I cannot remember when I first started cooking. Some of my fondest memories are of me sitting on my grandmother’s counter-top handing her ingredients when I was just a little girl. From a very young age, I was exposed to a variety of foods and ingredients. I was born in Costa Rica.

My grandmother has Spanish heritage from the Basque region of Spain and my grandfather has Mexican heritage. On my mother’s side of the family, my grandmother was several generations Costa Rican and my grandfather had Italian heritage. When my dad remarried, a brand new world was exposed to me. In this family, my uncle is Indian, my aunt is Irish and the rest of the family has Northern European heritage. Needless to say, there was a variety of foods served at any gathering. I remember when we first moved to the states, one of my dad’s friends was trying to gross me out by telling me that we were eating octopus for dinner. Sadly for him, my reaction was the complete opposite from what he expected. I was eleven at the time and had tried and loved octopus.

After getting a Food Engineering degree from Iowa State University, I went to work for a large agro-processing company. It was during this time that I realized that my true calling was in the culinary arts. So, I took a leap of faith and went to the Culinary Business Academy in Phoenix, Arizona. There I learned how to better my skills to become a Personal Chef.

However, when I finished my course of study, I decided to stay working for the same company until I found a place where I wanted to settle down. Fast-forward a couple of years… When I moved to Baton Rouge in the summer of 2004, I decided that it was here that I wanted to start my business. So, I prepared and acclimated myself to the south (I had been a northern girl for the past 18 years!), and this past January I was ready to get my business venture off to a start. Thus, The Dream Gourmet was born.

What is The Dream Gourmet? It is a chance for anyone that wants to take a break from their busy schedule from the daily task of cooking. Most people when they hear of a Personal Chef immediately have little dollar signs dancing in front of their eyes and are really thinking of a Private Chef. The main difference is the quantity of clients that are serviced. As a Personal Chef, I develop a menu, go grocery shopping, bring all of my equipment to the clients house, cook at the client’s home, prepare 4-5 entrees with 4-5 portions each, package them, label them, place them in either the fridge or the freezer and leave reheating instructions. Now, the client has enough food to last 20 servings! Perfect for anyone that is on-the-go.

I chose this profession because I just think cooking is an amazing art! Yes, an art. What I love most about it is how you can take a variety of ingredients, give them to ten different people and have them make a dish, any dish. You then get 10 completely different dishes. Now, if those ten people happen to be from 10 different countries, man, let me tell you… talk about different! There is a whole world of ingredients out there and all that we need is a little creativity to make a wonderful dish happen.

Let’s take tomatoes for example, in particular, tomato sauce. You open up the pantry and you have crushed tomatoes, white wine, garlic, oil and oregano. If you throw them in a pan and bring them to a boil, you get a pretty tasty soup. In another pan, you heat up the oil and fry the garlic for about a minute and then you put in about half a cup of the wine and let it reduce until it is almost all evaporated. Then you put in the tomatoes and oregano and let that reduce until it is thickened. Now you have a pretty tasty tomato sauce that can go over chicken scaloppini or any of your favorite pasta. You just made two very different products from the exact same ingredients and all you did was change the preparation method. That is what is so fun about cooking.