Marie has a new guest blog featured on the Project Foodie website.
This will be a long time Thanksgiving favorite dish!
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Watch Marie make a delicious fresh fig and peach crumble on KGO's View from the bay by clicking on the link below!!
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Here is a link to an informative interview with Marie at a cool food site.
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I’ve been invited to teach at Rancho La Puerta, the beautiful spa and resort in Tecate, Mexico on a regular (See Classes and Events)
The classes are held at La Cocina que Canta, the kitchen that sings. And sing it does. The students gather around an enormous butcher block work space, each with their own cutting board, razor sharp knives, and ingredients piled into brightly colored Mexican pottery bowls. For the first few minutes the students, all outfitted in bright blue aprons affixed with name tags in extra large and bold type, tentatively begin to organize their cooking adventure. Soon the singing begins: Voices hum, pots and pans clink and clatter, knives chop chop, water splashes and food sizzles in hot skillets. Yes, we’re cooking.
This sense of joy and community is contagious. And it’s why I love not only the process of cooking, but being a cooking teacher. Sometimes in the midst of all the cacophony I give myself a brief moment—and only a moment—to reflect on the positive energy in this beautiful brightly tiled space. I think to myself,” If success is to be measured by laughter and a keen sense of fun, learning and adventure, then the cooking school at Rancho La Puerta—La Cocina Que Canta— is indeed a raving success.
This is why I love the ranch and adore teaching classes there. The “kitchen that sings” makes me happy beyond measure.
But, that’s not all. 
The other reason I love teaching here is the astounding six acre organic garden and colorful flower gardens surrounding the large adobe building that houses the school.
Read more about the gardens—Rancho Tres Estrellas—and Salvador their dedicated head gardener in a feature I wrote for my Bay Area News Group monthly column, Simmons Sez, on May 6, 2009.
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Marie has a blog!
www.mariesimmonsvegetarian.blogspot.com/
Go to the bottom of the blog to subscribe
Marie uses olive oil from California Olive Ranch, located in the California foothills, here is a link to their web site.
To make the perfect meatball you need the love. Without the
love it’s just a ball of meat.”
Marie—the mother on the TV sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond”
For me, cooking is like breathing. It comes naturally,
intuitively, without a moment’s hesitation.
I cook because I love everything about it: The process; the
ingredients, the aromas; the taste…..and the ultimate
experience of sharing food lovingly cooked and prepared.
That’s where you come in.
This website allows me
to share almost a lifetime of cooking. It all began in my
grandmother’s and mother’s kitchen many years ago. Their
influence inspired me to study foods and nutrition in
college with the goal of working in magazine test kitchens
as a career. Ultimately I became a cookbook author and food
writer with over 30 years of experience. During this time
I’ve been researching food, eating— both around the world
and down the road— and cooking—always cooking. It seems no
matter what my destination or my intention, my journey
always leads me to the kitchen. It’s there that I am
obviously the happiest.
The result is that I’ve
published thousands of recipes, written hundreds of features
and columns for magazines and newspapers, and authored
numerous cookbooks.
Here I intend to share
the best of what I’ve produced and much of the newer stuff
I’m now working on. I hope that for you, logging on to this
website is akin to having me at your side either in the
kitchen or— better yet— sitting down at the table and
enjoying a meal—if not in the flesh, then certainly through
a cyber connection—together.
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My latest cookbook the best selling, THINGS COOKS LOVE for Sur La Table, the cookware chain, is not only a best seller, but was a 2009 nominee for an Internati onal Association of Culinary Professionals Award for "Best General Cookbook."
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From Nana’s Kitchen to Becoming a Cookbook Author 
When people hear I’m a cookbook author, they often ask, “How does one go about writing a cookbook?” And my answer is always, “Page, by page.”
I wasn’t born knowing how to write a cookbook, but I was groomed for the task by being born into a family of avid cooks. My fondest childhood memories are not of dolls and games, but of Saturdays spent in my grandmother’s –affectionately known as Nana—kitchen rolling out cookie dough, shaping fresh pasta, or peeling apples for pie.
I studied foods and nutrition in college, but being a cookbook author was not in my game plan. My first job, right out of college, was as a test kitchen editor at Woman’s Day magazine. Ultimately I became the food editor of Cuisine magazine. When Cuisine ceased publication and I began my freelance food writing career, it didn’t occur to me to write a cookbook, even then. But an editor from my magazine days, now working for a publisher, called to say she had an in house idea for a pasta cookbook and it needed a writer. The subject happened to be close to my heart. Little did I know at the time that her call would be the push I needed to find my life’s work.
I must have asked the editor the very same question that people ask me, because she is the one who advised me, “Page by page.”
Of course, it’s true that one writes one page at a time, but the advantage of writing a cookbook is that most of those pages are filled with recipes. And so I cook, so I can write, because without the cooking, those pages would be blank.
For me the process of writing a cookbook is purely organic. It is necessary for me to touch the food if I am going to write about it. It’s as if I need to stand in the kitchen and roll out the cookie dough, shape the fresh pasta, or peel those apples for pie before I can find the words to fill the pages that will someday be bound together into a book.
One might say that writing cookbooks has made it possible for me to recreate a lifetime of Saturdays in Nana’s kitchen
Advice for would-be cookbook authors:
Most cookbooks take a minimum 6 months to a year of daily work to complete.
Love your subject, otherwise after months, or in some cases years, of testing Find inspiration for recipe ideas in the market, by talking to friends, reading menus, reading books on food, tapping into your own memory.
Make a list of recipes and ideas for recipes and test your way through the list, day by day
The best way to organize is to write a rough draft of each recipe before going into the kitchen
Take the recipe into the kitchen and keep careful notes of amounts (weigh and measure everything), cooking times, size of pots, utensils used, etc.
Avoid testing fatigue by only testing 2 or 3 recipes a day.
So you won’t forget anything make sure to write a clean, final, version of the recipes you’ve tested at the end of the day
Keep your work organized. I like to organize by chapters, or if chapters haven’t been decided yet, by menu courses.
Use your friends and neighbors as tasters. Encourage them to be honest in their evaluations.
Retest each recipe at least once, but preferably twice.
Hire a recipe tester or recruit friends to re-test your recipes, especially baking recipes
Set aside one day of the week to research subjects, edit recipes, write head notes or side bars.
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