My family is Polish –American, and homegrown food was a large part of our lives, my family worked in our backyard garden and grew a large amount of what we ate.

   I realized how I was raised a few years ago, when reminiscing about our frequent family gatherings at my grandparents home, we would play hide and seek with my cousins, running and hiding in the rows of the garden, which filled their back yard. One of my favorite holiday treats was when my grandfather served his homemade kielbasa for dinner. There were winter days that we sat at the kitchen table and filled our bellies on preserved vegetables and peaches my grandmother stored from the summer’s harvest. The flavors and the aromas that I remember from my childhood inspire me in my cooking and to be sustainable in my life style.

   I have worked thirty plus years professionally as a chef, serving great recipes in award winning restaurants throughout Vermont. My restaurant journey began as a dishwasher after school at the Yankee Drover Inn Newton, Connecticut. This is where I was first inspired to become a chef. This experience and after many years of cooking in restaurants in New York and Connecticut, I wanted to become more knowledgeable about food, so I chose to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. Soon after my graduation I headed to Vermont with my wife and son, where I developed a life style inspired by my passion for food and the great outdoors.

   As a chef, there have been many restaurants, hotels, inns and resorts that I have worked in over the years; many of these experiences inspire my creative side. When I chose to prepare local food, it was quite challenging. I always enjoyed the opportunity to meet the farmers and other crafters of local foods. On the way to work some days I would spend hours gathering many items for that night’s preparation. Whenever an opportunity arose, I would fill the back of my car with fresh produce and all of us on the cooking staff would preserve the harvest for the winter to come. We cleaned and blanched hundreds of pounds of fiddleheads and wild chanterelle mushrooms.

   These days I am working as the executive chef at Vermont’s largest hospital, I am proud to provide the finest local foods in Vermont and the Northeast for our patients and others.  I am continuously challenged to work on reducing our waste and environmental impact. In addition to local produce, there is an abundance of other local foods available in Vermont and the Northeast, where there are producers of all kinds of artisan cheeses, grass-fed beef, lamb and apples.  My cooking is continuously being inspired by what is happening in Vermont farms today. I have really enjoyed living and working in a state full of such great riches.

   My life includes a harvest of good local foods, and recipes that I created for this cookbook were inspired by the years of cooking for friends, family and the many generous people we served at different restaurants in Vermont.