About

Kara was born on January 16th, 19….

Ok. That’s a bit TOO far back. Let’s skip ahead to maybe 19 years old.

Time for college, and my passion is art. Fine arts. I enrolled at Daemen College, a small private school in Buffalo, New York. I majored in Fine Arts Education, grades k-12. I also decided to undertake a minor in graphic design, because I couldn’t just have kiddos slinging paint at canvases all day long.

3 years into my degree, life happened. What I though was just a temporary derailment and hiatus from my degree pursuit became more permanent. I was dying, CRAVING, to return to school to complete my course work and get into a classroom to teach those eager little minds!

But as life does, it takes over. I had responsibilities since leaving school. And they seemed to drive everything.

I spent most of the next few years in restaurants, and typically as a manager. I’ve always been the leading type, I have a hard time following. Some call that “bossy”, mostly my kids and hubby. I call it organizing people within circumstances. :)

A brief time away from the food industry lead me to the man who would become my husband and father to our 3 noise makers adorable boys. But before number 3 arrived I went back to school at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.

Why go back to school with two kids? Why leave my job of four years, make my hubby transfer his job to a different state? Why give up most of our income?

I loved making sweets. And my husband believed in my ability to make it in the pastry world and to be someone with my art, just food art.

A wing and prayer, and rather blind faith, we did it.

I graduated two times atop my class and with accolades to boot. I learned under some of the best chefs and cake artists in the world. I sharpened my teeth as an intern in New York City for 5 months (after all, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere!) working under the guidance of Ron Ben-Israel and his crazy talented crew.

Straight away out of school (and 4 months pregnant with number 3) I took a positions a Dining Services Director in Healthcare for a hospice residence in Rockland County, just a few miles north of New York City. It changed everything about my love for food. It changed how I look at the world, family human beings… It was powerful.

Then… Baby.

Then… More unexpected life happening (it keeps doing that!).

Then back to my hometown and where my husband and I began, Buffalo, New York. The City of Good Neighbors. And chicken wings. And beef on weck. And snow in amounts that seem crippling; but we’ve evolved to make life work in spite of it. Buffalo. The place my heart will always reside.