Thank you for visiting Good Life Kitchen and believing as much as we do in the power of food to heal and lead your life. Here’s a bit about me!

I began cooking for others as soon as I could reach the counter, over 40 years ago, and soon discovered food as a source of joy, meaning and a central element in gathering people and creating traditions. My niche became baking and eventually evolved into a wholesale baking supply company that provided cakes to restaurants on Long Island, NY. Simultaneously I earned an Associate Degree in Restaurant Management from State University of New York Farmingdale.

After five years in a four star Northern Italian restaurant (La Capannina), my employer arranged a three-month apprenticeship at Ristorante Sabatini in Florence, Italy.

I returned in time to accept a scholarship that was being held for me at the Culinary Institute of America. I apprenticed at the Waldorf- Astoria in Manhattan.

I soon learned that success in the upper echelon restaurant world meant sixteen hour days and personal sacrifice that was incongruent with being a new wife. I accompanied my husband for his yearlong US Army Aviation training in Ft. Rucker Alabama, where I wrote a food column in the local newspaper and gave international cooking classes on Post to other Army wives.

After my husband graduated from Brooklyn Law School and the birth of our first child I devoted myself to being a mother and homemaker for my family. I spent the next 10 years raising children, dabbling in private catering and volunteering in schools, churches and organizations to help others. Following multiple military deployments, an internet search led us to Gloucester, the Land of the Life Worth Living.

We chose to raise our young family in Gloucester because of its family oriented culture, natural beauty and wealth of historical significance. In 2008, the perfect storm of my youngest child beginning school full time, the brand new opportunity to use my husband’s GI education benefits and a newly minted Registered Nurse program at Rappahannock Community College helped me to fulfill a lifelong dream of following in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps to become a nurse.

Although it was the most difficult and humbling three years of my life, I am so glad I did it.

My soul is in the hospitality industry. My ambition is to combine my knowledge as a registered nurse with my cooking ability in a way that will benefit the people who are Gloucester.

Please join me for lunch. Dinner. Or just to talk about food and health.

Cheers –

Lorraine Walsh