Reclaiming Joy in the Kitchen w/ Nicki Sizemore

Reclaiming Joy in the Kitchen

w/ Nicki Sizemore

Nicki Sizemore on mindful cooking, her new book, and upcoming book signing and wine tasting at our shop in St. Helena.

Nicki invites us to slow down.

Before the chopping starts. Before the stove heats up. Before dinner becomes just another task to check off the list.

On Thursday, February 12, Sizemore will bring that invitation to New West KnifeWorks St. Helena, where she’ll be hosting a book signing and wine tasting celebrating her new cookbook, Mind, Body, Spirit, Food. The free, open-to-the-public event pairs conversation, cooking philosophy, and a curated tasting from Aperture Cellars—a fitting setting for a conversation about intention, pleasure, and presence in the kitchen.

RSVP HERE

At the heart of Sizemore’s work is a simple idea: cooking doesn’t have to be stressful. It can be grounding. It can be joyful.

“To me, it’s less about the end result,” she said. “It’s actually about the practice—and how we can imbue this thing we have to do, feeding ourselves, with a bit more intention and freedom and joy.”

Nicki Sizemore has spent more than two decades in the culinary world as a professionally trained chef, cookbook author, blogger and educator. For years, she taught people how to get dinner on the table—efficiently, beautifully, and well.

Cooking was her creative outlet. Her livelihood. Something she loved.

But she also knows that cooking isn’t always joyful. She knows firsthand how easily it can turn into a source of stress.

“I built this business and meanwhile, underneath it all, I had completely lost my joy in cooking,” she said. “I completely burned out. I had a young family at the time, two young kids, and the work I was doing became so technical.”

She hit a breaking point. Physically, she got sick—chronic congestion that lasted for years.

“I was not enjoying the cooking hour,” she said. “I had this one night where I was like, ‘What is happening here? How did I get here?’ And that was the moment I realized I actually had control over the process.”

Sizemore realized she was entering the kitchen still carrying the stress of the day—moving with urgency, treating cooking like a task to survive rather than an experience to inhabit. So she began introducing small practices to calm her nervous system before she ever picked up a knife.

“It starts with something as simple as taking deep breaths,” she said. “That pause between everything that happened during the day and this moment in the kitchen—how we engage our senses, how we set an intention. How do we want this cooking experience to feel?”

Slowly, cooking became less about the outcome and more about the act itself.

“I had been so end-result focused as a food stylist and trained chef. It was all about what landed on the plate,” she said. “I realized I had it all wrong. The practice itself—that’s where the magic lies. That’s where the pleasure is.”

Those practices, along with adaptable recipes, are the foundation of her new cookbook, Mind, Body, Spirit, Food: Adaptable Recipes and Grounding Meditations for Preparing Meals with Joy and Intention.

“You can approach this as just a cookbook,” she said, “but my hope is that it unlocks something for people—that it invites them to think about cooking as an opportunity to tend to themselves in a way that’s personal and authentic.”

That philosophy is what brings Sizemore to New West KnifeWorks St. Helena for a book signing and wine tasting on Thursday, February 12.

“I’ve ogled New West KnifeWorks for many years,” she said. “They talk about the knife as a tool for connection, for pleasure, for beauty in the kitchen—which is 100 percent aligned with the mission behind my work.”

Sizemore regularly cooks with a New West KnifeWorks Santoku and says she doesn’t enter her kitchen without it.

“It’s become my go-to happy place,” she said. “I’m in the middle of a book launch—my life is bonkers—but this knife has become a grounding reminder of my own work. It’s like saying, ‘Okay, let’s pause. Let’s just be here. Let’s cook.’”

Now living in New York’s Hudson Valley, Sizemore is looking forward to connecting with the St. Helena community.

“I feel like it’s going to be such a fun opportunity,” she said. “To connect people to the knives, to my work—but really to this idea that cooking can be more than something we have to do. It can be an opportunity for something deeper.”

The free event, open to the public, will include book signing with Nicki Sizemore and a curated wine tasting from Aperture Cellars, known for its Bordeaux-inspired wines crafted from cool-climate vineyards in Sonoma and Alexander Valley.

Mind, Body, Spirit, Food: Adaptable Recipes and Grounding Meditations for Preparing Meals with Joy and Intention.

Book signing with Nicky Sizemore, wine tasting with Aperture Cellars.
Where: New West Knifeworks in Napa Valley, 1380 Main Street, St. Helena
When: Feb 12th, 3:30-6:00

Mind, Body, Spirit, Food: Adaptable Recipes and Grounding Meditations for Preparing Meals with Joy and Intention. Buy the book

About Aperture Cellars
Aperture Cellars, founded by winemaker Jesse Katz, crafts Bordeaux-inspired wines from cool-climate vineyards in Sonoma and Alexander Valley. Rooted in both old-world elegance and new-world innovation, Aperture is known for wines that express terroir, balance, and refinement.