Relish Culinary Adventures is a culinary education business in Healdsburg, California, in the heart of the Sonoma County wine country. Relish combines talented chefs, fabulous cuisine, and captivating Sonoma County locations, including the new Relish Culinary Center, to create one-of-a-kind wine country cooking classes, tours and other culinary events for individuals, groups, and businesses. All of our events feature locally-grown and/or organic ingredients whenever possible, illustrating the bounty of this wonderful region and leaving guests with a "sense of place" that is all about Sonoma County.

Our goal is to celebrate seasonal, local food and provide afresh and stimulating learning experience for everyone at every event.

Founded by Donna del Rey in 2003, Relish offers classes on a wide range of topics from wine country cuisine to ethnic specialties, wine and beer education to cheese making workshops, canning &preserving to children's cooking classes. In addition, Relish hosts events that bring people together in the kitchen such as private cooking parties and corporate team-building events.

For each event, we thoughtfully match each location with a skilled chef and class theme, resulting in a unique “personality” for each event. Most classes include a full meal of the featured recipes (no skimpy tastes here) paired with excellent local wines specially selected for the menu.

Relish supports the bounty of local chefs, farmers, wine experts and food purveyors in Sonoma County from whom we build an impressive list of class instructors. We have cultivated relationships with local farms, cheesemakers, olive oil producers and other artisans and our local farmers markets and we encourage guests to support sustainable farms.

In addition to our scheduled cooking classes, Relish offers private events for groups and businesses, organizes culinary tours, is a responsive operator for tour groups, and sponsors chef demonstrations at a variety of culinary events in Sonoma County including the Gravenstein Apple Fair and the Artisan Cheese Festival.

Photograph by Michal Venera. Courtesy of Traditional Home magazine.

Visit Relish Culinary! Download all the delicious 2009 recipes by clicking the dishes in the schedule above!

Get Adobe Acrobat here.

Carol Kozlowski-Every is third generation of Sonoma County agricultural heritage. She is involved in the daily operations and management of Kozlowski Farms along with her brother Perry Kozlowski, Sister Cindy Kozlowski-Hayworth and Mother Carmen Kozlowski.

Carol specializes her business expertise in the sales and marketing division of all Kozlowski Farms and Russian River Organic products on the national and local levels. She also works in the development of many of their specialty, natural and organic products.

Residing in Santa Rosa with her husband Paul, together they have two children; Tracy Dutton of Sebastopol and Kimberly Knechtle of Santa Rosa and six grandchildren. Carol is currently on the Board of Directors and is the current Secretary for the Russian River Winegrowers Association, is an active member of Farm Trails and the Sonoma County Farm Bureau.

Chef/Owner Joe Rueter is a CIA grad and French Laundry alum. He has worked in restaurants all over the globe from Charlie Trotters in Chicago to Checchino dal 1887 in Rome and Country in New York. Long before opening the GreenGrocer with his wife Susanna Davis, Joe began a passionate career in farm direct foods and has developed a strong philosophy rooted in the “eat local” food movement. By starting a 16 acre farm he filled the void for locally grown beef, pork, poultry and tree fruit, to stock his original Wise Traditions Market & Café in Essex, MA. Chef Joe Rueter has furthered his education for the Animal Husbandry, Slaughter, Butchery, Traditional Salumi, Permaculture farming and Lacto-fermentation through experience. His goal is to concern himself and educate others in Gastronomy, the discipline that concerns itself with all things pertaining to food and nourishment though eating.

“Once I knew how to cook meat perfectly, I learned to butcher. It was only natural to then begin raising animals myself when the quality I expected was not available locally. Of necessity and respect I learned to slaughter and to utilize every part of an animal.” - Chef Joe Rueter

The philosophy of “head to tail” and “range to plate” is applied to everything edible and Joe embraces this process in every ingredient of every dish at the GreenGrocer. Since moving to California and starting a business Joe is also concerning himself with carbon footprints and the economy. Between the two you’ll have enough to keep conversation rolling for hours. Add pesticides and government-subsidized farming and that’s more than enough for a three course dinner. But today, Windsor-area residents have a gastronomically conscientious alternative for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The GreenGrocer may not offer a myriad selection of salsas, but the one they do carry is homemade, everything in it is from within 150 miles of the store and in most cases they can even tell you who grew it. Breakfast burritos with duck confit, fresh chocolate chip cookies and rosemary infused lemonade only begin to frame up what The GreenGrocer is all about. The equation goes like this: Local plus Sustainable equals Delicious. So if you’re tired of eating hard imported plums & waxy apples, tasteless unidentifiable meat & fish and heavily processed rancid white flour & other grains then check out The GreenGrocer and Eat 150.

-Joe Rueter & Elliot Davis, ©2009

A Gravenstein Apple Fair tradition awards the Santa Rosa Junior College Sonoma County Farm Trails Memorial Scholarship and a second scholarship, the John Smith Memorial Scholarship which honors the Farm Advisor who encouraged farmers to create Farm Trails almost 30 years ago.

The 2009 scholarship presentations will be made on Saturday, 8/15 at 2:50 pm, Stage One.