About Becky

Becky Selengut is a 1999 Seattle Culinary Academy graduate where she was awarded the Outstanding Culinarian of the Year. Selengut's culinary career began in restaurants, with stints at La Medusa, La Spiga and 3 years at the internationally acclaimed Herbfarm Restaurant working under her mentor, Chef Jerry Traunfeld. Since 2004, her career has moved beyond the traditional restaurant into everything but the restaurant, taking on such diverse jobs as cheffing on a yacht tour of the Inside Passage to teaching cooking to immigrants and refugees and finding them work in the food industry. In 2004, she started her private chef and culinary education business, Cornucopia Cuisine, and in January 2006 she founded the educational website Seasonal Cornucopia . A regular instructor for PCC Natural Markets since '04, Selengut is also an adjunct professor in the culinary/nutrition department at Bastyr University. A prolific writer, Selengut co-authored The Washington Local and Seasonal Cookbook  in 2008, and wrote Good Fish in 2011 with wine pairing contributions from her wife, Sommelier April Pogue. Good Fish was an IACP book award finalist, one of Seattle Magazine's best cookbooks of 2011 and an NPR-notable read. In 2012, Selengut was given the Seafood Ambassador Award by the Monterey Bay Aquarium for her commitment to ocean conservation and sustainable seafood education. A former freelancer for Seattle Homes and Lifestyles Magazine, she currently writes a two time "Eddy" award-nominated humor column for Edible Seattle Magazine . Selengut also runs the blog Chef Reinvented and co-leads springtime foraging tours.

Each year she donates cooking classes, demonstrations, dinners and cookbooks to raise money for local charities and non-profits. In 2012 she is working with the Cascade Harvest Coalition, Legal Voice, and Equal Rights Washington, among others.

In 2013, Selengut hopes to clone herself so she can find the time to do more of these fun things other people call 'work'.

Find Becky on:
Twitter: @chefreinvented 
Facebook 
Youtube 

People are saying...

"Best. Dinner. Ever."
Nicola Griffith
Author

"Becky is generous with her culinary talents and a joy to work with and learn from. She brings to the kitchen a keen palate and enthusiastic delight for flavor balanced with common sense and solid technical skill."
Jerry Traunfeld
Chef and Owner of Poppy
Former Executive Chef
The Herbfarm

"Our guests sighed with pleasure when they caught sight of Cornucopia's exquisitely arranged Spanish tapas at our National Parks benefit reception."
Heather Weiner
Former Director, Northwest Region
National Parks Conservation Association

"Becky provides food which encompasses all that food can be...connection, pleasure, generosity, glamour. Her intuitive understanding of how food nourishes gives substance to each occasion."
Jacqueline Barnett
Artist

"Becky has changed our relationship to food. As a teacher and private chef, she has broadened our culinary horizons, and sharpened our sense of the details that go into every dish. Her delicious, healthful cooking verges on the therapeutic if not the divine!"
Mark Malamud
Susan Hautala
Seattle, WA