ABOUT THIS COOK:

I've been a life long lover of anything to do with food whether it's growing it, cooking it or eating it. I was surrounded by farms, growing and preserving food, and cooking from a very early age and some of my earliest memories are of me sitting on a high stool by the stove watching jam being made and tasting it. For many years, cooking and developing my own recipes was a way for me to unwind after a long day at work, and reconnect with myself and with others. At the age of 50-something, I enrolled in Tante Marie Cooking School in San Francisco and am now embarking on Part 2 of my worklife by teaching cooking classes, doing cooking parties and team building classes in San Francisco and Marin Counties. Over the past year, I've been working with the Marin Agricultural Land Trust (MALT) to create a series of cooking classes I teach at the farms/ranches to encourage locavore cooking and eating, and we're now deep in the planning stages for the upcoming year. I'm thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to meet some of the local farmers and ranchers that are putting food on my table and working with the food they are providing the community. Next month I'm starting to teach cooking classes with locally grown and raised food at a local community college, which should be a lot of fun as well.

• What do you cook when home alone?
  Linguine con Vongole. I think I could eat this every day.

• Your most treasured kitchen possession:
  My immersion blender! No mess from transferring stuff from a pot to a blender and it cleans up in 15 seconds!!

• The ideal number of guests for a dinner party is:
  8