods that my mom made for me. She’d grab some humble ingredients from dad’s garden, throw it in a skillet with some bacon grease and call it a day,” Odom said. “That tastes like home. When I need a taste of home, I go for the bacon grease. It’s pure comfort.”