Teachers
Wendy Van Wagner- Owner
In 2007, Wendy Van Wagner founded In the Kitchen Cooking School in her San Francisco home-kitchen. The classes started as a humble offering to other cooks, non-cooks and passionate eaters as a way to learn, create and enjoy a meal together with friends.
In 2008 Wendy moved to Nevada City where she opened In the Kitchen featuring a brand new teaching kitchen and dining room. The classes bloomed as did partnerships with other organizations that were in line with all that In the Kitchen aimed to be. Some of those organizations included Sierra Nevada Memorial Hospital Foundation, Briar Patch Co-op and Fit Culture.
In 2009, In the Kitchen also became home to several micro-food businesses and served as an incubator to new businesses. Currently, In the Kitchen offers a kitchen share program.
Most recently Wendy has devoted much of her time to the organization Live Healthy Nevada County which improves access to healthy, local foods as well as farm to school connections.
Prior to founding In the Kitchen, Wendy received a B.A. in cultural anthropology from Pitzer College in Claremont, Ca. She also studied at Bauman College in Berkeley and is a certified Nutrition Educator.
Her passion for cooking developed while in college and working at a student run cafe called The Grove House Kitchen. From there she worked for Bay Area catering and events company, Jane Hammond Events, Aubergine in Berkeley and at Gialina in San Francisco.
Wendy has taught cooking and nutrition classes in both public and private schools, including Berkeley Youth Alternatives, a community center offering enrichment classes to underserved populations, The North Oakland Community Charter School. She was also involved with the Edible Schoolyard project at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, which actively integrates the crucial connections between agriculture and culinary arts.
In 2006 she designed and produced the hot lunch program at the Oakland Community Charter School. In the fall of 2006, Wendy worked on the Alexander Valley Vineyard in Healdsburg, CA as the assistant chef in residence for the grape harvest and crush season.
She has been member of Slow Food, the Weston A. Price Foundation, and the National Association of Nutrition Professionals
Joe Meade- Teacher, fermentation and burrito expert Joe is a passionate home cook, artist, storyteller and character. He teaches the Indian class as well the Yoga of Cooking. He has cooked for a thousand people at festivals, run a bed and breakfast and been a vegetarian for 25 years. He is a new father and looks forward to cooking colorful baby mashes soon!
Pauli Halstead
Pauli Halstead, author of Primal Cuisine, Cooking for the Paleo Diet, will teach why the primal diet of our ancestors is the most successful from an evolutionary standpoint and the diet that we will thrive on today. The class focuses on protein from exclusively grass-fed meat, wild fish, healthy fats, non-starchy organic vegetables, nuts, seeds and berries as key to the primal diet.
Pauli’s culinary career began in San Francisco in 1975 when she opened Pauli’s Café, a wonderful neighborhood restaurant on the corner of Fillmore and Washington streets. She also ran a successful catering business, The Best of Everything, in the Napa Valley for over twenty years. Pauli now has a new venture, Sierra Farm to Table, with her partner, Shanan Manuel, which features local and regionally sourced food from Nevada County.
Pauli brings her many years of experience with fine California wine country cuisine and organic natural foods to her classes. Her focus on nutritionally dense food, lovingly prepared, is coupled with her philosophy that organic vegetables and fruits, grass-fed meat, sustainably caught wild fish, “pastured” poultry and dairy are the basic building blocks to optimum physical and mental health.
Jessica Flanigan
Jessica is a functional nutritionist, licensed caterer and owner of Lemon Star Larder. She is a food writer and blogger, and she started the Nevada City Food Swap. She was on the board of directors for the North Columbia Schoolhouse Cultural Center for 8 years, and currently she offers a food share made with locally grown food through In The Kitchen . Her blog is www.seaweedsnacks@blogspot.com
Atma Campbell
Amanda “Atma” Campbell is owner & creator of Next Level Foods, a Nevada County local raw foods business specializing in nutritious, dehydrated snacks & other living cuisine items. Offering a wide array of class options at In The Kitchen, Atma & co-teaching partner Eva Tobie delight in sharing local, organic, raw, gluten free, low gylcemic & plant based nutrition with the community. Connect with Next Level Foods at the Nevada City Farmer’s Market & join in on a class that will activate your taste buds & then some. Atma also teaches children’s “un-cooking” classes at local schools where she connects the whole process of growing the foods & utilizes local & seasonally grown ingredients to create delicious snacks with the children.
Eva Tobie
Eva Tobie has graduated from two chef schools focused on healthy eating. The first in Berkeley at Bauman College in their Holistic Nutrition and Culinary Arts training and in Fort Bragg at the Living Light Raw Culinary Instructor Chef program. Eva also completed the Plant Based Nutrition course from E-Cornell from the people interviewed in the film FORKS OVER KNIVES. She continues to get most of her wisdom on healthy eating directly from the plant kingdom in her garden as well extensive personal research. A true “Kitchen Alchemist” Eva loves to create dishes so delicious and eye appealing that you would naturally choose them over any other food choices. Her greatest passion is igniting people on their own personal discovery of vibrant health.
Mielle Chenier-Cowan Rose
Mielle Chenier-Cowan Rose recently transplanted from the Bay Area, where she helped develop Cafe Gratitude of SF/Berkeley. She also cooked at the Macrobiotic Cafe after training at Bauman College in 2000. Last year she self-published “Piece of My Heart: A Collection of Vegan Recipes and Cooking Techniques” while simultaneously learning to cook with nutrient dense animal-based foods, and has lived to integrate the paradox. Her meals have been compared to the thrill of being on an amusement park ride. She strives to live up to the compliment.
Steffen Snell and Adam Montgomery
Both Adam and Steffen work locally as baristi at The Curly Wolf Espresso House in Nevada City. Steffen has been making coffee professionally and passionately since 1999 when he started as a barista in training at Dean and DeLuca in Washington D.C. where he rose to barista trainer and partook in local espresso competitions. Adam found coffee and started on the path of being a barista in 2010 when he discovered the rarity of people caring about what they do in a service environment which then blossomed into a soul attraction to the ritual of coffee brewing. These two have found a very warm common ground both in serving fine coffee but also in their nearly addictive love of seeking out and tasting the variations and character of the sensory yoga/meta-experience of preparing and drinking the good coffee.
Katie Carter
Katie Carter, known in our community as a yoga teacher and founder of Wild Mountain Yoga Center, went back to school and graduated from Hawthorn University as a Holistic Nutrition Consultant. Katie’s cooking classes are focused on attaining vibrant health through food. She’s taught such topics as detoxification, how to nourish adrenals, weight loss, and food intolerance.
Visit her website www.katiecarterwellness.com
Victoria LaFont
I am a certified Nutritional Therapy Practitioner through the Nutritional Therapy Association, located in Olympia, Washington. For over a decade I have explored varied diets and healing modalities, ranging from raw veganism to the Primal Diet. My interest in diet stemmed from a strong desire to heal life long health problems without continued reliance on prescription drugs.
In 2006 I graduated magne cum laude from Murray State University with a bachelor of arts degree, emphasis in medical anthropology and professional writing. My time studying varied culture’s practices sparked my interest in continuing to investigate the link between chronic illness/ degenerative disease and dietary habits.
The teachings of the Weston A. Price Foundation and the Nutritional Therapy Association, paired with my background in medical anthropology, have led me to believe that a properly prepared, whole food, nutrient dense diet is one of the primary keys to optimal health.
Migiwa Kawasaki
Migiwa is a Macrobiotic chef who was born in Japan. She completed the Macrobiotic Leadership program at the Kushi Institute, a nationally recognized center for natural healing in Massachusetts. Migiwa teaches Macrobiotic cooking classes and coaches individuals on the Macrobiotic diet. She is also the Macrobiotic chef at BriarPatch Co-op, preparing the popular Bento boxes. Migiwa is also an in-home personal chef and caterer.
Shan Kendall
Shan grew up on a farm in central Illinois. Following a career which included work as a microbiologist, a mother and a Waldorf teacher, she returned to the “farm” as a local food activist and teacher.
Shan has been a strong supporter of the local food movement for the past ten years, especially since becoming a local Chapter Leader of the Weston Price Foundation. The main job of a Weston Price Chapter Leader is to locate local sources of nutrient dense foods, such as those grown by Joel Salatin on Polyface Farms or those grown locally by the farmers of the Living Lands Agrarian Network. Shan has taken it a step further by helping to educate local farmers and consumers and to personally attempt to grow some of those foods herself: raising chickens on sprouted grains and pasture for eggs and meat, raising cows and goats for meat, milk and cheese, and growing organic and biodynamic fruits and vegetables.
In addition to farming and supporting local farmers, Shan has been teaching cooking/nutrition classes for the past eight years and at “In the Kitchen” in Nevada City since it first opened. For more information about nutrient dense foods, you can visit www.westonaprice.org or email Shan at daveshanken@juno.com.
Susan Meagher
Local Mom Susan Meagher started Nanas Artisan Bakery in 2009 after retiring from a career as a Buyer/Planning Manager for Macys and Gap to raise her son.
She has been baking and collecting recipes since she was 16, and starting Nanas was a dream come true.
Nanas focuses on made from scratch classics such as Scones, Cinnamon Rolls, Fruit Pies, Cookies reminiscent of Grandma’s cookie jar, Cobblers, Apple Dumplings, and more. She uses local, organic fruit where possible.
This year, Nana can be found at the Northstar House Growers Market, Saturdays 8-12:30 starting April 13. Come for breakfast, hopefully still warm from the oven, enjoying Apricot White Chocolate Scones, Blueberry Coffee Cake, Peach Raspberry Pocket Pies, Lemon Cake with Organic Raspberry Coulis, Espresso Brownies, and much more.
Georgia Gross
Georgia Gross is a native San Franciscan. By the age of 14, she knew that culinary arts was her passion and began her lifelong career. After practicing at home with French and Italian cookbooks making dinner for her father and sisters, she landed a job at a popular upscale Italian bistro in Pacific Heights. She graduated from the California Culinary Academy in 1989 and was recruited by Italian restaurant group Il Fornaio and moved to Los Angeles to open a downtown café with the company. After returning to San Francisco in 1993, she worked alternately as a chef and as a manager in local restaurants and food retail establishments, while also working as a private caterer and personal chef around the Bay Area. In 2002, she opened her own farm-to-table restaurant concept, Dulcinea Café and Catering in San Francisco’s South of Market district.
In 2012, she relocated to Nevada County, CA and has made a new home with a large organic garden, bringing along over two decades of cooking and service experience. She launched Beverly and Nyla Catering (named as a tribute to her two grandmothers) and has settled nicely into her new community. Georgia entertains and delights the culinary demographic of California’s Gold Country with her hearty Mediterranean-style fare with an emphasis on seasonal and local ingredients.