Wine and Food Festival kick off events

MSU-Billings Foundation's popular event and fundraiser, the Wine and Food Festival is May 10th to the 15th but you can get in the spirit early with two special preview events--Wine 101 on February 23rd and 24th and Wine 201 on March 9th and 10th, 7pm-9pm.  The courses will cover wine basics and wine tasting and will be taught by Stella Fong.

Stella shares her personal love of food and wine through her classes on Asian style cooking, wine seminars and her writings. She holds a Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Davis and a General Cooking Certificate from the Culinary Institute of America, and in 2009 earned a Wine Professional Certification. She has taught cooking classes on the west coast for Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, Macy’s Cellars and Gelson’s, as well as after-school enrichment programs for elementary and middle school children. In Billings she has instructed at the Billings Depot, Wellness Center, Copper Colander and the YWCA.

Born in the San Francisco Bay area and raised in a traditional Chinese family, Fong devises culinary creations that include a mixture of old and new. Her understanding of food for the consumer came from working at her father’s grocery, Martin’s Market, in Berkeley, California. In California, she developed recipes for San Diego State University food services and the Kids Cooking Club. Now she features locally grown food when cooking for the Good Earth Market Sunday Suppers and last summer she contributed to the first Field-to-Table dinner at Danly Farms.

Fong’s articles have appeared in Cooking Light magazine, the San Diego Union Tribune, and Fine Cooking magazine. More recently she has written for Yellowstone Valley Woman, Big Sky Journal, Distinctly Montana, Magic City Magazine and Montana Quarterly. She has volunteered for the MSUB Wine and Food Festival for many years and was co-chair of the festival in 2008 and 2009.

You can find more info at www.winefoodfestival.com and on the festival's Facebook Page.