About the Chef/Owner

   Tessa Holmes has been cooking professionally for over 25 years.  What began as a hobby and love for creating and preparing delicious recipes, happily developed into a professional business.  

  In the late 90’s, she began cooking vegetarian cuisine, and soon branched out into other cooking styles and dietary frameworks: including meat, vegan, raw and gluten free dishes. She specializes in vegetarian comfort whole food meals inspired by dishes from around the world.

 Tessa started her career at Heartwood Institute, a residential healing arts school in Garberville, California, first as a kitchen helper before quickly being promoted to Head Chef. Cooking plant based whole foods from scratch was unusual at the time and gave her valuable experience and expertise in the field. At Heartwood Tessa was lucky to live with, work, and learn from Paul Pitchford, author of Healing with Whole Foods, the bestseller on Eastern traditions of diet and nutrition, as well as many other amazing cooks, healers and natural health therapists.

 In 2000 she moved back to Vermont and was the Kitchen Coordinator and Head Chef at Common Ground Center for 10 years before holding the same title at Farm and Wilderness Camps for two summers. In 2012 she started the hot lunch service, and helped to launch the Farm Food Forest program, at The Schoolhouse Learning Center in South Burlington, introducing kids, from ages 6-14, to the kitchen, where food comes from and how to cook healthy meals for themselves. 

In 2015 Tessa decided to start her own business, Blossom Whole Foods Kitchen and Catering, that began with a Meals to Go pick up service and soon led to opening her own store front serving lunches and a weekly Community Dinner in Winooski, VT. In 2019 catering had taken over and she decided to move her kitchen to an organic flower farm to focus on personal chef jobs, business lunches, retreats, farm events, and cooking experiences. 

These days Blossom (Tessa) runs mainly as a retreat chef for hire, sometimes hosting events and/or teaching cooking classes. Her clients include Seventh Generation, Ben and Jerrys, Love Your Brain Foundation, The University of Vermont, The Tampa Bay Rays, Target, Vermont Public Broadcasting, Vermont Department of Health, and many many more. 

Tessa is passionate about nurturing people, teaching people of all ages to grow, cook and eat whole foods, and working toward the health and well being of our planet. 

   Tessa is proud to be a seventh generation Vermonter who was born and raised in South Burlington and now lives in Hinesburg. 

When Tessa is not cooking she runs a photography business specializing in portraiture -  almost all the photos on this website are taken by her.  She is also a professional artist who paints with oils and you can find her artwork here