Michelle Palmer (now newlywed Michelle Peters!) is the owner of Absolutely Michelle’s Artisan Eats, a Chef-for-Hire, and current Executive Chef for Nevada 36 Historical Preservation Society in Incline Village. Michelle specializes in authentic cultural cuisine that’s low fat, low sodium, and low sugar. She’s here to prove that healthy food can also be delicious- which we can personally attest to!
Michelle loves bringing her goodies to the Ag & Artisan Holiday Faire to help give back to local 4-H students, as her granddaughters are both blue ribbon winners due to raising sheep and pigs in their local 4-H programs.
Life As a Chef
Michelle has been a chef for more than 30 years, breaking barriers and puncturing the glass ceiling in her career. Michelle was the first chef to cook on-site at the Carson City Farmers Market back when the market first started, purchasing items from the market itself and creating a meal right there and then. Now, she’s had her own booth at the market for years, selling her gluten-free desserts and other goodies.
One of Michelle’s biggest mentors and partners in the kitchen was Chef Charlie Abowd, who always believed in her more than she believed in herself. Michelle cooked green tomato tarts to donate to Charlie and Karen’s nonprofit, The Greenhouse Project, and she had the honor of being one of the chefs to join Charlie on his trip to New York City, where they earned the James Beard Award.
“Charlie asked me to be the chef for a project he was working on, and I said, ‘Charlie, I’m not a restaurant person’,” Michelle said. “He put my hands in between his hands and said ’I know what these hands make’, and oh, it made me cry.”
Michelle made many interesting items while cooking with Charlie including watermelon, mango, and vanilla bean ice cream with no eggs, jalapeno-flavored gummies for a shrimp course, and even going out to pick 300 leaves from a winery to go with the grapes from the same winery- just for a single course! Anything big, small, or strange, Michelle was up for the task.
Commitment to Fresh, Healthy Foods & Desserts
Through the people she met in town through Charlie, Michelle learned how to grow her own foods on her property by partnering with a local farmer. Nowadays, Michelle’s farm is a lot smaller than it used to be, but she grows foods for her position in Incline Village that cannot be grown up the hill due to the climate and pesky animals! She likes to use fresh, local ingredients in the kitchen when she can find them, either from her garden, markets, or other local farmers in the area.
When Michelle started her business, her Small Business Development Center mentor at the University of Nevada, Reno told her nobody likes healthy foods. Michelle agrees that most people believe healthy foods taste like cardboard (her words, not ours!), but 30 years later, she continues to prove people wrong with her delightful creations in the kitchen.
This year, Michelle is bringing back all her wonderful desserts from last year. Her gluten-free, organic, non-GMO protein cookies, featured in Edible Magazine, are coming back in three delicious flavors: peanut butter cookies, chocolate-chip Thai cookies made with peanuts, lemongrass, and ginger, and Spicy Thai cookies that have a little Thai chili to them.
Michelle also cooks Tarta de Santiago, a traditional Spanish almond cake from the Galicia region, inspired by her experience in Spain, where she learned how to make traditional Spanish paella. Her gluten-free, organic brownies will also be for sale, featuring delicious Swiss chocolate at the request of her Swiss husband!
Michelle is truly a one-of-a-kind Chef and baker and we are thrilled to have her goodies back again this year! Gluten-free and organic treats don’t have to taste like cardboard, as Michelle’s items taste like anything but! Be sure to stop by her booth at the 4th Annual Ag & Artisan Faire on Saturday, December 7, from 10 am to 4 pm.