MEET THE CHEF

Chef Kathleen was raised in Michigan with her Italian immigrant grandparents living upstairs. It was natural that she learned to love food and cooking in that environment. As a teenager Kathleen was drawn to the kitchen baking. She would hound her siblings to stay out of the downstairs freezer that held all the Christmas cookies she had made in advance. Invariably, she would have to cook several more batches before the holiday actually came! Her older brother always begged her to make Pan Dulce (Mexican sweet bread) which she had gotten from a recipe in Gourmet magazine. It became a family favorite.

While in college, for her birthdays she asked for Corning Ware and Caphalon pots. (She never did let her college roommates touch those pans!) Instead of reading novels and tales of far away, Kathleen could be found in the library on the floor reading the latest cookbooks by Craig Clairborne, Martha Stewart, and Gourmet and Bon Apetit magazines. She became a collector of recipes and it took her 20 years until she actually developed an organized way to categorize and store all of them. When it came time to pick a major, she entered the Nursing program at San Diego State University. She graduated with a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing.

After years of working as an Oncology nurse and later a Pediatric nurse at Children’s Hospital in San Diego, she moved with her husband and young son to Thousand Oaks, CA and gave up the arduous hours of hospital nursing and focused on raising her son and providing a home for her family while her husband brought home the bacon. She also volunteered to assist her husband at work and gained some new skills in an office environment. Her young son is now 6'2" and in college. Kathleen had a choice to either return to nursing (a noble profession with good pay and high demand) or pursue her passion. Passion won out this time. She figures, “You only live once; I might as well spend my time doing something I love to do.” Instead, she chose a profession where long arduous hours are involved, it’s physically taxing, and the pay is inconsistent!