I cannot tell you how excited I am to represent Optimal Living and to be involved with this unique culinary experience. Together we will embark on a great journey of cooking, food, restaurants, and all around wellness.

The main purpose of this course is to help you expand your culinary knowledge and to demonstrate the professional techniques that the master chefs of the world use to make their rudimentary foods complete works of art in both taste and appearance. It is important to understand that my lectures and demonstrations are designed to help you “ramp up” towards these levels without intimidating you and leaving you overwhelmed with information.  Anyone can be gourmand and it usually requires a high interest and desire to learn and expand on the base skills that you currently have.  I will help you expand in these areas by showing you extensive demonstrations and by providing you with fun and exciting culinary lectures.  Once you have mastered the secrets behind these techniques, you will be able to expand your talents beyond the basics. Learning the basics is easy but creating and improvising on them will come with desire and the willingness to have fun in the kitchen. Optimal Living is designed for the unproven cook that is ready to prove.

In addition, Optimal Living will be the study of gourmet foods and the components that help make any meal a success. Planning and preparation will be the main tools that will help establish the link between the skills needed in production and the presentation of the finished product. A menu is the most powerful module in the planning phase. I will show you how to plan and compose a menu within the many ethnical, nutritional, seasonal and cost effective manners. Sets and sub-sets of food values, interwoven through these specific manners, will help you harvest a consistent understanding behind the planning phase of a wonderful meal.

Of course, no plan can be executed without the correct tools within the kitchen itself. I will show how to master these tools and where to purchase them if needed.  I will share my knowledge on how to maximize these tools to their full extent in order to minimize the essential inventory that you will need to run an efficient kitchen. Also, I will demonstrate how you can maintain your tools so you can have top culinary equipment at your disposal at all times.

Finally, I encourage you to set a time and date to enjoy visits to restaurants, grocery and specialty wine stores in order to get a feel for what types of products and exciting ideas are being offered to the general public. I look forward to a successful and enriching class.