Teaching and cooking with love

Annie McDaniel loved her kindergarten teacher so much, she wanted to be a teacher herself someday.

She got married just after she graduated from high school, had her first of three daughters by the time she was 19 and never attended college.

“Honestly, nobody in my family went to college — they were mommas who stayed at home,” McDaniel said.

While working at Hargis Retreat on weekends, she met a certified teacher and the two of them decided to start doing in-school field trips. Her friend moved away the next year, but McDaniel continued doing it on her own and Miss Annie has been a fixture in elementary school classrooms for the past 25 years.

She teaches science-based programs where she dresses up in costumes and presents hands-on learning opportunities to elementary students.

“I’m in 35 different schools in eight to 10 different school systems, including all the Shelby County schools,” McDaniel said. “It moved to full-time about 15 years ago, and I am at a different school every day. I probably teach about 20,000 kids a year.”

She said it’s such an amazing blessing to her and that God knew she wanted to teach, and while the traditional way didn’t work out for her, this has been even better.

She knows at some point she will transition from being Miss Annie at school to her new venture — Miss Annie Home + Kitchen — but it will be in God’s timing.

She began sharing recipes on Facebook and her YouTube channel in October and recently released her first cookbook, “A Collection of Family Favorites - Volume 1.” McDaniel said she made the cookbook she’s always wanted and it’s full of her favorite things.

“Every recipe I love,” she said. “It includes the recipe for my famous pumpkin bread, my grandmother’s fudge and my mom’s apple pie.

She has plans to publish a second cookbook in the fall that includes recipes for holiday celebrations.

McDaniel said she lives by two mottos. “You can do hard things” came to her after her husband, Daryl, had a massive stroke eight years ago. It was during the journey of his recovery and rehabilitation that she repeated those words to herself. She wrote them on sticky notes and put them in places she would see them every day to encourage her to keep going.

Her other motto is “Stronger every day.” When Daryl completed his time at Lakeshore Rehab, his nurse hugged McDaniel and whispered those words in her ear and They stuck with her.

McDaniel is also a certified life coach, a mom of three daughters and a grandmother of nine. She prioritizes her health by exercising daily and loves spending time with her family.

“I’m willing to take the next right step,” she said. “I can’t be Miss Annie forever, but I feel like Miss Annie’s Home + Kitchen is the place I’m being led.”

For more information, visit missannie.com and missannieshomeandkitchen.com/cookbook