It isn’t often that my work and private lives intersect, but I’m always happy when they do. During the day, I work with venture capital firms and the entrepreneurs that they invest in to help them tell their stories. I love a good story, and the startup ecosystem is full of them, from big dramatic story arcs to my favorite kind of story: the little-known entrepreneur with a clear idea and a passion for making it a reality.

Yesterday, I visited Elsa Cisneros and Cristina Gonzalez, the founders of DailyGreenz, etc., in the sunny, spacious kitchen where they work in Santa Barbara. In business for nine months, they sell salads, wraps and other healthy lunch treats to local businesses. Their food is locally-sourced, their approach is sustainable, and their clientele is loyal and growing.

Both are food industry veterans with culinary degrees and broad experience, including corporate catering organizations. Cristina cut her teeth cooking in popular Wolfgang Puck and Reed Hearon establishments in San Francisco. Elsa added to her resume by completing the 14-week Self-Employment Training Course offered by Women’s Economic Ventures, a local, 21-year-old organization that describes its mission this way: “…to create an equitable and just society through the economic empowerment of women.”

While Cristina made salads and wraps for me to taste, Elsa told me about their vision for continuing to expand the currently boot-strapped business, including looking for a store-front to introduce more people to their fresh, thoughtfully-constructed dishes. Down the road, they would like to develop an internship program for students, who are interested in gaining real-world experience as they attend school. The women also told me that they’d like to develop a program to help women in at-risk situations learn the skills they can use to find meaningful work in the culinary world. That kind of passion is infectious.

I watched Cristina make the Flank Steak Wrap, a straightforward name for a wrap that was anything but. The grainy flatbread, sourced from a bakery in Los Angeles, is spread with Cristina’s roasted garlic aioli. The dreamy green spread gets extra flavor from spring onions and tarragon. Marinated, strips of grilled flank steak — from Rancho San Julian, a 175-year-old Santa Barbara County ranch known as much for its extraordinary beef as it is for its storied history — were laid on top of the aioli.

Sliced roasted portobello mushrooms and red peppers and grilled red onions were draped across the beef, layering on the flavor and vibrant color. Organic arugula, Cristina’s kick-in-the-pants cilantro pesto, and a big crumble of goat cheese followed before the wrap was folded and cut in half.

It’s served with a side of a greens and a perfectly-seasoned red-wine vinaigrette. The wrap showcased big, bold flavors and was a striking from the bright colors of those local Farmers Market vegetables.

Elsa and Cristina also sent me on my way with a box of their Grilled Lemongrass Chicken Salad. Thin slices of the marinated, organic chicken, taste both lemony and minty and top a generous mix of soft butter lettuce, tapioca noodles, crunchy napa cabbage, sprouts, sliced carrots, green onions and cucumbers. Fresh aromatic Thai basil, with its purple and green leaves, is scattered on top along with fresh mint and cilantro leaves and chopped peanuts. It comes together with a peppy serrano chili and lime dressing and includes a container of Cristina’s special peanut sauce for a sweet and nutty drizzle of extra flavor.

I’m already angling for an invitation back so I can try the Big Everything Cookies. Cristina let slip that they contain two types of dark chocolate. I’ll report back.

The sun was bright and the fog already had lifted at our house, when I zipped up my down vest, climbed into the car with my camera and my bags, and headed into town for my usual Saturday morning visit to the downtown Santa Barbara Farmers Market.

The colorful baskets from Botswana already were set up on the sidewalk next to the entrance to the Market.

I like to arrive before the Market is open so I can see what’s new, what’s plentiful and what looks interesting to photograph. Maybe because it was still a little overcast downtown, I was struck by the brightness of the colors I saw. And, when I returned home and looked at my photos, I noticed a few themes: Yellow

First squash blossoms of the season; so delicate.

Butter yellow irises, too.

Bright orange, cheery as always, could be seen throughout the Market.

and purple. Purple just pops next to green.

After a busy work week, I feel restored as I stroll through the Market filling my bags. I joke that by the time I’m done with my shopping — weighted down by my haul – I look like a pack mule plodding back to my car, bags and camera swinging in different directions as I walk. I’m always smiling on that walk, though.

I’ll be back later this week with a recipe, but before I sign off, I wanted to share the links to a handful of creative local bloggers, who are cooking, gardening, and creating beautiful homes for their families. Their sites remind me how fortunate I am to live here.

My friend Hollye Jacobs writes movingly about her ordeal with cancer, finding silver linings in life, fashion, home and living a healthy life at The Silver Pen. I learn from her every day.

Valerie Rice welcomes you to her home for cooking, gardening and entertaining tips. Meet her at Eat Drink Garden and don’t forget your gardening gloves. Her blooms and vegetables are quite striking.

Katie at EpicureanMom bowls me over every time I look at her photos whether she’s making healthy dishes or decadent treats.

I haven’t met Emily Jacobs of Sage Recipes yet, but am so enjoying her blog. Her food is inventive and healthy. I’ve bookmarked several recipes that I know my family will enjoy.

Sarah Barbour at GirlFarmKitchen writes beautiful, evocative posts. I love her credo: “food is community, creativity, family and festivity…” I look forward to meeting her, too.

When I made Cathy Barrow’s spicy and garlicky pickled Italian vegetables, Giardiniera, a few months ago, I wrote about my goal to learn how to can and experience the joys of food preservation this year. While I feel confident making sauces and jams, the thought of sterilizing jars, negotiating water baths at a rolling boil and wondering if I had made a catastrophic mistake was all too much. Cathy and others assured me that poisoning my loved ones wasn’t likely to happen if I stuck to jams, jellies and fruit sauces.

Lately, the sheer volume of bright red strawberries has made walking through the Farmers Market feel like aromatherapy of the sweet variety. Tidy, one-pound bundles of rhubarb, rosy-hued and leggy, began making their modest appearance at the Market, too. It was high time I stopped stalling and stepped into the kitchen. I’m so glad that I did.

Nearly a year ago, Cathy wrote this post, Rhubarb Six Ways from Sunday, mentioning my father who adores rhubarb and makes his own sauce, freezing it in small plastic containers that last him most of the year. I thought her Strawberry Rhubarb Sauce would be an appropriate way to kick off my canning experience. I picked up strawberries

and rhubarb.

I grabbed a few Meyer Lemons, too.

Following the recipe, I mixed the slightly mashed berries, sliced rhubarb and lemon juice with sugar and vanilla beans. This vibrant, colorful mixture sat in a glass bowl brightening my kitchen counter on a stormy, gray day.

As the fruit macerated, it released a beautiful, rich pink liquid. After six hours, I drained the juice and boiled it on the stove until thickened. Then, I stirred in the berry mixture until the fruit began to soften. I filled the jars after sterilizing (actually a very straightforward and easy process) leaving a quarter-inch of headroom before placing a lid on top. After locking the lids in place, I lowered the jars carefully into a large pot of boiling water and left them in there to process for 10 minutes. When the timer went off, I set them on a dry towel on the counter to cool a bit. Within a few minutes a ping could be heard from each of the jars, signaling that the seals were strong. (I checked the jars the next morning, unscrewing the rings and lifting the jars by the lids. The lids held their seals beautifully. If they hadn’t, the jars would have been placed immediately in the fridge.)

I can’t sign off without telling you about this complex and alluring sauce. The color is arresting; a deep, dark red. The aroma: sweet at first, then slightly spicy and warm from the vanilla. The flavor: sweet and tart at once and the fruit is lightly cooked, so there is texture to the sauce. While we nearly polished off the first jar simply dipping our spoons in for tastes, in my next post, I’ll show you a terrific way to serve this versatile sauce. In the meantime, here is a link to Cathy’s recipe.

Over a dinner organized by my friend Cathy Barrow in New York last week, I met Stella Parks (AKA @thebravetart), who for the last 18 months has been applying the rigor of her education from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) to the creation of sophisticated and inventive desserts for Table 310, a Lexington, Kentucky-based restaurant serving local, farm-driven, seasonal food. For her Blood Orange Panna Cotta with a toasted Champagne Marshmallow and countless other desserts, Food & Wine Magazine named her one of the country’s Best New Pastry Chefs in 2012 — the first year the publication has recognized pastry chefs.

Despite the national recognition and accolades for her work at Table 310, Stella may be better known to her Twitter followers, her Facebook fans and virtual friends for her blog, BraveTart, and the column she writes for Serious Eats. Her friendly, come-on-give-it-a-try posts are focused on re-creating the homey commercial dessert treats she adores from her childhood: Think Peanut butter cups, Butterfingers, Fig Newtons, Pop Tarts and more. The woman even makes her own sprinkles! These may be whimsical-sounding dishes, but the recipes are carefully-developed, disciplined and include helpful detail for mastering the various techniques needed to deliver modern versions of American classics. In fact, Stella was featured in Jennifer Steinhauer’s recent story in The New York Times Dining section about trying to duplicate favorite snacks from Jennifer’s childhood — Oreos, Hostess Cupcakes and other nostalgic treats.

Over the weekend, I made Stella’s chocolate ganache, one of the more traditional recipes found on her blog. We poured this velvety, vanilla-scented sauce over locally-produced McConnells Ice Cream and fresh strawberries from the Saturday Farmers Market. Stella builds maximum flavor with just a handful of ingredients. Vanilla beans, scooped from their pod, and their pod, as well, are stirred into a small saucepan filled with heavy cream; the vanilla and cream are brought to a boil, and then immediately taken off of the heat. The aromatic mixture steeps for an hour, infusing the thick cream with the spicy warmth of the vanilla. The cream is brought to a boil again, and then chopped bittersweet chocolate is whisked into the cream, along with a few pinches of espresso powder and pinch of sea salt. Everything quickly melted together and thickened into a silky sauce that dressed up our lonely scoops of ice cream, the way slipping on a rope of pearls completes the look of a favorite little black dress.

I must confess: I hesitated before committing to Stella’s Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts. While I was taken with the idea of recreating one of my childhood favorites, I typically keep my distance from intricate desserts, favoring rustic tarts, fruit-filled muffins and craggy-looking homemade cookies instead. I shook off my nerves this time, and decided these little tarts would be a good challenge, even if I stumbled along the way.

The recipe for Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop Tarts is divided into three sections: pastry, filling and icing. The pastry recipe begins in a straightforward manner — butter cut into a mixture of flour and salt. In an unexpected twist, though, corn syrup is poured into the crumbly mixture, and then mixed in with a fork, resulting in a very soft, slightly sweet, buttery dough. Shaping into a flatish square, and chilling in the freezer follows.

While the pastry firmed up in the freezer, The Bug made the filling, a thick, paste-like brown sugar, cinnamon filling. I divided the pastry in half, in order to more effectively manage the rolling and shaping process, which calls for a ruler, a pizza slicer and precision. It helped to freeze the pastry at regular intervals during the process — before measuring and shaping, and directly following. The tarts baked for about 20-25 minutes, and after they were completely cool, The Bug lightly glazed them.

Despite my best efforts, the Pop Tarts spread a bit while baking. While they were still warm, I sliced off the caramelized edges with a pizza cutter, giving the pastries the sharp corners they deserved, and Matthew the crispy, cookie-like trimmings that he loves. According to Stella, the key to the flavor and texture is an overnight “aging” process, which takes place in a cool dry place. While we held most of the Pop Tarts back for aging, we ate a few as soon as they were iced; quality control, of course.

My Pop Tarts weren’t the beautiful specimens that Stella created, but they passed the taste test with flying colors: the pastry was crispy, light and buttery — a vast improvement over the heavier, dry pastry found in a commercial Pop Tart. Stella’s sweet brown sugar-cinnamon filling melts into an almost-creamy consistency, and is spicy from the cinnamon and vanilla — also a cut above the drier filling I remembered. They made for a much-needed Sunday afternoon pick-me-up, and a decadent breakfast treat, too.

I like that Stella’s focus moves in two directions — backward, capturing sweet memories of her youth — and forward, creating new desserts that will become someone else’s memories one day. With The Bug by my side for much of the Pop Tart project, I also was struck by the kind of role model Stella makes for girls my daughter’s age and older. We can’t have too many generous, good-humored women in the kitchen, I say.

Here again are the links to Stella’s blog and the column she writes for Serious Eats, where the Pop Tart recipe can be found. The links above will take you to the specific recipes.

Last weekend, I traveled to New York to attend a few days of the nearly-weeklong International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) annual conference. One of the highlights of my quick trip east, was wandering around the Culinary Expo and Book and Blog Festival that took place on Sunday afternoon in Soho. More than 100 companies and food-related organizations exhibited their products, including food companies, cookware manufacturers and culinary arts organizations.

Before heading downtown to Soho from my Times Square hotel, I was determined to walk north to visit Levain Bakery on the Upper West Side and sample a few of this nearly 20-year-old bakery’s best known confections. My friend Beth Lee, of OMGYummy blog, joined me on the excursion. Down a short staircase, in a deep, narrow space that is almost entirely kitchen, Levain turns out yeasty, crusty breads and rolls, cookies, muffins and scones without peer. I heard about Levain Bakery first through Twitter, noticing tweets about chocolate chip cookies

and brioche pastries that re-defined their respective genres.

And, they did. The dark chocolate chocolate chip cookie is jumbo-sized, perfect for sharing, and boasts rich cocoa flavor, soft chocolate chunks, and despite its heft, a soft cookie crumb. The cinnamon raisin brioche sticky bun, recommended with enthusiasm by the gent in line ahead of me, was so satisfying whatever words I choose to describe it won’t be sufficient, but I’ll give it a try: yeasty, soft, and buttery but not in the least greasy. Gently spiced with raisins that are plump and soft when you bite into them. Memorable.

A few hours later, we headed south to Soho and walked slowly through the warehouse-like rooms, stopping at booths that caught my eye. The theme of the culinary expo was Manhattan’s Five Boroughs, which meant as many small artisanal producers as larger companies set up shop and cheerfully handed out samples. Of course, no trip to New York would be complete without a bagel, right? I couldn’t resist.

There were artisanal cheese producers from Long Island. Lucy’s Whey goat cheese from East Hampton was tangy and creamy and sprinkled with silvery ash.

Pasta imported from Italy and sold by a local company caught my eye; I loved the simple, bright yellow paper packaging with black type.

A Greek, family-owned bakery in Queens handed visitors tall squares of its many-layered baklava, laden with sweet honey and walnuts.

One company produced a variety of crunchy flatbreads, some covered in seeds, others dusted with spices such as olive green za’atar.

For recovering foie gras addicts, there was this vegan faux gras. I confess that I couldn’t bring myself to try it.

As my stroll through the expo came to a close, I stopped for an Illy coffee. I fell hard for this bright and shiny red coffee maker. It’s a beaut, isn’t it?

I’m back home in Santa Barbara re-stocking the pantry and fridge before the holiday weekend. I made a quick trip to the downtown Santa Barbara Farmers Market yesterday and picked up these gorgeous tomatoes that are bursting with sweet juice and the flavor of sunshine.

I look forward to a weekend home, cooking and baking. In the meantime, if you’re in the kitchen this weekend, I wanted to share a few links:

Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies From François Payard — from New York Magazine (hat tip to Jodi Kantor of The New York Times, who raved about it)

Lemon Pudding Cakes from East of Eden Cooking

Almond Pear-Blueberry Cake from Hungry Rabbit

Caramelized Coconut Macaroons from Gillian Shaw of Black Jet Baking Co. in San Francisco (from the Wall Street Journal)

Italian Easter Bread from Jennifer Perillo

A Springy Easter Dinner Menu from Food52