Family Recipe Workshops
I start off 2025 with two workshops scheduled in January.
For about four years, I’ve been heading down to Sun Valley once or twice a year to teach cooking classes at the Sun Valley Culinary Institute—a great program with both vocational and avocational courses. A couple of years ago, the school’s director, Karl Uri, mentioned he was interested in partnering now and then with The Community Library there in Ketchum. He posed the question, wondering if there might be a topic I’d like to speak about at the library.
At the time I had just the slightest hint of an idea about this whole “preserving family recipes” idea — but I tossed it out there as an option for a workshop. They liked the idea and scheduled me for a class. Now all I had to do was come up with what those couple hours would entail, what I wanted to cover, how I’d engage attendees to create an inspiring and interesting experience for them. I’m extraordinarily grateful to them for giving me that opportunity. And grateful that they’ve had me back! I’ll be leading my third workshop there January 15, you can find out more about the class here.
I’ve also led the worshop a few places in the Seattle area, including the upcoming class at Hot Stove Society in Seattle.
Every workshop is such a unique experience, I can’t say how much I get out of leading them. In particular because attendees are always invited to bring in a couple of recipes from their collection to reference during the class and talk about during a couple of exercises if they’d like. Sometimes it’s just a couple of recipe cards, other times it might be a whole box or a notebook overflowing with recipes or even a book that their mom or an uncle has put together to share with the family. I LOVE hearing all the stories and seeing what they bring. I love the conversations that happen among the attendees, sharing experiences, perspectives, ideas, challenges. Every bit of it serves as such encouragement for me to continue on this path. The joy and the enthusiasm that crops up in class talking about these recipes and the prospect of recording them for sharing and preserving…it’s pure delight.