Hi! I'm a classically-trained cook who went to culinary school after college (BA in History) and worked in restaurant and bakery kitchens for a few years before shifting gears to a career in marketing communications.

I was born and raised in the city of Chicago, but spent considerable time in Crete as a child (my mother's homeland). As an adult, I've lived in Chania (Greece), Paris (France) and now San Francisco, where I live with my husband Scott. We are lucky enough to split our time between the city and wine country. (If you want to watch an episode of about our rebuilding efforts after the Nuns Fire of 2017, find Tiny House Nation, episode "A Firefighter Rebuilds" on Netflix.)

I love to travel and, when I have a kitchen at my disposal, my favorite thing to do is shop in local markets and cook with local products. To me this is one of the best ways to understand a place. I'm a big advocate of supporting local farmers and producers. I served on the board of Slow Food San Francisco for nine years and had the privilege of representing the Bay Area as a US delegate to Terra Madre & Salone del Gusto, in Turin, Italy in 2014.

Keeping with my roots, my cooking style tends towards the Mediterranean. I mix in French technique I picked up in culinary school, and from living in Paris for three years. I'm very inspired by travel and restaurants, a whiff of anachronism in today's world. Cooking seasonally is important to me and I love taking advantage of the bounty of fresh ingredients we have here in the Bay Area.

What makes my cooking sessions different:

  1. You, the participants, all such cool people from all around the world.
  2. I teach you how to get creative without f-ing things up. There are certain things in every recipe that need to do a certain way because of chemistry or physics. Once you know what you have to do and what signs to look for, you can play with flavors.
  3. I explain the science behind the recipe and teach you to trust your instincts and make adjustments based on your observations. There is no perfect recipe, especially when working with doughs, your ambient temperature and humidity may mean you need to adjust the recipe a bit. I teach you how to make that determination and troubleshoot for better results.
  4. You discover how to make stuff you thought you had to buy: bread, mascarpone, pasta, ricotta, butter, crackers, puff pastry... yes we can make all that stuff, and it's way better than what you get from the store.
  5. Aspire to no-waste! Schedules are built so that items made early in the week make cameos later in the week. We use by-products like whey. I help scale recipes so you can bake even if you're cooking for one.
  6. I'm here for you. Reach out with cooking emergency questions and I will help!
  7. And best of all, we have a lot of fun. Many stories and laughs as we roll out our pasta, sauté our veggies and wait for our bakes to come out of the oven.

I love entertaining, and my dinner parties are legendary. Food is a gift and best shared. When the covid-19 shelter-in-place orders were announced, getting together and cooking remotely has been the highlight of my days. I hope one day we can all meet over one luxuriously long dinner, clink glasses and toast to these moments, I promise to never take for granted again.

Cheers! 🥂

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