After plucking a ripe mango from our backyard tree, I remember my grandmother peeling it in one clean stroke with the edge of her blade. Ever since, I have aspired to have knife skills like her. Before making my way back into the kitchen, however, I was first a yoga practitioner and instructor. Naturally, the energetics of food, body and mind became intrinsically important to me.

Ron Silver started working in restaurants at age 13. He washed dishes for five years, ultimately decided to be a chef and moved from Salt Lake City to Atlanta to learn in a prominent restaurant group. In 1987, he moved to New York after an invite to cook at a Guggenheim Museum event and spent time cooking at a high-end hotel.

In honor of its 40th anniversary, the Natural Gourmet Institute dug into its archives to find some of the community's favorite articles written by founder Annemarie Colbin, Ph.D. This series celebrated her teachings on food, science and nutrition, which are now more prominent than ever in the better food movement. Annemarie was a true visionary: inquisitive, intuitive, relentless, progressive and thoughtful. In the late 1970s, she recovered important facts about food that humanity seems to have misplaced – namely, that what we eat directly impacts our well being, our communities and our planet.

Chef Elliott Prag graduated from the NGI's Chef's Training Program in 1995 and has utilized his passion for cooking and "food as healing" in the restaurant business, as a private chef and caterer and as an instructor at ICE. Read on to learn about Chef Elliott's experience at NGI as a student and how he hopes to shape the future of the school as a faculty member.

Friday Night Dinner (FND) at Natural Gourmet Institute was a weekly, three-course, plant-based dinner open to the public and the final project for students in the Chef’s Training Program. FND was added to the curriculum as an opportunity for students to showcase their newfound culinary technique, gain real-life experience and express their individual creativity.

Through 30+ years in the professional kitchen, I’ve heard the same question again and again: “Why doesn’t my [fill in the blank] taste like the one from the restaurant?”

Cara Lanzi is a graduate of NGI’s Chef's Training Program and the proud owner of Simply Honest Kitchen (SHK). SHK is a private chef, catering and in-home cooking instruction business, which serves the tri-state area.