09/29/2026
I came to Paso Robles to bake, talk pastry, and spend a weekend with extraordinary women in food and agriculture. I left thinking about everything that happens before an ingredient reaches my kitchen.
As bakers and chefs, we put our names on the finished thing. But every piece of fruit, bag of flour, bottle of w**e, pound of butter—and, this weekend, every California prune—has a chain of people, knowledge, labor, and decisions behind it.
That was one of my favorite things about ’s Farmers & Makers: growers, producers, makers, chefs, and bakers sharing the same space and seeing more of the food system from one another’s vantage points.
I loved representing , talking baking on the She’s My Cherry Pie panel, making a few hundred Toasted Milk + California Prune Jewel Cookies, eating extremely well, meeting women whose work I’ve admired from afar, and coming home with seventeen new things I want to make.
Mostly, though, I came home curious (which, after all these years of working in food, might be the best souvenir I could have asked for.)
Thank you to everyone who made this weekend so special. 💜