COOKING WITH YOUR BEST FRIEND

My first memories of food were rather traumatic, if I may… As an infant I choked on nearly every meal that I ate and was highly allergic to milk. As life progressed I had a rather limited range of taste and hated most foods that weren't served with a happy meal, which led, though I didn’t discover until much later, to a not so happy day on account of the painful stomach problems, diarrhea and heartburn I often suffered with. But this isn’t a story about struggling so much as a tale about the journey I went on to free myself from suffering, first from food, but ultimately from the very container of fear in which I had been marinating in most of my life.

After years of complaining about the lack of flavor and love in the food my Mom was serving us (what a brat…), I finally got the cooking bug and was thrust into a new world of delectable wonder. Cooking, something I was beginning to love—challenging myself to try new things, bringing friends together to connect over a good meal—became so much more than I could have ever imagined. When I started to see food and the act of preparing it not just as a chore or even a fun thing to do to pass the time, I started to experience food on an energetic level—how it made me feel, how it brought me closer to my community, how it made me think, and ultimately how it made me question who I was at my core. Everything I once knew and believed to be true was suddenly thrown in the blender and pureed into nothingness, or rather, something entirely unfamiliar to all that I had been taught to be true.

As time went on, as I began to explore all of the different ways food could be used to grow and progress my life, this passionate love affair I had with cooking led me and my brother to creating an alternative cooking show with the hope to inspire people around the world to get excited about cooking, as well as signing a deal with a major TV network and flying around the world to cook for celebrities and make cooking fun and simple as a way to break down the culinary wall that often kept people out of the kitchen.

My food journey may seem unique, but it is the underlying notion of what food really is that fascinates me and can benefit anyone. And the best part is—it doesn’t take much to get started, just a few ingredients, an open mind and a willingness to look beyond failure and to focus on being present and seeing what you might uncover. After all, food, beyond the surface, is an energy, and rather than getting too caught up on what we are eating, when we see HOW and WHY we are eating, we start to unlock pieces of ourselves that make the rest of our life more clear. Sure, eating a good meal is delicious and the skill of cooking has infinite potential, but the journey of learning about food, of developing a deeper relationship to it as a tool for healing and connection can truly change life in quite a fascinating way.

And that is really what “Cooking With Your Best Friend,” is about. Consider me a guide that has spent the last good many years of my life diving deep into the delicious world of food, and making sense of an often confusing topic. I share tips on how I learned to love to cook, how I found creative ways to save money and still eat well, how I uncovered my intuitive ability to eat without having to diet, and how I tapped into a piece of myself that allowed me to heal and feel better than I ever have by simply learning to listen to my body. Ready to cook up something delicious for your life?