About the Chef/Owner

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   Tessa Holmes has been cooking professionally for over 24 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.

  In California, she was a Head Cook in the kitchen at Heartwood Institute, a healing arts school in Garberville. 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.  

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 a flower farm to focus on personal chef jobs, business lunches, retreats, farm events, and cooking experiences. 

Today Blossom is based out of Common Ground Center where Tessa is mainly a retreat chef for hire, hosting events and teaching plant based/vegetarian cooking classes.

   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.