With Katherine Deumling

Regularly cooking from scratch is often seen as time consuming, complicated and just plain unrealistic for our busy lives. Katherine Deumling (Cook With What You Have) sees it as a way to simplify and beautify your life--a creative, delicious and even meditative part of daily life. Cooking with our extraordinary local fruits and vegetables is a treat for the senses and our health and a real connection to our soil, climate and place. Join us as Katherine demonstrates and shares techniques and recipes to make delicious meals with ease. 

Katherine owns the local business Cook With What You Have to share her joy of cooking vegetable-centered meals with fresh, seasonal produce. Her recent year of breast cancer treatment made it even more apparent that we all need tools to nourish ourselves, our loved ones and those in need.

Preparing delicious, creative meals with fresh vegetables and pantry staples can be simple, fun and rewarding. Take control of your kitchen, health and budget and cook with what you have! Cook with What You Have’s Seasonal Recipe Collection offers simple, flexible recipes, templates and tips to make the most of seasonal produce and combine them with basic pantry staples for every day meals.

Katherine studied food and culture in Italy and Mexico (on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship) and grew up in Germany. She has worked in restaurants; however, her primary experience comes from feeding groups of people on the fly in many settings with whatever was available. These experiences have broadened her notion of what constitutes a meal and her repertoire of dinner ideas beyond the classic meat, potatoes, vegetable trio.

She is an emeritus board member of Slow Food USA and was the leader of Slow Food Portland from 2003 to 2008. She is an ambassador for Oxfam’s Sisters on the Planet Initiative. Locally she is part of the Culinary Breeding Network and a board member of Zena Forest Products, a family forest and sawmill operation. She is an avid (and very mediocre) gardener, cook and food activist, living in Portland (Oregon) with her husband and 11-year old son.