Since its founding in 1940, Rancho La Puerta has been a proponent of “eating locally”. Over the years Rancho La Puerta’s organic farm has grown into a world-renowned example of successful organic gardening. The garden provides the immediate contact with nature that guests crave. It was natural and endemic to learn how food could be prepared with a sense of care and honor – a careful and “slower” way of cooking that turned its back on the rise of packaged food and industrial agriculture after World War II.
Eating locally now goes far beyond freshness and seasonality; the “carbon footprint” attendant to any product that is shipped long distance can mean that a meal of foods from distant places may “cost” the planet a significant amount of fossil fuel consumption – and the attendant global warming and air pollution as trucks, trains, planes and ships move foodstuffs around the world.
Today, Deborah Szekely and her daughter Sarah Livia Brightwood have created a new food experience at Rancho La Puerta. La Cocina Que Canta (The Kitchen that Sings) now allows guests to take hands-on cooking classes in a 5,000 sq. ft. school set in the organic farm. The act of selecting, preparing and enjoying food with friends has never been more enjoyable.