She is the author of fourteen cookbooks including Seduced by Bacon and, most recently, Soup for Two: Small-Batch Recipes for One, Two, or a Few and Dos Caminos Tacos: 100 Recipes for Everyone's Favorite Mexican Street Food with chef Ivy Stark.
[1] Pruess graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, received a master's degree in English from Stanford University, and a certificate of graduate studies in French literature and arts from the Sorbonne.
She also studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Pruess was the director of the Cookingstudio, a school she founded that held classes in a number of New Jersey branches of the Kings Super Markets chain, from 1982 to 1987.
Her parents were Harriet and Gerald Rubens of Los Angeles, California.