About Us

A Full Living owners and content creators standing in a bright kitchen together.

Hi there!

Welcome to A Full Living!

We're Briana and Chamere, the husband-wife team behind this blog, and we've been cooking our childhood favorites and creating our own since 2016.

We're keeping our families' food traditions alive and building new ones of our own. Southern/Soul Food meets Nordic comfort in our Michigan kitchen, alongside the nostalgic Midwest dishes we both grew up with and the vibrant Cajun/Creole flavors we can't get enough of. 😉

Our Mission

We believe every home cook deserves meals worth gathering around - that make you excited to get in the kitchen! Think smothered turkey wings, Swedish meatballs, pot roast, and seafood boil.

Our recipes use mostly everyday ingredients (with the occasional specialty item that's worth seeking out 😉). We test everything multiple times so you can cook well-seasoned, crave-worthy comfort food with confidence. Welcome to our table!

Classic Norwegian breakfast with bread and lots of toppings!

Ingredients to make Louisiana hot crawfish dip laid out on a table. — Classic Norwegian breakfast with bread and lots of toppings!

What You'll Find on A Full Living

Over 500 tested recipes-all developed in our home kitchen!
Step-by-step photography 📸 so you know exactly how everything should look at each stage.
Seasonal cooking inspiration 🍅 featuring produce from our Michigan garden and local farms to help you embrace each season.
Real home cooking from two self-taught cooks who've pieced together family recipes from memory and research

Briana and Chamere in the Bake From Scratch Test Kitchen holding homemade butternut squash puff pastries.

Chamere and I making butternut squash galettes at the Bake From Scratch Magazine Test Kitchen, October 2025! Here's a behind the scenes video + recipe for cornbread biscuits! 😉

Goofing around in our old Chicago apartment when filming our Maple Fig Cocktail video, Fall 2024!

Briana and Chamere filming a fig cocktail video and being silly.

Let's Start from Scratch: Briana's Story

I grew up in Traverse City, Michigan, with endless delicious fruit & wine 🍓🍑🍷in the summer (Traverse City is the cherry capital 🍒 of the world!) Growing up, summers in the Upper Peninsula meant visiting my gram at camp, where we'd forage for wild blueberries🫐 for pancakes, eat pasties, catch and cook our own fish🎣, jump in the water for a swim, then warm up in the sauna. All Finnish Americans know! 😉 Pure Michigan summer magic!

Back home, my parents worked a lot and didn't have much time or interest in cooking. I became obsessed with the Food Network and checking out cookbooks from the library. When I wasn't working at Red Lobster, a local fine dining Italian spot, or making smoothies at my dad's business, I was cooking food for my family and friends with whatever we had lying around, and people loved my food. A passion was born, and I was now the designated "cook" of the house! I was happy for this to be my responsibility!

Briana holding a plate with homemade cooked food in her younger highschool days. — *Me in high school doing some late-night cooking for my friends! I'm not sure what I was making.. But I was proud! 😂*

In high school, my best friend Sofie was an exchange student from Norway. We loved cooking Nordic food together! The following year, I went to Norway as an exchange student myself.

Two women cooking in a small kitchen. — Sofie (left) and me (right) cooking a Norwegian style Easter feast in 2009!

Two women holding glasses of homemade Norwegian style rice pudding. — Sofie (left) and me (right) cooking a Norwegian style Easter feast in 2009!

While I was there, I tried EVERYTHING and baked constantly-making cakes for my Norwegian classmates when they'd give me rides home. My Norwegian high school principal gifted me a Norwegian cookbook after hearing about my enthusiasm for the local cuisine and my baking. Some of my friends joked that I "was a better Norwegian than them" because I'd try even the most adventurous foods!

A woman holding a Norwegian flag wit ha thumbs up sitting in front of a plate of food. — Me as an exchange student holding up a Norwegian flag at a restaurant.

Two women standing in a small Norwegian fishing village with fjords in the background. — Me as an exchange student holding up a Norwegian flag at a restaurant.

After exchange, I came back to Traverse City and lived at home for a couple of years, working at the same restaurants. I even started culinary school, thinking maybe that was the path...but I promptly quit. 😂 It was so intense and honestly took all the fun out of being in the kitchen for me.

I switched my major to marketing instead, thinking maybe I could find a job in food marketing when I graduated. I transferred to DePaul in Chicago to finish my degree, working as a nanny and at a brunch spot to pay my way through school. The summer after I graduated, I met Chamere. 💘

Meanwhile in Chicago: Chamere's Story

Chamere was born and raised in Chicago, where pizza puffs, Chicago mild sauce, and his grandma's soul food cooking shaped his palate.

He lived off takeout for years and never learned to cook, but he had a huge appetite for bold, spicy flavors 🌶️ and a seemingly bottomless pit of a stomach. 😂 He is DEFINITELY the number one taste tester around here.

Chamere has always been creative and VERY driven. We hit it off immediately since we're both a little scrappy, and if he wants to do something, he does it. However, his talents are vast and a little more exciting than mine 😂, spanning DJing, dancing, drawing, painting, and more.

Man breakdancing in front of water on pavement doing a freeze holding his leg. — *Chamere breaking on the Chicago lakefront!*

He studied photography and loved shooting street style, urban landscapes, and candid portraits. When he decided he wanted his first camera, he bought it at an IHOP in all singles from someone he met on Craigslist. 😂 This feels like the start of a horror movie, but it wasn't! It was the start of something great! Food photography wasn't even on his radar.... YET!🤭💘

A man in a green jacket holding a coffee reaching over his head to take a photo in downtown Chicago. — *Chamere out and about in Chicago, taking photos.* 📸

How We Met

Chamere and I both swiped right on Tinder in the summer of 2015, and it was a match! We were pretty smitten with each other right away. 🤭 I cooked, Chamere had the appetite and the eye for capturing beautiful images, and the sparks were flying! 🥰

man and woman in front of a beautiful huge body of blue water on a tall sand dune, and the man is giving the woman a kiss on the cheek. — *Chamere and I, in our early days of dating, on a hike with a beautiful view at the Sleeping Bear Dunes!*

In the spring of 2016, I decided it was time to finally write down my recipes. Friends and family were constantly asking for them, and I thought, "Why not start a blog?" Chamere offered to help with photography, teaching himself food photography from scratch (and lots of online courses!), which is a completely different beast from street photography! He poured his heart into learning the craft, and we started creating together.

For years, we worked odd jobs while chasing our entrepreneurial dreams. Each winter and spring, we'd head to Louisiana for Mardi Gras season, where my dad had moved. We worked at his smoothie business and helped out at a family friend's Baton Rouge bakery, deepening our connection to Southern food culture while exploring the local Cajun and Creole cuisine.

Briana and Chamere being silly while eating crawfish in Louisiana at a restaurant. — *Enjoying a delicious crawfish boil in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with Chamere being silly, per usual! 😂*

Around 2018, we started taking the blog seriously. We realized this could actually be more than a hobby. By 2020, A Full Living became our full-time work, and it was the same year we got privately married! 🥰

Chamere outside in the forest with a cocktail scene set up and camera gear surrounding him.

Chamere getting set up to photograph our peach bourbon smash cocktail for an outdoor photoshoot!

Coming Home to Michigan

After over a decade in Chicago, we were ready for a new chapter. We longed for a garden, more space, and to be closer to nature.

This past summer (2025), we packed up and moved back to my home state of Michigan. Chicago will always be our home away from home, with world-class food that we miss dearly!

We're brand new to gardening, learning as we go, and loving every minute of it!

Harvest basket with colorful homegrown produce. — One of the many photos of my harvest baskets with my garden produce!

There's something special about cooking with produce you grew yourself, even when the tomatoes are a little wonky or the herbs take over. 😂

Man and woman in a garden filming a video.

Luscious orange Sungold pasta in a blue bowl, topped with burst orange cherry tomatoes, basil, breadcrumbs, and surrounded by ingredients to make the pasta.

Chamere and I in the garden filming a video for our Roasted Sungold Tomato Pasta from our first harvest!

How We Work

Photo of Briana and Chamere smiling at a camera.

Chamere and I at Robinette's Apple Haus in Grand Rapids over the summer!

Briana is the head recipe developer and the obsessive tester, though she gets a ton of input from Chamere! If something isn't quite right, she'll make it five more times until it's perfect. She's fueled by too much coffee, loves hiking and gardening, and dreams about new recipes!

✨ All-Time Favorite Recipes: Finnish Salmon Soup, Ham Bean & Collard Greens Soup, and Swedish Almond Cake!

Chamere is our photographer and the ultimate taste tester. He also handles ALL of the tech side of things! He captures every step of the cooking process and has a huge appetite for bold, spicy flavors. If he goes back for seconds (and thirds), we know the recipe is a keeper! Chamere is fueled by cartwheels, daily journaling while drinking his coffee, and cracking jokes all day long!

✨ All-Time Favorite Recipes: Southern Baked Mac and Cheese, Birthday Yellow Cake Chocolate Frosting (On a Sheet Pan), and Dutch Oven Chili!

We work from our Michigan kitchen, and every recipe you see has earned its spot on the site. Welcome to our table! 🫶🏼🫶🏾

Work With Us

We proudly work with dozens of local and national brands, including Plugrá Butter, Bob's Red Mill, and the Michigan Apple Committee. We love bringing delicious recipes to life-whether that's brand partnerships on our site or mouthwatering food and beverage content for your channels.

Check out our portfolio or reach out to [email protected]!