Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Pastry Chef Cheryl

ACTIVITIES | SPRING

uncovering the lawn furniture, starting up the lawn mower, opening the windows, spring cleaning the house, designing new garden plots, pulling weeds

listening to peepers sing, bird’s melodies, soft spring showers

watching fern fonds uncoil, birds busy nesting, morning mist, trees budding, brown turn to green

smelling lilac’s and Lily of the valley, fresh paint in our new renovated kitchen, and tasting first of the season farm produce

ACTIVITIES | SUMMER

digging in the soil, planting seeds and perennials, watching things grow, arranging cut garden flowers

listening to music, wind, thunder, Cicada’s, camp fires, waves, sheets on the clothes line, birds, and friends

looking at trees, cookbooks, flowers, clouds, Oliver, the moon, lightening bugs, stars

swimming underwater in silence, laps in a pool, to the other side of a pond, in the ocean

smelling fresh cut grass, fruit pies in the oven, pizza on the grill, rain, heirloom tomato plants, lemon verbena, the sweet success when we finished building our screened in porch

INSPIRATION |

every color especially green, flea markets, poetry, feeling free, dining with friends, farmers markets, traveling, abandoned farm houses, reading everything, drinking champagne, NYC,  fresh seasonal produce and fruit, looking in the past, architecture, my Dad, adventure, kindness, going to the movies, making new friends, baking old fashioned layer cakes

ICONS |

Julia Child

Pierre Herme

Helmet Newton

David Tanis

Alice Waters

Andy Warhol

CONSTANT FAVORITES | not necessarily in this order

fresh squeezed grapefruit juice

flower gardens

jams & jellies

white

Jack Russell Terriers

seasonal farm fruit and vegetables

evolving as a Chef

our home

fresh picked cherries

Nature

Marilyn Monroe films

Saddle shoes

Ray Bans

Mad Men

F. Scott Fitzgerald

walking Oliver

baking pies

PLAYLIST | SPRING

Brian Eno, echo and the bunnymen, Philip Glass, Edith Piaf, Kraftwerk, Florence + The Machine, Diana Krall, The Clash

PLAYLIST | SUMMER

David Bowie, Velvet Underground, Pixies, Elvis Costello, T Rex, Woody Guthrie, Munford & Sons, Beastie Boys, The Flaming Lips and always every summer Stan Getz, The Girl from Ipanema

WHAT MAKES ME, ME |

Born in Pekin Illinois and raised in the home my parents built, grew up camping and water skiing, have been cooking and baking in the kitchen since I was a little girl, loved being a Girl Scout, studied horticulture in college, hairstylist for 25 years, went to film and photography school in Philadelphia, packed up once and drove 3 months throughout the USA searching for the perfect artistic community to live and decided on Chicago, graduated from pastry school when I was 40 years young, have lived in 8 states, sometimes I cry when I see beautiful food, my beau and I are lovingly restoring our 1930′s home along with Oliver, a rescued Jack Russell,  I recently worked on a farm and it changed my life forever