DIY Network

Ultimate Cooking School: Sheelah Kay Stepkin From "Special Presentation" episode DMUW-S

Sheelah Kay Stepkin

Sheelah Kay Stepkin's Ultimate Kitchen

Torte Knox Recreational Cooking School
Hawley, Pennsylvania

Cooking is something that comes naturally to Sheelah Kay Stepkin. She's been giving cooking lessons for more than half her life and loved the interaction with her students. To Sheelah cooking is part of an interaction that binds people together and results in memories that last a lifetime.

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Torte Knox Recreational Cooking School in Hawley, PA.

For years Sheelah would invite students to her New York and Philadelphia apartments and give individual lessons in her small kitchen. About ten years ago she heard about a unique opportunity to buy a one hundred year old building in the Pocono Mountains, about 2 hours west of New York. This wasn't any building. It was the former home of the First National Bank of Hawley. Still a majestic stone structure, the bank had long ago merged with a national chain and had gone through a series of unfortunate renovations. Sheelah says she knew this building was to be her home and workshop the moment she looked through the window.

Moving to Hawley was not without sacrifice. Taking up residence in the bank's old conference room Sheelah prepared meals on a hot plate and slept on a cot while starting renovations. She first tackled the second floor of the bank converting offices into a living area and her first workshop kitchen.

It was only recently that Sheelah was able to start renovations on the main floor of the bank. Wherever possible she tried to preserve and restore as much of the old bank's furnishings, such as the double-door nickel and steel vault and the dozens of safe deposit boxes. The boxes -- weighing thousands of pounds -now support the butcher-block work surfaces where the students prepare their meals. The windows of the bank were all restored to their original splendor, the drop ceiling was removed and the florescent lighting was replaced elegant lamps from another closed bank.
Sheelah opened her new cooking school on the main floor in October of 2003, and has begun classes. Ten years ago she had looked through the dirty windows of a closed bank and had a vision of what it could be. It took sacrifice, lots of hard work, and a belief in her vision to create the Torte Knox Recreational Cooking School in her adopted hometown of Hawley, PA.