About For Love of the Table

Welcome to For Love of the Table!  My name is Paige.  I am a professional chef...although I am no longer working in a professional restaurant kitchen.  I graduated from Le Cordon Bleu in London.  Following that I worked at the award winning American Restaurant in Kansas City under the James Beard Award winning chefs Michael Smith and Debbie Gold.  After spending six years there I left to work and learn in France for a while.  I spent some time in Provence followed by a couple of stints working with Susan Herrmann Loomis in Normandy.  Upon my return to the United States I worked at a delightful little pastry shop in the Kansas City area called The Pastry Goddess.  Following that I started my own private chef service.  While that was getting off the ground I began to work occasionally at The Culinary Center of Kansas City.  At the time the business at The Culinary Center was divided between private events and cooking classes.  I worked for a while exclusively in the private events area but was eventually tapped to teach a class or two.  I have been teaching classes ever since.

Today, I spend most of my time cooking private dinners for my Simple-Food clients and teaching local cooking classes.  The element unifying these two is my desire to make it possible for people to cook and eat well in their own homes.  For Love of the Table was the natural outgrowth of all of this.  Over the past few years I have written a couple of posts about why I cook, why I teach and why I write For Love of the Table.  If you would like to know more about these things, here are the posts:

The beginning...my first post...why I cook

When I changed the name of my blog....why I keep a blog

My goal with For Love of the Table will always be to encourage people to really cook at home...with real ingredients and with good technique.  Sprinkled throughout are nuts and bolts posts on basic (and sometimes not-so-basic) techniques which will hopefully provide the tools to do this.  Most of my posts are devoted to describing recipes that I make at home for our table.  Occasionally I will post recipes that I have prepared through my private dinner service...or in a class.

I test all of the recipes I post myself and make it a priority to make sure that they actually work.  I want anyone who tries them to have good success so that they will want to continue to cook and feed themselves (and their families and friends) well.....  In their own kitchens...  Around their own tables. 

Thanks for visiting.  I hope you will find much to enjoy at For Love of the Table.