Hello.
My life as a pastry chef was incredible. But this Substack is about all the things my baking life was not.
Starting out in the 1980’s as a savory cook in New York City, with a brief stint in France, I ended up at Jeremiah Tower’s Stars restaurant in San Francisco, the city that became my culinary home. At Stars I switched to the pastry department and never looked back, eventually going on to work at several other great restaurants.
It was high-paced, all-consuming work that filled my life with amazing food, shared meals, grateful customers, and wonderful colleagues. I participated in food and charity events across the country and the world where I met many talented, fun chefs. Thousands of desserts, hundreds of dessert menus, five cookbooks, and two James Beard Awards, I wouldn’t give it back for anything.
But once outside the organized chaos of the industry, it became clear that I had missed many of the quieter, more subtle details and moments of my life. I am now captivated by the task of discovering, exploring, and capturing these as I pursue a life both with and beyond food. Whether it is making jam, chocolate, or fruit-based caramel sauces, cooking with chef friends at a charity event, reading poetry, listening to podcasts that make me think (like Wiser Than Me by Julia Louis Dreyfus and Wild Card with Rachel Martin), hiking near my home in Western Marin County, or cleaning the chicken coop, I am trying to bring a curious attention to everything I do and see.
Why the title Apricot Perigee? Seasonally perfect fruit was the hallmark of my award winning desserts. Over the decades, I have held thousands of fragrant lemons and softened stone fruit in my hand, marveling at their beauty and flavor. At night when I look up at a full or new moon in perigee (the point in the moon’s orbit when it is nearest to the earth), I imagine plucking it from the sky and holding it in my hand just like a piece of ripe fruit. It’s about exploring the beauty of seemingly simple things and those that are so large you can only begin to understand them.
I’d be thrilled if you’d join me as I write (every two weeks on Thursdays) about my food world now, life as a part-time ranch hand on our family cattle ranch, places I visit, and people I meet. I will have conversations with women who inspire me. On occasion, I will post an original poem. Apricot Perigee will meander and evolve, for that’s what life does. I look forward to you getting to know another side of me, not just Emily the pastry chef and cookbook author.
If you enjoy my work and are so inclined, please share it with others. I am making my work free for now but if you join as a Founding Member I have a special offer. The first hundred people who sign up as Founding Members will receive a jar of my homemade jam or flavored caramel sauce as a thank you. (Options will be emailed once you sign up!)
