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Nadine Daszkiewicz, left, is the longtime owner of The Kitchen Shop in downtown Craig.

“I think it was 1996 when I opened this place, but I can’t remember for sure. I know it’s been more than 10 years. My whole family has always been in the food industry. My husband, Mike, worked in restaurants, and before he was cooking, he was a waiter and it just seems like we’ve always been involved in that industry. It’s been a natural progression to me opening the shop. And after I started it, he joined me once he retired.

“We’ll be having some cooking demonstrations coming up. I’m not sure when because the equipment hasn’t gotten here yet, but it’s something that I’ve really wanted to do here, we just don’t have the space. We have to do two classes that Fagor requires, and hopefully, we’ll get some more people involved. There are some really good cooks around town. They may not be affiliated with any restaurants right now, but they’ve lived all over the world, they have lots of experience and sometimes that’s best because somebody who’s worked in a kitchen similar to yours is easier to learn from than someone who’s used to working in a big restaurant kitchen or a hotel kitchen. Fagor makes pots and pans, pressure cookers, cook-tops. We sell some of their stuff, like the pressure cookers.

“Most of our stuff is kitchen-related, but we also have things that are more like gifts. We brought cards in because we do so many wedding gifts that people needed wedding cards, and once you start with wedding cards, you’ve got all the other kinds of cards. And, it’s fun because people will stand there and laugh and that’s great. Most of our business is wedding-related, although we do a lot of business around Christmas, too. We sell a lot of knives because people need them for hunting and for their kitchen. We sell a lot of boning knives.

“Besides the store — which takes up a good portion of time — we have a big garden at home. That connects to cooking in some way, too, and that’s all I have time for right now. The closest thing to gardening we sell is stuff for canning and food dehydrators, things like that. We already have good garden places here in town, and we just don’t have room to sell things like that. That’s what’s limiting a lot of the things we’d like to do.

“We always have some off-the-wall stuff that we bring in for Christmas, like for a long time we used to sell socks, and we still have some. But, I try to keep things connected, in some way, to food. We have a lot of hot sauces, we sell candy by the pound, like different chocolates, chocolate-covered espresso beans and gummi bears. When it comes to food, I look to Colorado products, although we’ve lost two of our big suppliers. We’ve also got some beer equipment, too. The kits we sell have the equipment and the ingredients. We could sell the ingredients by themselves, but it’s another question of ‘where would we put it?’

“We stay open late on Thursdays for the farmer’s market. We were hoping that people could get used to it and that we could keep doing that through Christmas. The stuff for the farmer’s market has to be homegrown, so most of my stuff doesn’t qualify. I grow my own vegetables, but I don’t have enough to bring over there.

“I’m originally from Pennsylvania. I grew up in Harrisburg and then went to Penn State. After Mike and I got married, we moved to Philadelphia for a while. Then we moved to Meeker, which was a huge change. He worked for Northern Coal, and when that shut down, we moved up here. Been here ever since. I certainly am happy here. It’s a great place to live, and we’ve raised our kids here. I love it. I really love doing business in Craig.”

— Interview by Andy Bockelman