Hi, I'm Melly Bess!

So here's a little bit about my food background before I dive into posting recipes.  I have always loved food, but who the hell hasn't? After various experiments with my personal eating habits (veganisn, vegetarianism, college-stoner snackism...) I have settled on being happily omnivorous. I have also had the good fortune to hone my kitchen skills through during several years of cooking jobs.

In college I lived in a 150 person student cooperative with a 2000 square foot commercial kitchen, complete with walk in fridge and freezer. We purchased food collectively, going through cases of local, organic fruits veggies, bacon, and even a whole pasture-raised cow. We also cooked dinner collectively. I somehow weaseled my way onto a dinner cooking crew and spend 5 hours each Wednesday pumping out huge meals. The themes changed week to week and day to day, but all the meals were vegan except for the meat dish and usually one of the desserts. We made kiddie-pool sized salads, garbage-can volumes of veggies, and amounts of cornbread and cake that could have been measured in acres.

Get at those veggies kid!

My second semester I moved up to co-food manager, purchasing the food and organizing the cooking crews. I would describe all the food I cooked and oversaw at the coop as Pan-Hippie Chic. Most dinners were well rounded and healthy, to counter the Earth Balance-heavy vegan sweets and cheesy snacks pumped out of the kitchen during late night stress or substance induced cooking sessions.

Pretty sure I saw a few of these come out of our kitchen

After college I was able to apply my Pan-Hippie experience to a cooking job in the Sierra. I was the staff cook for the outdoor instructors of Outward Bound. My job was to make lunch and dinner and special event meals for a fluctuating number of metabolic-machine mountain men and women, and to make sure all their food cost $5 per person per day. That meant turning cheap whole ingredients (mostly organic) into interesting, delicious, healthy meals. It was a challenge--finding new recipes with my limited ingredients—but a wonderful exercise in creative cooking.

My Mountain People at a special dinner

I also did a stint at a fine dining hotel restaurant. I learned some great basic skills, but I can honestly say that it was not my kind of food. The menu was all meat, seafood and sauce, with nods to molecular gastronomy and plates full of coulis squiggles and dots. Anti-simple.

Did I mention polenta cubes?

So, you—my dear reader—can take all of these things into consideration as you check out my recipes and posts.