Chef Nicole Straight

Chef Nicole Straight focuses her talents on creating simple and healthy food. She does more than demystify cooking great meals. The recipes and techniques explored in her writing, teaching and television appearances are designed for parents and busy people. Everyone needs time to eat and enjoy what they have prepared. Chef Nicole Straight weaves this belief into her menus, 15-minute meal recipes, classes and presentations.

Like many chefs, Nicole’s grandmother and mother drew her into the kitchen in early childhood. This family-kitchen spirit brought her to Tuscany after graduate school. In Italy, she added professional skills to family tradition at La Cucina al Focolare. Working as a private chef and with a food and lifestyle television program, together with her other experiences, has given Nicole a unique blend of skills.

As a private chef, Nicole observed how busy people can miss out on cooking’s pleasures. Becoming a parent, taught her that families face the same time pressures, with the added difficulty of satisfying both children and parents. These insights flow together in her approach to cooking, teaching and writing: Time to Eat!

Nicole’s Time to Eat! gives parents and busy people ways to enjoy cooking within their busy schedules. In Time to Eat! classes, her students learn to prepare easy 15-minute meals. Each student leaves understanding cooking’s basic techniques and tools. Nicole’s tips on shopping and list of staples open the world of stress-free cooking to the parents, professionals and business people taking Time to Eat! classes. Easy. Healthy. Quick. Nicole helps everyone find time to eat.

Via her classes, writing, blog, website, cooking on television and interviews, Nicole brings the Time to Eat! philosophy to a broad audience. By presenting her expertise across a variety of media, Nicole helps more and more people find time to eat and enjoy solid nutrition with enticing flavors.

Chef Nicole Straight is dedicated to good, healthy food and the techniques that make it easy for parents and busy people to enjoy cooking and eating 15-minute meals. In the kitchen, in front of the camera, and on the page, Chef Nicole Straight keeps cooking simple, flavorful and fun.

Chef Nicole Straight’s Time to Eat!

Everyone needs time to eat. Chef Nicole Straight’s Time to Eat! classes teach parents and busy people how to cook healthy food quickly. Her 15-minute meals’ simple techniques and rich flavors open cooking’s pleasures to people with busy lives.

Time to Eat! classes gather the insights and skills Nicole has gained as a private chef, educator and parent. She found that the skills anyone needs to cook a wide variety of healthy, fast and flavorful meals could be reduced in number and simplified.

A 90-minute Time to Eat! class makes the kitchen fun again. With a sense of play and exploration, students learn to use simple tools, basic techniques and quick recipes. Nicole demonstrates these skills by preparing meals that take 15 minutes from start to finish. Students use these basic skills because they’ve seen them work in the classroom. Nicole designed the 15-minute meals to be readily adaptable using the basic skills she teaches.

People leave Nicole’s classes looking forward to cooking at home. They’ve experienced the ease and pleasure of good cooking with Nicole. Time to Eat!’s tips and list of staples keep them cooking. Stocking the kitchen with the easily found items on her lists means people can readily prepare their 15-minute meals and create others using their basic skills.

Time to Eat! – like Nicole’s articles, presentations and television appearances – is designed to appeal to parents and busy people. Everyone needs time to eat, but parents and busy people face special challenges.

Parents need speed, appealing flavor and solid nutrition in the kitchen. The question, “Would my children eat this?” guides Nicole’s Time to Eat! meal creation. If she is teaching a recipe in class, odds are that it brought smiles to her daughters’ faces.

Busy people with active professional and personal lives share one problem: time. Nicole solves the time problem. When someone has the basic skills, a good recipe, and the right ingredients they can cook. When a classroom experience teaches them that it will only take 15 minutes, they will cook.

Chef Nicole Straight’s Time to Eat! classes are a great way for anyone to make cooking a relaxing pleasure they cherish and eating a joy they share with others.