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12/13/2017 07:30 AMWell, you know how things happen in small towns. The real estate agent who sold Laura Grimmer and her husband Michael Beil their home introduced her to Mihae Lee, the artistic director of the Essex Winter Series. And Laura also knew Janice Atkeson, the chair of the board of the series. One thing led to another and…voilà! Laura has joined the board of trustees of the series.
“It was easy to say ‘Yes’ to a series with such great concerts,” Laura says.
The winter series opens this year on Sunday, Jan. 7, 2018 with the New York Woodwind Quintet, one of whose members, French horn player William Purvis, is Lee’s husband. Lee, a pianist, will be featured with the quintet in works by Mozart and Poulenc.
Subsequent concerts include Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks in the annual Stu Ingersoll Jazz Concert on Feb. 18; bass-baritone David Pittsinger, a performer of international reputation with roots on the shoreline, on March 4; and the Quodlibet Ensemble, a string orchestra, in the Fenton Brown emerging Artist Concert on April 8.
Now, back to one thing leading to another. The same realtor who introduced Laura to Lee called Laura to let her know a store was available on Chester Main Street and, once again…voilà! Laura opened The Perfect Pear, an upscale cookware shop. She also gives cooking lessons and demonstrations at her home. Her small store, she notes, couldn’t accommodate those activities.
Her culinary skills have brought Laura appearances on television station WFSB’s lifestyle show, Better Connecticut. In one appearance she demonstrated how to make a dessert pizza; in another, a technique called sous vide, in which she bagged a beef tenderloin in plastic and then cooked it by immersing the bag in boiling water. (She also was the subject of a Courier Food Court article on making perfect popcorn.)
Laura didn’t start out as a cook. She majored in journalism at the University of North Carolina and worked for the Associated Press before making a career change and going into public relations. Part of the career move, she admits, was the desire of a girl who had grown up in a small southern town to move to the big city. The first big city was Boston, where she worked for a public relations firm specializing in business-to-business computer technology. The next city was New York, where she first headed a branch of the Boston agency for which she had worked and then opened her own public relations firm.
Then, after some 17 years in public relations, Laura changed careers again; she sold her public relations agency and enrolled in the French Culinary Institute.
“I was 45; for me, was the perfect time to do it. I always enjoyed cooking and entertaining, but I worked 12 hours a day. My husband did all the cooking,” she says.
Laura’s husband Michael is an author who writes books for children and young adults.
After finishing her culinary course, Laura started a new business as a private chef cooking in the homes of individual clients. Her idea was not simply to prepare elegant food, but to match wines to her meals, thus the name of her business, the Perfect Pair. When she opened her shop in Chester, she used a variation on the name: The Perfect Pear. A perfect pear, she explains, is “an absolutely beautiful thing.”
Laura says she had no qualms about opening her culinary store.
“I already opened two businesses,” she says.
In fact, when she heard that the Chester store was vacant, she made a rapid decision to start her shop there. Snap decisions, she adds, are not new for her.
“My husband and I joke about making big decisions in no time at all. We met on a blind date and were engaged 10 weeks later,” she says.
With only 400 square feet of space, she says she has to select her wares carefully.
“It’s so personal. I chose every single item in the store,” she says.
She delights in the range of her merchandise, however. She recalls the customer who thought there was no way she would have what he wanted—a truffle cutter—but he was surprised by her immediate response: “I do.” A local restaurant had called her several months before to ask if she had one, so Laura decided to stock it.
“I waited six months for another person to ask, but I had it,” she says.
Laura and Michael started coming to this area on weekends some five years ago before deciding to move here full time in 2016. Laura is enthusiastic about the cultural offerings in this area.
“Between the theaters, the Eugene O’Neill center in Waterford, the Kate, and my initial exposure to Essex Winter Series, it’s an amazing place to be,” she notes.
She now tutors for the Valley Shore Literacy Volunteers working with a 27 year-old Chinese women with very limited English skills.
“It’s very rewarding work,” she says.
Laura also swims regularly on a master’s swim team that practices at the pool at Haddam-Killingworth High School. In college, Laura competed in both breast stroke and individual medley. Actually, although her swimming group calls itself a team, she says they don’t compete. Every year a senior on the Haddam Killingworth High School swim team acts as the master’s team coach.
“He is a ]\17-year-old and he really kicks our butts,” she says.
Once again, Laura has become so busy that she doesn’t have time to cook dinner every night. She says she and Michael divide dinner preparation duties now.
“He’s a great sous chef; I think we’ve reached a happy medium,” she says.
Laura admits that when it is her time to be the sous chef, she doesn’t always succeed as the second in command in the kitchen.
“Maybe I can sometimes be a bit too bossy,” she says.
For more information and tickets for the Essex Winter Series, visit essexwinterseries.com or call 860-272-4572.