Recipe for success
Build one of the top catering companies in Canada.
Mix in active involvement in education and industry volunteering.
Bring to a boil with a desire for excellence and a passion for food.
Season with numerous catering and community awards.
Simmer for 20 years and what do you get?
Seasoned Solutions with Gail Hall
Gail Hall is a well-known Edmonton culinarian, chef, food activist, educator, writer and consultant. Gail’s food apprenticeship began at the age of five, helping her mother cook for their family of five, as both parents worked. Gail loved the attention that came with serving her family food, although it wasn’t until many years later that she realized it was a passion.
After a 10-year career with the provincial government, Gail switched careers and followed her passion for cooking. For the next 18 years she owned Gourmet Goodies catering, a legendary award-winning customized catering company in Edmonton that became one of the largest in Canada, employing 95 full and part time staff and generating over $3 million annually. Her business set new standards for food quality, presentation, retailing of local and regional food products, cooking classes and culinary tours.
Gail’s business awards include:
Global’s Women of Vision;
YWCA Entrepreneur of the Year;
The Mayor’s Award for Sustained Support to the Arts; and
Milner Fenerty’s Pinnacle Award for Business.
Gail now owns and operates Seasoned Solutions Loft Cooking School and Culinary Tours. Gail is passionate about sourcing local and regional ingredients and supporting our agricultural community. Her cooking school is on the same street as the City Market on 104 Street. Students shop the market with Gail, meet vendors and retailers and purchase ingredients, which they then create into a scrumptious three-course meal, paired with Canadian wines. The cooking school is a popular venue for private special events and corporate team building afternoons.
For five years, Gail was the weekly food columnist for CBC radio 740 am/93.9 fm. For the past 23 years, Gail continues to teach cooking classes for Metro Continuing Edmonton and Planet Organic, is a culinary presenter at special events such as Christmas in November at the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and is a regular speaker and presenter at conferences and conventions. Gail regularly cooks on CTV, BT City TV & Global TV. In 2006, Gail was selected by the Province of Alberta to organize and present the cooking stage at “Alberta at the Smithsonian,” in Washington, DC, a two-week cultural festival showcasing all cultural and economic aspects of Alberta.
Culinary Tours are another specialty of Gail’s that started with her catering business in 1997 and continue through Seasoned Solutions. Two to three times a year, Gail hosts culinary tours to great food locations, knowing that the food culture discovered while traveling, will enrich our food culture back home. Her list of tours include culinary regions of the US (Santa Fe, Louisiana, Seattle, New York, Chicago and San Francisco) as well as Italy, New Zealand, the southwest of France, Greece and Turkey, Sicily, Chile and Argentina, South Okanagan Eastern Townships of Quebec, Vietnam and Cambodia, Charleston, SC. and Portugal. New tours include: Peru in March 2015 and Portugal in October 2015, India in February 2016 and the British Isles in 2016. Gail also started culinary tours in Alberta: Smoky Lake and Gull Lake in 2013, and Kitscoty in July 2014.
Gail is on the board of directors for Theatre Network and Global Women of Vision, is a Judge for Gold Medal Plates and the Sunshine Skillet, is a former president of Cuisine Canada and former Judge for Grand Prix Cheese Dairy Farmers of Canada.
Gail’s favourite food reference books: Food and the City (Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution) by Jennifer Cockrall-King; The Third Plate by Dan Barber; Stuffed and Starved and the Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel; Clean, by Dr. Alejandro Junger; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver; Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollen; The Food Lover’s Trail Guide to Alberta Vol. 1 and II, by Judy Schultz and Mary Bailey; Foodshed and Shop Talk by dee Hobsbawn-Smith; Wheatbelly, by Dr. William Davis, The End of Illness, by Dr. David B. Angus,You on a Diet by Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Roizen; The South Beach Diet by Dr. Agatston, Food Matters by Mark Bittman, Squeezed (the hidden history of orange juice) by Alissa Hamilton.
Gail’s favourite food videos/film/dvd’s s: Fed Up, Hungry for Change, Supersize Me; King Corn; The World According to Monsanto, Food INC. and Fresh the movie.
Contact Information: gail@seasonedsolutions.ca, www.seasonedsolutions.ca, phone: 780-437-0761, twitter: @cookeatenjoy