GARDEN to TABLE

A restaurant cook sets out to garden + write.

Working in celebrated restaurants encouraged me to explore sustainability in my private culinary life.

​​What can be done with the odds and ends? How can scraps add up so much? Who produces our food? How do we honor them?

I hope to write a cookbook connecting my fine dining experience with the realities of living on a budget and choosing local ingredients.

the Cafe Eli offers catering in the greater Tucson area. Parties, family dinners, weekly meal plans & specialty items. Local produce at a fair price. Contact for menus and pricing.

Cafe Eli recipes are written for the home cook, using professional techniques to achieve restaurant results.

Forget meal planning, learning to cook like a chef is all about Mis En Place- giving you more versatility and getting the most out of each ingredient.

Cooking Seasonally in Southern Arizona

The Arizona-Sonora desert is a beautiful and biodiverse place. It is home to and surrounded by agricultural production of many kinds.

Organic farms, community programs, suburban orchards and desert foraging give us unique and distinct local products. The warm winters + monsoon season give Arizonans two bonus growing seasons.

Through organizations like Native Seeds Search and the Pima County Library Seed Catalog, gardeners in Tucson have access to seeds and plants which will thrive right here.