Why I Love Teaching Cooking

In my younger years, I spent some time whooshing down the slippery slope of emotional eating. Luckily, a few very good meals in Paris changed that mindset. A week after that trip to France, I signed up for chef school as a beloved second career, and ever since, I have exchanged emotional eating for emotional cooking; it is sooooo much more fun, nurturing and pleasurable!!

Almost 25 years into this journey of teaching cooking, I still happily consider myself a lifelong student of cooking. Studying the infinite varieties of ingredients, techniques, artistry and cultural culinary traditions fills me with awe.

That doesn’t mean I’m always energized by the responsibility of cooking! I also have a busy family, and there never seem to be enough hours in the day to prepare a meal from scratch. Conflicting nutritional information can be confusing and daunting for anyone, professional chefs included. But with the right approach, a homemade food experience can be restorative.

My best food experiences are consistently founded on the same philosophy:

These tenets address the root issues for nourishment. This philosophy helps kids cook and care for themselves and helps adults maintain a healthy lifestyle and weight. It’s a sustainable practice for mind, body, spirit and Mother Earth, and I guarantee it will elevate your kitchen experiences!

Connect with your inner foodie, family, friends and community through food! Eating local, seasonal foods and shopping at local farmers’ markets is good for us all. Supporting your local, hard-working farm community with your dollars speaks volumes, and eco-friendly cooking helps our ecosystems flourish.

Anyone who wants to cook better can learn. The skills and artistry are already within you to grasp. It’s a truth I’ve witnessed in my years of teaching and thousands of hours deep in the cooking trenches. Think about it positively, and you’re halfway there.

Connect to creating! Making a conscious effort to connect to all of your senses can reveal unexpected gifts in the kitchen. Great chefs don’t develop their artistry through recipes—they develop hands-on skills, use common sense and commit to quality and follow-through.

Cooking is a relationship between the chef and good food. Good relationships are good for your health! There’s nothing better than long conversations over long meals. Real cooking, real food, real people and real conversation—you don’t need anything complicated or expensive to create a magical meal.

Connect all these dots and see the magic unfold within and around you!

Update: We’re so proud of our past hands-on teaching and dinner party classes. Working with our clients has played an important part in the new direction of Tree House Kitchen as a food literacy company. We hope you enjoy reading about our past classes and where we’re headed moving forward!