Instructor, Culinary Arts Kootenay-born professional pastry chef and chocolatier Merri Schwartz has been working in the BC food community since 2002. Merri credits her childhood with awakening her interest in baking. Raised by back-to-the-land hippies, she didn’t buy her first bag of granulated sugar until the age of 18 and learned, in a kitchen filled with carob, honey and whole wheat flour, that