Throughout my life I have been around food, working with food and questioning our food.
I have seen the full scope of our food.
What our food once was, what it has become and how it has negatively affected us.
I know that we need to restore our food back to what it once was for our health and
well-being and how we can get there.
Becoming a certified nutritionist was not a straight path but was definitely an enlightening education that I did not expect.
Born to immigrant parents, both raised and worked on their family farms with a close up view and understanding of where our food comes from and how it comes to be, from seed to table.
We had a vegetable garden where we had a front row seat to how things grew. We had to help shell beans, make tomato puree for sauce and jams from strawberries or peaches. We saw chickens being killed and sausages being made. This was a great education in food, and in life for us and there we had no illusions of where our food came from.
The second part of my education came when I worked in the food industry, both as pastry chef and as a sales representative for ingredient manufacturers. I was lucky enough to work with some very skilled food scientists and learned a lot about how our food is made, why they use certain ingredients and why they add preservatives and other additives to processed foods. This explains why we refer to manufactured foods as formulated and home cooked food is created using recipes.
These are two very different things.
These manufactured foods that I was able to see close up from concept to manufacture, were in such sharp contrast to the food of my childhood that I started to question everything. Everything I ate and everything that was considered to be food, especially if they used the word ‘healthy’ to describe them.
These experiences are actually in part the reason I turned to wholistic nutrition.
Getting a closer look at how our food is made and how the use of chemicals, preservatives and additives are utilized not to increase the quality of the foods manufactured but to increase such things as shelf life, appearance, taste and/or texture and unfortunately, the addictiveness of these products. All this has been done without the consideration of how it can affect the health of our bodies especially if consumed on a regular basis over long periods of time. I have seen the food industry for what it truly is and, quite frankly, I found it terrifying but it also made me see very clearly what we need it to be for us to live well and truly thrive.
A whole-istic view of our health is what I believe should form the solid foundation from where we may be able to transform our health and our lives. Create balance for ourselves. Our health should not be compromised by compartmentalizing.
There is no separation.
The whole is greater than the one.
All the pieces we need to keep us healthy and happy need to come together. We need to dig into our past and bring forward all the things we’ve forgotten…all those things our grandparents and great-grandparents knew instinctively or learned because the time was taken to pass this vital information down from one generation to the next. For me, this is my mother’s voice in my head constantly reminding me.
This is what I intend to pass onto you…
if you’ll allow me.
After years of speaking with many people about their health challenges,
I learned how to find my way to the core issues of their health concerns.
Asking the right questions, sometimes seemingly odd questions, to find that one little detail that will allow me to discover exactly what they need to help them.
I had the privilege of working with a wonderful man and great pastry chef how showed me the techniques and skills I would need for a lifetime, both in the pastry shop and out in the world.
I take the skills I’ve learned from the pros
I’ve worked with, add them to the old world ways that I’ve learned from one of the best cooks I’ve ever known, my mother,
to create a new world way of cooking, one that is uncomplicated, healthy,
easy to follow and delicious.
Still in training under my expert mother who grew up on a sprawling farm in Southern Italy. Gardening is more than just putting a plant in the ground and adding water. My mother is teaching me all the nuances of working with Mother Earth and how to follow your intuition and your heart.
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