Good Evening Friends…..

I am very excited about the opportunity to share my love of cooking and hospitality with all of you.  Thank you for taking time to visit The Culinary Retreat….my objective for this blog is that as a community, we can all learn from each other, become better chefs in our respective kitchens, create an air of hospitality in our homes and cultivate a better community.

Before we begin, let me state a few things for the record:

First thing to state for the record, my schedule is packed just like yours….I am employed as a Financial Controller for a company in the Detroit area.  I am a single mom of a high school senior.  I am currently training to run another 5K race in November.  I chair the kitchen of my daughter’s high school band program…not a lot of free time in my world!!!

Second thing to state for the record….my culinary training does not come from a formal classroom.  My training came from the shoulders of the women in my family, namely my maternal and paternal grandmothers, Marjorie Hall and Elizabeth Sulkowski.  My classroom was their respective kitchens and my lessons were Sunday family dinners, parties, and holidays. I watched what they did and little did I know that years of observation and helping them out would turn into a great personal passion worth sharing with my little corner of the world.

Some people find solace in a great many things…for me, I look at the kitchen as a place to retreat, recharge my mental batteries and create great meals.  I am blessed that I get to share my love of food with family, friends and co-workers.

I am convinced that the most of the world lives by the paradigm that scratch cooking is a lost art gone by the wayside of our elders and that our severely packed schedules full of activity have no accommodation to take on such a task.  With no time to cook, we grab fast, processed food out of necessity and convenience.

I learned the lesson that convenience does not always pay dividends, especially when you are feeding crowds!!!  When I started chairing the kitchen for my daughter’s high school band program, I learned quickly that the past practice of convenience food served at a competition or a craft show would leave a bad taste in the mouth of vendors and customers and a band program with lots of leftovers and no profits.  That being said, I decided to go back to my culinary roots and reintroduce the idea that scratch cooking can be well received and very profitable!!!

My goal is to get people back in their kitchens, sharing great food with family, friends and loved ones and to get over the idea is scratch cooking is a forgotten concept.  I want to re-emphasize that we can all learn from each other.  I look forward to hearing from you as well.

So enough about me and my motivation…. let’s get cooking in the kitchen and create an environment where we can recharge our batteries, create great meals and reconnect with our loved ones, friends and our community….

Welcome to the Culinary Retreat,

Angie