Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Silverman.
Hi Sarah, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Canyon Kitchen began as a personal challenge – to create delicious and nourishing desserts with zero processed sugar that kids would love! I wanted to be able to say “YES” when my kids begged for seconds, and I was seriously distressed by the amount of processed sugary foods that were being regularly brought into their school classrooms.
In my first year of Canyon Kitchen, an entire class of kindergarten children became my eager taste testers and biggest fans – I actually had kids begging their parents to place muffin orders for them! Every new recipe I developed was inspired by the children, the local farmer’s markets and the wild herbs that grow in our canyon. My criteria for creating recipes was simple – I could only use bananas or dates for sweetener and I wanted to raise awareness for seasonal local food by creating recipes based on seasonal produce (like Avocado Chocolate, Orange Chip and Rosemary Strawberry Muffins).
Over the past few years, I have baked for farmer’s markets, Hollywood TV sets (Modern Family, Dead To Me), school lunch programs (Organic Kids LA), Silverback Coffee of Rwanda, and my local neighborhood community. When the world shut down due to COVID-19, I expanded my menu to include soups, elixirs and other vegetarian dishes, and I also began teaching some of my recipes and methods in live zoom classes, which inspired me to begin re-imagining the future of Canyon Kitchen.
Canyon Kitchen has now transitioned into a virtual space and I am thrilled to be teaching and sharing all of my recipes through our online programs! We now have two different programs that help empower people to make delicious healthy food themselves!
In our online course “Flexible Family Meals” 4 simple recipe frameworks are transformed into more than 20 easy family meals! In addition to all the recipes, I share tips on how to cook for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians in the same meal, my favourite ingredient swaps to help adapt recipes to your specific needs, and of course ideas for creating one of my favourite things in the world – food boards!
Our “Monthly Nourishment” program is an in-depth baking and cooking subscription program that delivers Canyon Kitchen recipes, step-by-step video tutorials and bonus content to your virtual doorstep every month! In this program members learn all about my Blender Baking and No-Fuss Kitchen methods while growing a delicious collection of healthy recipes.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
I started Canyon Kitchen out of my home kitchen, and so one of the biggest challenges has been figuring out the best ways to grow and expand. There is only so much baking that I can (or want to) do in a day and producing the volume of food needed for farmer’s markets and TV sets and local orders was really labor intensive and I ended up burning out. I don’t love spending all my time in the kitchen cooking/baking for others, I love experimenting and developing new recipes and adapting recipes – making them simpler, healthier and more flexible.
Transitioning into an online business has been an amazing way for me to reach more people and to share my recipes and methods in new ways! Rather than baking/cooking for people, I am now able to teach skills and empower people to make fresh healthy food themselves! This is also allowing Canyon Kitchen to expand far beyond Los Angeles and welcome online members throughout the US and Canada.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am most proud of the recipes I have developed for Canyon Kitchen for a few reasons:
First of all, for the quality of the ingredients and how each of the ingredients interacts to create amazing texture and taste. For example, I use a combination of whole zucchini and apple in all of our baking recipes because together, they create the perfect springy muffin/cake texture. And because I’m using whole fruits and vegetables and eliminating processed sugars, I love how these recipes challenge our traditional ideas around desserts and treats.
Secondly, I love how flexible our recipes are. Flexible baking? Yes! Over the years, in response to my customer’s needs, I have been able to adapt the recipes for all kinds of dietary restrictions. By simply swapping out one or two ingredients, the recipes can be transformed into vegan, gluten-free or nut-free, etc. No weird substitutions or specialty recipes needed. Our recipes work for almost every diet out there.
Finally, and maybe most importantly if you have kids, I love how simple and quick these recipes are. I have said this many times and I’ll say it again – I am a self-professed “lazy cook”. I don’t actually love spending a lot of time cooking in the kitchen. I want the most results for the least amount of work and all of my recipes are designed to be as quick and easy as possible. If I can avoid extra chopping, grating, peeling and dirtying tons of dishes I’m going to find a way! I can’t tell you how many times I have tried recipes from cookbooks that are unnecessarily complicated, create a huge mess and end up tasting awful. Nothing makes me angrier than bad recipes written by authors who have clearly never cooked while listening to the whining of hungry children. For this reason, I am hyper-focused on creating foolproof, fuss-free, simple family-friendly recipes!
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love that you can drive to the ocean, the mountains and downtown all in the same day! I hate driving and it’s impossible to avoid in this city, so that can sometimes put a kink in my style.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.canyonkitchen.org
- Instagram: @canyon.kitchen
Image Credits
Zoe Sher
