Portland Farmers Market and the Rouxbe Cooking School Offer Shoppers Online Lessons on How to Cook

Grab Your Apron: Portland Farmers Market and the Rouxbe Cooking School Offer Shoppers Online Lessons on How to Cook

Market-goers can learn to transform farmers’ market purchases into delectable dishes thanks to the world’s first-ever online cooking school

Portland, Ore., July 23, 2009 – The Portland Farmers Market and the Rouxbe (pronounced roo-bee) Cooking School have partnered to offer market-goers a 90-day free membership to the world’s first-ever online cooking school.

Aspiring chefs can sign up at http://pfm.rouxbe.com and have immediate access to a fully integrated experience that mirrors an actual culinary academy, complete with close-up instructional video lessons, edible exercises, progress reporting, evaluation quizzes, and chef and community support.

“Our loyal shoppers recognize that locally grown, farm-fresh produce represents the best in quality, taste and nutritional value,” says Ann Forsthoefel, executive director of Portland Farmers Market. “This partnership with the Rouxbe Cooking School allows our fans to enjoy their market finds even more by teaching them the skills and techniques to become better and more confident home cooks.”

Joe Girard, CEO and president of Rouxbe, adds, “Portland is known for its awesome restaurants, regional bounty and vibrant farmers’ markets. We’re glad to invite Portland Farmers Market shoppers into our virtual kitchen where they can learn how to create gourmet meals like a professional chef on their own time and in the comfort of their own homes and kitchens.”

Rouxbe Cooking School

The Rouxbe Cooking School features more than 50 full professional cooking school lessons packaged in a high quality step-by-step format that makes learning easy. Course lessons include everything from Knife Handling to Pasta to Eggs to Steaks and even how to make restaurant quality Sauces. For the complete curriculum, visit www.rouxbe.com/school. The year-old school has won rave reviews and attracted students from more than 180 countries.

Unlike other online cooking sites that focus on recipes, celebrity chefs and short technique videos, the school uses a two-prong approach that is unparalleled in the online cooking world. It pairs excellent “how-to” content, which teaches skills and techniques necessary to drive cooking success, with unique “why-to” content, which helps students really understand cooking and frees them from following recipes.

When cooks simply follow a recipe step by step, they often don’t understand why they are doing what they are doing. The result? Their success is hit and miss, and they end up with a single dish from one recipe. However, once at-home cooks start to understand the how’s and why’s of cooking, they can begin to apply this learning to successfully create countless other dishes.

The Rouxbe Cooking School doesn’t just teach students how to cook; it aims to empower them to think for themselves in the kitchen and to create gourmet meals like a professional chef. Plus, the online instruction takes a quarter of the time it would take to complete in a traditional culinary institute, allowing busy home cooks to have their cake and eat it too.

Lessons From The Farm Delivered To Your Door

The partnership between Portland Farmers Market and Rouxbe stretches beyond opening access to the online cooking school. Site visitors can search for recipes featuring items they find at the markets that are currently in season. Also, to underscore the educational programming already offered at Portland Farmers Market, visitors to http://pfm.rouxbe.com can review some recipes presented during Chef at the Market demonstrations.

Forsthoefel says, “People love to watch our chef demonstrations at the Saturday PSU Market. Now they’ll be able to learn the skills and techniques used by these chefs making it easier for them recreate the fabulous dishes they see in these demos.”

For those wannabe chefs that wish to continue with the school after the 90-day free pass, an annual membership costs $99, while a premium lifetime membership costs $199. Rouxbe contributes 10 percent of all membership fees to Rouxbe for Life, which feeds hungry children in developing countries. To date, Rouxbe has fed more than 82,000 children.

About Portland Farmers Market

Founded in 1992, Portland Farmers Market, a nonprofit 501(c)6, brings the best of the country to the heart of the city by supporting the region’s farmers and creating vibrant urban marketplaces where growers and consumers come together. This nonprofit’s staff of four full-time and four part-time employees aims to grow, nourish and inspire the community by staging weekly markets in five different locations throughout the Portland area from March until December. In addition to managing the markets, Portland Farmers Market has been an early leader in Portland’s sustainability movement and has served as an incubator for small businesses. With more than 250 vendors from Oregon and Washington – including farms, bakeries, nurseries, meat and seafood providers, cheese makers and specialty food producers – Portland Farmers Market is a true showplace of Northwest agriculture. Portland Farmers Market is generously supported by community partners West Coast Bank and Mix.

About Rouxbe

Rouxbe.com (roo-bee) is the world’s first-ever online cooking school. Unlike many cooking sites that focus on celebrities, Rouxbe celebrates food by delivering close-up technique and skill instruction to aspiring at-home cooks seeking solutions that drive successful results each and every time. Created by two professional chefs, Joe Girard and Dawn Thomas, Rouxbe.com was launched in 2006. The Vancouver, B.C.-based company also offers its rich content through a brand-exclusive engagement tool to premium partners like HarperCollins Canada, Dean & DeLuca, and MetroKitchen.com. To see what’s cooking at Rouxbe, visit Rouxbe.com.