Theo has been the head chef at China Folk House for three years. Previously, she worked as an elementary school teacher and social worker. She’s from the Harper’s Ferry area, loves to hike and travel, and is a proud mom of two boys. This year, she’s excited that the kitchen is focusing more on Chinese dishes and is using fresh ingredients from the garden for farm-to-table projects like homemade chili crisp. Theo says it’s special to be part of something so unique. For her, cooking at CFH is about learning, sharing, and building something meaningful together.
Interview
What are your reflections on the past year at the Folk House?
As far as the kitchen is concerned and the garden, I feel like it’s really started coming into its own. I feel like we incorporated a whole lot more of the garden food and included participants with more of the cooking projects. And I’m also really happy that we’ve started to work on narrowing down a more Chinese food-centered menu.
What are your hopes for this next year at the Folk House?
In the future, I think it would be helpful if the kitchen knows what’s going to be grown in the garden, so we can have time to kind of research on unfamiliar vegetables that I don’t always know what to do with, but also to plan more for when groups do come so they can be involved more in the harvesting or at least the preparing of food. The participation in that way has been sort of limited. The new covered space that’s right outside the kitchen—I think that’s really going to be a game changer and open up a lot more opportunities for that sort of thing because it’s a space that’s not weather-dependent that can be ready to go.
Also, a lot of things are harvested pretty much when [the seasonal programs] are over, like all those hot peppers and things like that. I think it would be cool to come up with some things that we can have people make but not just eat that day, things like chili crisp or things like that that we can have in the pantry to use in the future. I think that would be pretty cool if, when visitors come, we could offer some things that came from the garden that were made by the campers, or make things for donors. We have some stuff that’s grown that we don’t really do anything with—the winter melons come to mind a little bit, even though some people kind of swooped in to help us with those. That just comes down to communicating what’s growing and when it’s supposed to be harvested, etc.
Why do you choose to be involved with the Folk House, and what does it mean to you?
It’s great to have the freedom to learn things, to learn how to cook different foods that I’m not familiar with. It’s really awesome to be a part of something that is so unique.