What Books Did She Write?

I'm not going back to running kitchens at this age no matter how glamorous Gordon Ramsey makes it look. I'm too old to lift giant stock pots and unclog floor drains at 2:00 a.m. I'm going to brag about my books now so you'll buy them if you don't have them. And you'll give them away as gifts if you like them as much as I do which is very much. I worked darn hard on them and I lost a lot of weight (75 pounds and counting) just by cooking almost everything I eat.

I've kept the weight off for over 15 years. I eat steak and ice cream and McDonald's sometimes. I eat real desserts made with real butter. The weight stays off because I balance high calorie foods with lower calorie foods. I exercise and I don't eat Fred Flinstone size portions anymore.

Oprah_3
Cooking Thin with Chef Kathleen, 200 Easy Recipes for Healthy Weight Loss is a The New York Times Best Seller. Oprah might have had something to do with that. My second book, Getting Thin and Loving Food, 200 Easy Recipes to Take You Where You Want to Be, won an International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award.  

Oprah definately didn't have anything to do with that. I like to think it has to do with the work.  The book is very special to me. It's filled with the flavors of the Pacific Rim; California and Hawaii and it has a lot of Japanese influences but the recipes are as simple as the first book (except when I warn you ahead of time).

My Neapolitan heritage, my mother's cooking and my Zuni cafe training are the foundation for my work but the flavors of California's Central Coast (where I worked my way through college and many years later opened a restaurant or two); Montecito, Santa Barbara, Santa Ynez, Pismo Beach, San Louis Obispo, Morro Bay and Paso Robles are undeniably woven into this body of work.

There are tropical influences throughout the book as well. Five years of living on the island of Maui with daily visits to the farms in Kula on the slopes of Haleakala, across the street from pineapple fields that would mysteriously be missing pineapples moments after my staff and I would walk the fields is once-in-a-lifetime dream-come-true cooking.

I worked breakfast and lunch service. We'd leave the restaurant everyday at 3:00 p.m. or 4:00 p.m. and head for the farm. We'd spend the rest of the day there working the fields. I'd write the next days menu in my head, standing on a carpet of lush baby lettuces while harvesting fresh herbs with a sickle. Or maybe I was picking (and feasting on) fresh mangos.  There was no line between work and play. It was all play to me. I loved the islands and miss them dearly.

The final culinary influence in the second book is Japanese. My sous chef was born and raised in Japan. We shared the same birthday and were the same age. Somehow she ended up in Michigan cooking with me. I received private lessons from a gifted Japanese chef named Miho Mizuno, is the way I see it.

She graciously shared lots of her secret recipes in the book. When she came to work with me she knew she was dying. Only she didn't tell me right away. Cooking was her way of coping. It was her way of living. She lived to cook. She couldn't speak English. She communicated through her cooking. She ate not for pleasure but for health, for healing and for prevention. Food was medicine. Miho created recipes for people she loved, to heal them and to honor them. Knowing her recipes would be published in this book made her very happy.

I'm building a whole new blog dedicated to the books! As soon as the new blog is live, I'll link the new blog to this blog and the both of them will always be linked to chefkathleen.com (my other website). And the whole blog family should serve your every culinary need. If they don't, there are plenty of email links, and places for you to rant at me to tell me what you want more of. I'm in the business of serving you, my audience. I don't work tirelessly on these websites and blogs to entertain myself. You are my employers you know. So get your money's worth!


 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Comments

Jacob

It looks like you really had a nice time

Posted by: Jacob | 17 December 2008 at 23:18

adopt a family christmas

Comprehensive Work, I liked It, Thanks

Posted by: adopt a family christmas | 15 December 2008 at 10:53

The comments to this entry are closed.

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