About Me
I am a Laguna Beach mom with a passion for food, fitness and well-being. Focusing on healthy eating, exercise and meditation, I seek to live the “good life” – a life filled with real food, longevity, fitness, love and gratitude. I am delighted to share my ideas in the hopes of helping YOU reach your own goals and achieve an overall greater level of health and happiness.
I don’t claim to be a nutrition or fitness expert. My ideas and suggestions come from my years of experience in the kitchen and in life –as a child, teen, a single twenty something, and then as a wife, mother and now empty-nester. I am proud to say that today I weigh within five pounds of my weight on my wedding day over twenty years ago and I hope to maintain this for more than another twenty years to come. This was not always my weight though; I did gain 15 pounds the year I lived in France and 40 pounds with each pregnancy. For me, diet and exercise has become less about being “thin” and more about feeling fit and feeling happy. Above all, it is about being able to move comfortably and to actively enjoy the activities I love — yoga, stand up paddle, dancing, hiking and skiing – and, more recently, to be able to simply walk unaided down the street. Having had a total hip replacement surgery in 2014, I no longer take for granted the ability to simply walk, it is a wondrous gift!
After watching my 70-year-old father die in 2009 from a toxic combination of medications, as well as seeing many relatives and friends battling various forms of cancer and debilitating illnesses, I have to become very interested in food as medicine…as a preventative and homeopathic tool.
When I was diagnosed with degenerative joint disease, a.k.a. osteoarthritis, in my late 40’s, one doctor recommended the anti-inflammation diet as a way to slow down and stave off the degeneration of tissue in my right hip. This further turned my attention to diet as a key factor to wellness and mobility as opposed to purely a tool to maintain appearance and weight. However, after trying an extreme diet, based on an ALCAT test, to reduce inflammation, and then experimenting with a platelet-rich plasma injection and later an amnio-fix injection, the pain and limited mobility I was experiencing became such that I went in for a total right hip replacement on March 3, 2014 at the age of 50.
Immediately after my surgery, resting comfortably (all drugged up) in my hospital bed, with a brand new titanium ball and socket hip joint and a 4” stem that reached down into my femur, I saw the movie Forks Over Knives. This has influenced me to eat less and less animal protein and to eliminate processed foods entirely from my diet. Real food for real life; that is my focus. But I am human, and I have family and friends who do not necessarily wish to eat as I do. So the recipes I share here include not only clean, vegetarian fare, but they also include things I have cooked for years, before my latest revolutions in nutritional philosophy. Enjoy!
Education
B.A. University of California, Berkeley
Double Major in French and Philosophy
1986
M.B.A. University of Southern California
Emphasis in Marketing and Entrepreneurship
1993
