French Cuisine, a Traditional Experience

Discover the art of old world French traditional cuisine that tantalizes your palette and awakens your senses as you cook recipes from Alsace to French Morocco to the Loire Valley. This is your opportunity to touch, smell, taste and experience for yourself recipes that are almost a lost art form.

There are 69 recipes from Hors D'oeuvres to Desserts with all categories in-between for you to enjoy in the comfort of your home with step by step pictures for each recipe. All recipes are French Classics; exceptionally delicious, unusual and old fashion favorites. Your kitchen will be filled with amazing smells as you fall in love with our cookbook: French Cuisine, a traditional experience.

French Cuisine, a Traditional Experience is a cookbook filled with traditional recipes passed down from Grand'Mere Cecile to Mother Nicole to me. When it comes to food, you'll fine we've got a wide variety on our plates. French Cuisine, a Traditional Experience is as diverse and delicious as can be, as it is the result of a vast array of in season ingredients, cultural influences and the imagination of these two French women when they lived on three continents. Savor French flavor and enjoy. This cookbook is full of delicious recipes worthy of sharing and filled with the food memories of these two French women, my Grand’Mere Cecile and my Mother Nicole. They were all important in developing my love of French Cuisine. Both of these ladies entertained with grace and cooked sumptuous meals for the people they loved. This is the culmination of my dream of creating a cookbook that would honor and capture the memories of these two head-strong females, the food they prepared and the art of gracious living, the French joie de vivre!

French heritage is the beginning. My Mother Nicole was French and my Father (Norman Gates), spent 17 years living with the French in France and in French Morocco. He was very involved with the Wine Industry, both in France and the United States, and was always curious about wine and wanted to share his knowledge. I was fortunate to be raised in a family that celebrated fine cuisine, as a living art form through the Art of the Table, the Art of Wine, and the Art of the Vine. As a third cultural child, in many ways, I’m more French than American. The Loire Valley of France was my home for five years as a teenager, and my early years were spent in French Morocco, Casablanca. My French heritage draws not only from the Alsace area of France, where Mother's family came from, but also from living in French Morocco and in the Loire Valley. As I grew up, I was surrounded by excellent cooks, who passed down to me their love of traditional French Classic Cuisine. I feel that I have a good understanding of the people, their way of life and I'm anxious to share their "joie de vivre" with you. I truly enjoy celebrating my French heritage and want to share with you all that I love and all that I hold dear about France in all her glory. This is my raison d’être! Our cookbook, “French Cuisine, a Traditional Experience" is filled with authentic delicious recipes that were family favorites while I was growing up. I adore French cooking and sharing French traditional cuisine and culture. Many of my customers have suggested that a cookbook should be published celebrating the cuisine that I was raised on and love. Et voila, our cookbook, "French Cuisine, A Traditional Experience", filled full of traditional classic recipes that originate from the cuisine of my Grand’Mere Cecile and my Mother Nicole.

I have always been a self-starter, and an entrepreneur. The only time that I worked for someone else, was early on as a flight attendant during the days of being called an “airline hostess”, for a non-schedule airline. I owned and operated an Employment Service for the Trade Show Industry strictly for flight attendants and later a company that was part of the Two Way Radio and Cellular boom of the early 1990’s. Now days, I run a French Country Inn and French Specialty Cooking School, Auberge de Seattle Cooking School. in Woodinville, Wa.