At Home with Kim Vallee

I received my copy at the beginning of the week. I think Whitewater Cooks is a wonderful cookbook.

It is unusual to crave for the food at a ski resort cafeteria. But Fresh Tracks Café is not your typical ski resort cafeteria. Before acquiring Whitewater Winter Resort with her husband Mike in 1997, Shelley Adams spent 15 years as a popular caterer to the west coast film industry.

Shelley Adams finally gave in to the incessant requests of patrons who wanted her kept-secret recipes. In Whitewater Cooks, Shelley shares 80 gourmet recipes that she cooked over her career at Fresh Tracks Café and also as a caterer.

Whitewater Cooks is divided in 5 recipe sections: soups and bowls, salads and greens, savouries, salsas, chutneys and sauces, and finally sweet things.

Trusting Her Guts

Her cookbook is a national bestseller. The current edition is at the fourth printing. This is an impressive achievement for an author who self published the first 5,300 copies of her cookbook in 2005. The first edition sold quickly. With a proof of success under her belts, Shelley Adams got a deal with Whitecap Books, a Canadian publisher.

Her cookbook is also praised on the other side of the border. The travel section of the New York Times wrote a fantastic review about the staff and the menu. You can read that “the Fresh Tracks Cafe’s burgers are not just burgers. There are eight varieties on the menu, including the big-selling Fancy Pants Burger, which is piled with chèvre, caramelized onions, roasted garlic aioli, tomatoes, bacon and spring greens.”

Apparently, Shelly Adams is working on a second cookbook. I cannot wait to get my hand on it. In the meantime, I will cook several of her recipes.

SOURCING:
+ Fresh Tracks Café at Whitewater Winter Resort
+ Unusually Good Food at an Unusual Hill [New York Times]
+ Whitewater Cooks: Pure, Simple and Real Creations from the Fresh Tracks Cafe by Shelley Adams – price: $21.86 USD at Amazon

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