I’ve been cooking for as long as I can remember. Like many little kids, I would always follow my mother around the kitchen and “help” as much as she could.
Starting when I was about 10, it was one of my chores to completely plan and cook dinner one night every week. The dinner had to be a balanced meal – no getting away with saying we’re having ice cream sundaes for dinner! At first, it was a little overwhelming – I still remember the first time I tried to manage a stovetop full of boiling pots – and there were failures when mom had to come to the rescue for sure. But the excitement and pride that came with pulling off a successful meal couldn’t be matched. It was this early experience with cooking and menu planning that contributed to my love of cooking today. Cooking was never scary to me – it was a chance to create what I wanted to eat.
In the summer of 2015, I completed the Plant-Based Professional Course through Rouxbe Cooking School in order to build on the skills I had learned on my own. Although I’m not a vegan, the plant-based techniques I learned in the course have helped me incorporate more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains into my recipes in unique ways.
My work has been featured by Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Parade Magazine, Yahoo! News, Buzzfeed, and The Huffington Post, among others. I also have a second blog called The Busy Foodie.
What is healthy?
I feel like every time you turn around there’s new information about what’s “healthy” and what isn’t. I’m not a doctor or nutritionist by any means, so please don’t take my word for what’s healthy.
If you read back in my archives far enough, you’ll see that I started this blog as a Weight Watchers blog. I started Weight Watchers after I graduated from college. Back then, there weren’t nearly as many prepared options made with natural, whole foods available as there are now. It was the era of Snackwells, and “health food” was either hippie food or tasted like cardboard. I love food, and don’t want to waste time on things that don’t actually taste good, so I had to learn to make my own! Just because something is healthy, doesn’t mean that it can’t be enjoyable! Before I eat anything, I try to ask myself “is this delicious?” because if it isn’t delicious, it isn’t worth eating. I’d much rather eat 1 really good cookie made with natural ingredients, than 3 not so great cookies that are full of artificial chemicals.
New to Healthy Delicious? Here are some of my favorite recipes to get you started:
- Lemon-Parmesan Gnocchi with Mushrooms (Sheet Pan Dinner)
- Chicken Cauliflower Rice Soup (Whole 30)
- Taco Casserole
- Baked Chicken and Spinach Flautas
- Dill Havarti Turkey Burgers
Short on time? You love these 20 Make-Ahead Breakfasts and 20 Healthy Sheet Pan Dinners for Busy Weeknights and well as my extensive collection of healthy weeknight dinner recipes.
You can also check out my cookbook, Healthy Eating One-Pot Cookbook, available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble.
Thank you for this work or art, and the recipes. I am an ex-diabetic with high blood pressure. For 21 years I fought these issues with medicine and every diet I could try. I am no nutritional expert, and neither was I a good cook. I am now retired and living in the Philippines. This must be the “rice” capital of the world. 🙂 While in the US, I met a doctor who mentioned I try the carnivore diet with intermittent fasting. Heck no!!!! The thought kept plaguing my mind, so I did research… now I am no longer a diabetic nor do I have high blood pressure. In the Philippines I have not found sausage to correlate with my carnivore diet. This is the way I met you. I love your sausage recipe. It is as If I were in America again. I continue to try more of your recipes and now I am beginning to think we may have related taste buds. Maybe our taste buds are cousins…. or maybe siblings. Thank you for all your work and mostly for sharing it with me.
Looking forward to some low-carb healthy eating via your thoughts, experience, and recipes. Thank you for your specifics and great recipes.
I have to thank you for the efforts you have put in penning this
blog. I really hope to see the same high-grade blog posts
from you in the future as well. In truth, your creative writing abilities has
inspired me to get my very own website now 😉
I am a food lover and reading your posts inspired me to start my new food blog. Sometimes I get overwhelmed and don’t know where to begin. Your website is giving me some great ideas on incorporating my recipes/favorites into my new website blog. I also love to dine in restaurants. Love your food photos!
Paragraph writing is also a excitement, if you be familiar with after that you can write if not it is complex to write.
What?
hahahaha pretty sure that was a spam comment that slipped though. I usually delete them but it looks like there are a few on this page that snuck past me. 😉
Your food photos are terrific!
thank you!