Sunday, May 13, 12:00 noon
Members $55, guests $65

There’s no doubt that Ross School executive chef Ann Cooper has made her mother proud. She’s come a long way from the teenager who thumbed her nose at high school, strapped skis to her back, and hitchhiked to Telluride, Colorado, to become a ski bum. A baking venture, which supported her ski habit, was Cooper’s first foray into the world of food, and she hasn’t looked back.

Cooper ultimately traded in her skis for a degree from the CIA, but she never stopped looking for the next adventure. She has traveled around the world twice as a cook on board the SS Rotterdam and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. She was the first woman executive chef at a Radisson hotel (in Lynchburg, Virginia); served as executive chef for the Telluride Ski Company; owned Pandora’s restaurant in Telluride; catered parties for up to 10,000 as chef of the Telluride Film Festival; and then catered to a completely different clientele as executive chef at the Putney Inn in southern Vermont.

In 1997, Cooper penned A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen (Van Nostrand Reinhold), a book that examines the progress of women chefs in America. She still recalls that during the two years she worked on the Rotterdam, one cook never talked to her because he thought women were bad luck in the kitchen! Her latest book is Bitter Harvest: A Chef’s Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What We Can Do About It (Routledge). Cooper has been featured in Gourmet, Food Arts, Chef, and Restaurants & Institutions. Her recipe for maple-glazed pork chops with whiskey buttered applesauce graced the cover of The National Culinary Review.

Last spring, Cooper took on a completely new challenge. As part of the culinary team at The Ross School, an alternative educational institution in East Hampton, Long Island, she has turned her attention to educating students and faculty about the importance of nutritious, regional, seasonal, organic food. Her curriculum includes classes on culinary food and history, nutrition, and good ol’, hands-on cooking. She’ll be bringing several of her students to help at the Beard House, and will emphasize Long Island ingredients and wines on her menu. One of the school’s graduation requirements is that students must research, prepare, and serve a nutritionally sound and delicious meal.

Sound like meals your mom used to make? Why not bring her to lunch?