Chef Valerie Perry has been cooking since she could drag the chair to the countertop in her family's kitchen to help her mother prepare meals. Influenced by her (very talented!) mother's international cooking and inspired by the wide range of foods her whole family enjoyed, she was always interested in variety and using as many different flavors as possible. As a young foodie, her first love was desserts. She was constantly turning out pies, cakes, cookies and even what she sheepishly refers to now as "The Jello Variations." While she did learn a great deal from watching and helping her classically trained mom, it wasn't until after college that Chef Valerie started to hone her cooking skills by taking classes at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco. After completing the Basic Cooking certificate, she trained further there and took as many classes as she could at various schools including the Culinary Center at Monterey and the Culinary Insitute of America at Greystone in Napa.

All the while working as a marketing manager in "Corporate America," Valerie was searching for a way to follow her passion professionally. Not particularly excited by the prospect of what she felt were the more institutionalized and impersonal careers in the restaurant, hotel or large catering ventures, she came across an article about personal chefs by the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA) and pursued enrollment. While completing the Personal Chef training program at the USPCA, she became even more convinced that she was finally on the right culinary path.

Ever the nurturer, Chef Valerie feels that being a personal chef allows her to combine creativity with her natural instincts to "take care of people." In providing her clients with healthy, convenient and delicious alternatives to the too-busy-to-cook-fast-food-to-go-eat-on-the-run-oh-my-gosh-I-forgot-about-the-board-meeting dinner dilemma, Chef Valerie and Home Plate Personal Chef Service allow busy individuals and families to come back to the table to welcome quality food and quality time back into their lives.