It all started when…

I fell in love with cooking as soon as I was tall enough to reach the stove. On any given evening, I could be found at my father’s side, eagerly watching his every move. My early days of eating were not always the healthiest. Like most busy families with two working parents, there wasn’t always time for made from scratch meals. We were often eating convenience foods like Rice-a-Roni, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, American Singles, bologna and hot dogs. When I became vegetarian in 1996, most of my meals still consisted of these familiar foods of my childhood, just without the animal proteins.

After college, my experimentation and creativity in the kitchen blossomed and I was relying less on pre-packaged foods and more on vegetables and grains made from scratch.

In 2009, I decided to finally follow my passion for cooking to Bauman College in Berkeley, CA. My education at Bauman College changed my eating habits for good. Not only did the program teach me the practical and technical skills required by professional chefs, but also focused on the idea of eating for health by teaching the foundations of holistic nutrition. Through the program, I learned not just how to make a meal taste good and look nice, but also learned health benefits of the ingredients we were using.

I now fully understood and embrace the importance of whole food, plant strong meals. In addition, I also learned how to cook for people with dietary restrictions and food allergies (gluten free, soy free, sugar free, etc.).

All of this knowledge is incorporated in my own way of eating, and in the way I prepare food for clients, as well as teach in my cooking classes.