Conni's love of food started at an early age. She spent many weekends with her grandparents who taught her what good food really was. Her Grandfather was an avid gardener and Grandmother a wonderful cook. Accordingly, great food has always been a big part of her life. Since her Mom isn’t’ the greatest cook, Conni and her sister Sherri took over cooking the evening meals almost as soon as they could reach the stove. This chore was taken over shortly after their Mom thought it would be a great time saver to make a stack of sandwiches in one day then freeze them for school lunches.

This was a little much for two kids who loved good food. As you can imagine, no one at school wanted to swap lunches with them. They spent hours in the kitchen together after school and on Saturday mornings working their way through the one cookbook in the house.

After graduating from high school, Conni worked almost 15 years in the grocery business. It was the perfect place to learn about food. As a cashier, Conni was frequently asking customers what they were making with the ingredients they were buying. She worked her way around the different departments and eventually ended up in management. It was a great job; however, Conni's dream was to make people happy by cooking good tasting quality food for them.

After moving from California's Central Valley to New York's Hudson Valley Conni and her husband settled in Snohomish Washington in 1999. In 2000, Conni was able to follow her dream and attend a culinary school where she graduated with honors (The Art Institute of Seattle). While in culinary school she would intern during the week at Rovers, Seattle's finest dinning French restaurant. This was a non-paying job, but the education Conni received while working there was invaluable. She was able to experience food and wine from all over the world sometimes created from ingredients she had never even seen or heard of before. Then when she graduated in August 2002, she was offered a paying job at Rover’s which was very exciting.

At the beginning of 2003 Conni joined PCN and opened The Charmed Radish Personal Chef Service. By June of that year, the Radish was off and running. The Charmed Radish serves Seattle’s Eastside and surrounding areas and specializes in wholesome made from scratch meals. Conni is also a regular instructor at Pacific Culinary Studio in Everett and Kusler’s in Snohomish teaching a variety of classes.