Janice Feuer

The Cordon Bleu, Berkeley, and On-the-Job Training

I completed a Certificate Course at London's Cordon Bleu School upon graduation from U.C. Berkeley with a degree in Communications and Public Policy. With my Cordon Bleu Certificate on my resume, jobs were offered to me, and I found my calling.

For more than three decades I cooked and baked and catered in restaurants, hotels, a university cafeteria, a spiritual community, a natural foods deli and private homes and businesses.

Along the way I taught cooking classes and wrote 5 cookbooks: Chocolate Decadence, Sinful Strawberries, Virtuous Vanilla, Sweets for Saints and Sinners and Fruit-Sweet and Sugar-Free. For the past dozen years I have written a food column (article, recipe and photograph) for Montana's bi-monthly Natural Life News and Directory.

Living in Montana, enhances my appreciation of each of the seasons and the fruits and veggies particular to each season. There are barely enough adjectives to describe food fresh-from-the garden--either my own or from the farmers at either of our 2 local farmers' markets. Being mostly vegetarian, such great produce tastes best when prepared simply and cleanly. I have developed many such recipes and continue to do so. As a professional chef and teacher and home cook, I also appreciate the value of clear and precise recipes and make it a point to write them that way