Here’s the short list in no certain order:

• • Culinary Nutrition Expert
  • Culinary school trained chef of all kinds and a server extraordinaire who knows a little about wine
  • World traveler, sun-chaser, and mountain biker and hiker
  • Lifestyle and health enthusiast
  • Practicing yogi for 25 years, instructor and former studio owner
  • Over-educated science nerd
  • Writer and grammar geek

And here’s the extended version…

I’m all about retaining my health so that I can keep moving and living without needing pharmaceuticals.  Leaving small town Indiana in my 20s, I chose to live an alternative lifestyle that followed my whims and dreams giving my family anxiety.

Filled with travel and frequent housing moves, I wanted to explore the world near and far using my ecclectic skillset to find interesting and mind-expanding experiences that fed my soul and offered beautiful life-lessons. I say “beautiful” now looking back, but many of those lessons were very humbling teaching me to be a better human. I’m grateful for them to this day.

Working in restaurants cooking, serving and bartending to fund my education and fun, my botany and English degrees fell short of what I really loved…FOOD, PEOPLE, and TRAVEL. Culinary school provided the avenue for ALL THREE.

Here are a few adventurous opportunities that came out of that pivotal choice:

• • Wine tasting room manager (this little gem led me to doing 3 vintages in 3 countries)
  • Apple and kiwi fruit picker and packhouse employee in New Zealand (my botany degree landed me a spot in the Apple Institute of New Zealand testing and evaluating apple nutritional components)
  • Gardener at an organic vegan restaurant (This was long before vegan was a thing. I worked with 2 PhD nutritionists who had more food knowledge for healing than any book could tell me)
  • Chef at a guest stay cattle station in the Australian outback (I helicopted back and forth to town and had to be super creative when ingredients didn’t show up in the weekly delivery)
  • Professional tent dweller (I lived in a tent for a year in Australia to keep the rent cheap while working under the radar until I got a residency visa. I don’t need to camp ever again.)
  • Sous chef on a large cruise ship in the Caribbean (I learned quickly that getting off the ship didn’t help my moral about cooking canned, processed food.)
  • Yoga instructor and studio owner (I found yoga in New Zealand and unknowingly developed my own style. That effort led me to having teacher training and an established studio gifted to me.)
  • Herbalist assistant (I learned heaps about natural medicine and food therapy.)
  • Private chef and catering professional (Realistically, private chef work is less about cooking and more about doing  mountains of dishes. It’s not that glamorous.)
  • Remote technical writer for a technology company (I’m an excellent translator of tech-speak to people-speak. That job connected me to amazing array of internationals who shared their ethnic food recipes.)

Mixed in these opportunities are hundresd of mini jobs that provided me with incredible food knowledge and techniques, lifestyle hacks, and human interactions that have forever shaped my life. I have successfully avoided big pharma to stay moving. My steps throughout this journey aren’t perfect by any means, but I learned that mental, physical, and emotional health are directly related to what you eat and how you live.

My most recent turn found me in the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. In that program, my food knowledge expanded exponentially in a very DIFFERENT DIRECTION. I learned that cooking and eating is more than technique and flavor; it’s about the life-giving health benefits of every single ingredient. Combining ingredients to empower your body to heal and build resilience shifted how I looked at cooking not only for myself, but for others as well.

If I eat horrible fake food, then I feel and act horribly.

If I eat beautiful, life-giving, real food, I feel beautiful and exude that onto others.

Either way I choose to eat, the outcome affects me and those around me.

I choose to be beautiful; I can help you be beautiful too.

Change is hard. In convenience food culture, changing your eating habits is more than just changing what you eat. It’s changing your lifestyle in parallel as well. The lifestyle shift may be more difficult to maneuver than changing what you eat.

Changing your eating and lifestyle habits starts with shifting your perspective and having a plan to move towards your desired changes. It begins with small pivots.

Using a small pivot lessens the stress of making a change, any change. A single change isn’t as chaotic or disrupting as trying to deal with an overwhelming overhaul leading to failure.

A single change allows you time to adapt and incorporate your new rhythm in your daily life. As you settle into the new rhythm and notice the positive results, you prove to yourself that you made a great decision. From there, another change is initiated.

Effective change takes time. Compassion towards yourself is necessary to move through the rough patches; those patches aren’t permanent.

My mission is to guide and encourage you to slow down, reevaluate, and shift how you eat and how you live one small pivot at a time.

Real food guidelines are simple directives for initiating a change in your perspective about food, cooking and lifestyle. In busy  western culture, buying food and cooking are often associated with being time consuming and complicated, especially after a long day. Both are sidelined for more “convenient food” options that require little effort, bring no healing benefits, and taste terrible.

I’m here to tell you buying and cooking real food doesn’t have to be complicated or time consuming. If you have time to scroll social media for 30-45 minutes, you have time to whip up a tasty dish made with real food.

The best meals are simple, made with intention, and filled with flavor and lots of LOVE.

1. 1.  SIMPLE, FRESH INGREDIENTS!
   2. Organic, as best as possible for your area. Buying organic is an investment in your health. 
   3. Sustainable 4-legged and 2-legged creatures along with their swimming sea friends. NO conventional or farm-raised creatures. They come with a whole lotta chemical baggage.
   4. Leafy greens. Trust me. They are your friends, and your body loves them. 
   5. Trade some of the salt for fresh herbs and spices. There are loads of spectacular herb and spice blends to sass up any meal. 
   6. Try infused olive oils and vinegars for flavor diversity.
   7. Get grainy, nutty, and seedy! Organic is a must! They are more nutrient dense than conventional versions. Remember, soaking these little gems removes the naturally occurring toxins that can disrupt your belly. 
   8. Gluten-free, dairy-free. Yep, I said it. Many conditions have their origins from consuming gluten and dairy, so eliminating it needs to happen. I hear you…this seriously encroaches on lifestyle. Eating out becomes challenging.
   9. Real food is easier to digest. Your body knows what to do with real food. It gets confused with fake food and creates inflammation.