Rita Held

Rita's culinary communications expertise with food and beverage products includes recipe development, cooking demonstrations, food and nutrition writing for social media and websites, event planning and product publicity. Her versatility ranges from food and wine pairing (Meridian Vineyards), to website development and support (Golden Grain-Mission Pasta), to cooking demonstrations (Sunset magazine, Angostura USA, Nakano and Holland House vinegars), to teaching nutrition at the Culinary Institute at Foothill College.

Rita developed recipes for Food Saver vacuum sealer, and also wrote the recipe book for the (then) new kitchen appliance, the Chef Maker all-in-one food processor-mixer-blender.

Her creative recipes and specific how-to instructions (for staff and customers) helped launch The Full Plate, a Bay Area home-meal-assembly business. Not an easy task considering all recipes had to pass the freeze/thaw/cook "test".

Prior to life as a consultant, Rita's passion for food--and talking and writing about it--flourished during her ten years in the test kitchens and consumer services departments of Del Monte Foods, part of RJR/Nabisco. There she worked on a wide variety of consumer products including wines and spirits, a line of canned Mexican foods, and fresh fruits.

Rita holds a B.A. in Foods and Nutrition, and an M.A. in Adult Education. She is a member of International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), the San Francisco Professional Food Society, and Consumer Business Professionals of SF.

Visit Rita and Rosie's test kitchens at www.GetCookingSimply.com.