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NATCHEZ — Jessica Swalm Byrne was raised in an “ingredient household.”

“That’s why I never have a recipe. I just cook from whatever is in the refrigerator,” she said.

Byrne, a Natchez native and Trinity graduate, frequently contributes to the Natchez Cook Club Facebook group.

She focuses on whole foods, which she defines as fresh produce and fresh meat and foods without preservatives or additives.

“I think that dyes and additives have ruined us and our health. Seventy years ago, we didn’t have the diseases that we have now,” Byrne said.

Byrne is the daughter of Elizabeth Swalm and the late John Swalm and the niece of David Browning of Natchez.

Her mother was mindful of not wasting food and was frugal, which Byrne learned from and appreciates to this day.

“I have this thing now that I hate food to go to waste. I use it as best I can. I keep meat in the freezer. I always have a processed deer in the freezer and I pick a meat and use whatever I have with it,” she said. “That’s why there is never a recipe. I’m just dumping things in there.”

She began working as a young person for her Uncle David and Guy Bass in their restaurants.

Byrne also worked with preschool students at Cathedral for 10 years. After that, she bought a freeze drying machine and began making freeze-dried candy, which she sells for a living.

She also works at Wardo’s a couple of days a week.

“I call that my inflation job,” she said. “I love it! I enjoy seeing all the people again, and I love Tom Graning.”

Byrne shares a daughter, Liza Byrne, with ex-husband Priester Byrne. She and her boyfriend, Natchez native David McDaniel, split their time between his home in Hayden, Alabama, and Natchez, when he is not working offshore.

“I am lucky that he likes to eat the kind of food I cook,” she said. “And I like to eat what he cooks. He is the grill master, and we like to cook together.

“I just throw things together and I like to set a table. You should see my collection of china and old things!”

During the growing season, she and McDaniel like to can and make preserves. They buy peaches and other produce from a nearby orchard and farm in Alabama.

“David grows the habanero peppers. He dehydrates them and grounds them up to make the pepper flakes in the peach habanero pepper jelly. Most recently, we made muscadine jelly,” she said.