When Pamela Sheldon Johns comes to Utah this weekend to teach cooking classes and sign copies of her new cookbook 50 Great Appetizers, it will be a homecoming of sorts.

Johns, the author of 14 cookbooks and owner of the Italian Food Artisans cooking school in Tuscany, earned her degree from Brigham Young University in the 1970s.

"I'm not a Mormon, but I did live in Provo for a long time and still have many friends in Salt Lake, she said during a recent telephone interview.

Utahns can meet Johns on Friday, March 13 at the Harmon’s Grocery Store, 125 E. 13800 South, Draper. She will be signing copies of her cookbook beginning at 6:30 p.m.

On March 14, she will teach cooking classes at 11 a.m. and at 6:30 p.m. at the Draper store. Both classes cost $49 per person and are nearly full. Reserve a spot at harmonsgrocery.com.

Appetizers will be the topic of the first class. Johns’ demonstration will include spicy bread twists with pesto dip, polenta bites and crudités using the organic extra virgin olive oil she produces on her farm in Italy.

The later class will focus on great pasta sauces, with recipes from Johns’ early cookbook “50 Great Sauces.” The menu includes tomato and white bean sauce, sausage and pepper sauce with olives and basil and garlic shrimp in a wine sauce.

Johns and her family live on a 15-acre farm near Montepulciano, about 90 minute drive south of Florence. The estate is an active oliveto, with 1,250 olive trees and a garden that provides fresh, seasonal produce. Prior to opening the Bangerter Crossing store in 2008, two groups of Harmons associates toured the estate and experienced the olive-oil making process as part of an artisan cheese and bread making tour.