Vignettes & Vinaigrettes reflects the author's experience catering during the second wave of the Women's Movement. As women juggled professional and family lives, a food revolution took commercial cooking in totally new directions and opened a wide range of entrepreneurial opportunities. Though many talented women, from diverse backgrounds, were drawn to these new professional options, little has been written about their work. Like vinaigrettes, balancing dishes without masking ingredients, here are personal vignettes that allow the reader to stand at Carol Durst-Wertheim's elbow as she looked up from her pots and pans, her cutting board, and the back stairwell. Here are stories that reveal a woman, wife, and mother, her crew and catering clients, in the time just before working with food became "hot."