After so many years working in the culinary business, I cannot say how much I relish the incredibly broad, diverse, fascinating, inspiring group of colleagues I've had the pleasure to interact with over the years. And it is so very satisfying to cheer them in their accomplishments and milestones, tip [...]
DC....here I come For over two decades, about this time each year I've packed up for a trip to some North American city for a conference that has been a big part of my career path since the days when I was still trying to figure out where [...]
It's one of those photo-ops-missed that I've thought about more than a few times in the past year -- arriving in Portland on a Sunday afternoon, looking down on the sidewalk and seeing a "Feast Portland" wristband that clearly had gotten a lot of good use over the previous few [...]
Long, long ago, just a couple of years after having earned my degree in Mathematics from University of Puget Sound, I sat at the desk in my one-room apartment in Seattle and flipped a coin. I was filling out the application for a stagiaire position at the venerable La Varenne cooking [...]
It's funny those times when two otherwise disparate parts of our lives overlap a bit. Such is the case with Craftsy. I can't recall how I was very first introduced to the site, but got an email this past week that noted I'd been a member for a year. The context [...]
It is going to be such an honor to have Anne Willan here in Seattle for a couple days later this month. I love my hometown and am always thrilled at the chance to share it with friends and colleagues when they visit. This occasion will be an even richer [...]
It's funny, much as I usually abhor ruts and routine, I can be quite the creature of habit sometimes. Which, in the case of visiting the San Juan Islands in the Northwest corner of Washington state, comes in the form of me heading 99.9% of the time to Orcas, dating back to trips [...]
One of my mother's favorite quotes came from none other than Michelangelo -- the translation I remember seeing in clipping-form on her refrigerator cited it as "...and still I am learning." It's a quote I think about often. In this back-to-school week I'm personally thankful to not be starting high [...]
It's a rather odd phenomenon that occurs when involved in a conference as intensive and engaging as that of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, which just wrapped up this weekend in Austin. The days are long, from that first sip of coffee each morning, chatting with tablemates before heading to the day's [...]