My passion for food was nurtured at an early age in my mothers’s kitchen and around the table at our noisy family dinners. My parents tell me that they discovered me early one morning on a stool in the kitchen making pancakes – I was covered with flour but convinced that I knew just what to do. Today I am still passionate about food and cooking, but equally passionate about knowing where my food comes from and how it is grown. I think food tastes better when it is grown and eaten seasonally without the use of chemicals and when it comes from farms close by. For me this means tomatoes and strawberries in the summer, root vegetables in the winter and asparagus in the spring.

I cook what I love to eat, so they all reflect my culinary desires, but the dishes that friends and family often ask for are wild mushroom risotto, pasta puttanesca and my chocolate bread pudding.

Rosemary, fennel, thyme and cumin.

Currently, my favorite restaurant is Pizzaioli in Oakland, California.

Asparagus, tomatoes, zucchini, onions…they all keep me alive. And chocolate – does that count as a vegetable?

My mother modeled for me the value of good food prepared simply, eaten with family, but my husband and son keep me on my toes in the kitchen and inspire my everyday cooking.

I cook every day and my musical choices are as varied as the ingredients I use. One day it might be David Gray, another Micheal Franti and Spearhead, or on quieter days, Glenn Gould or Joni Mitchell. Growing up my father would prepare breakfast on the weekends to the sounds of Bach or Beethoven and my mother, well opera, always opera.