Summer pulls everyone this way and that. I myself have two more out of town trips planned, all the while balancing a schedule of classes to teach, demonstrations, and my 3 jobs.
At Veil, we are running on a skeleton crew with our sous chef working “off site” on a yacht for two weeks, [...]

I withstood the rain today, meandering through the University farmers market in desparate hopes of a sign of a coming summer, and found it in two baskets of strawberries and a pound of cherries. The first of the year!
The cherries aren’t great, and let me tell you they certainly weren’t cheap! And I’ll [...]

In other parts of the world, fruit is in season. In places other than Seattle, pastry chefs are working with more than Rhubarb.

But no matter how many sunny Seattle weekends drive a burning desire to work with fruit, nothing but Rhubarb, which technically isn’t even a fruit, is available to me.
I know, I know. [...]

I once read that concerning haute cuisine, texture is the final frontier. The showiest developments in cuisine lately have certainly been textural. While many of the new textures are coming from knowledge of hydrocolloids, old (like corn starch) and new, we can still be attentive and creative with our textures without specialty ingredients.
My [...]

It is a fact that color has a drastic effect on your perception of flavor. The information received from our eyes will lead us to anticipate a flavor based on the color of a food or beverage, and that initial assumption can over ride the information we receive from our taste buds and olfactory system.
At [...]

Shuna lost her job.
Shuna is a slashie like me. No, not a actor slash male model, silly Zoolander fan, blogger slash chef. Pastry chef to be exact. And she recently lost her pastry chef job.
I point this out, not to irritate what is a sensitive situation, but to shed light on the [...]

I grew up on Bisquick, as I am sure many of us did. Much of the baking my mom did came from a box. Cakes came from no where else, and as April 23rd neared each year my tiny mouth salivated in anticipation of my birthday cake, always cherry chip with pink cherry [...]

It seems every publication is all lists this time of year. What to gifts buy for this person or that, what to wear for holiday gatherings here or there, and finally, the “best of” lists.
We all have them, and personally, I love talking about them. Do you agree, disagree, what would you add [...]

It’s that time of year again, folks. Sure, time for holidays, nesting, hot cocoa, and all kinds of cold weather behavior. But it’s time again for Seattle’s biggest restaurant promotion. You knew it last march as “25 for 25″, but things have changed a bit.
For starters, the promotion is now being referred [...]

Starting a new job was once a fun exciting venture in my eyes.  I thrilled at meeting new people and learning new things.  Lately, however, I have come to realize how much I dislike starting new jobs.  Call me a homebody, but I like the familiarity of a kitchen I have worked in for an [...]