If you asked me 20 years ago what my life approaching 40 would look like, the answer would have been completely different. After being accepted to University of Toronto for microbiology and immunology, I decided to follow my heart and attend Le Cordon Bleu Culinary Arts Institute in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. My passion for good food made me excel to the top of my class and led to me to a prestigious “Grande Diplome” in Cuisine and Pastry. This gave me the amazing opportunity of apprenticing at both the Prime Minister and Governor General’s residences in my early 20s. After working for years in fine dining restaurants, catering and some stints as a private chef, my career took an unexpected turn and landed me in the corporate world working as a recipe developer for some of Canada’s largest food retailers. All before the age of 30! As a corporate recipe developer, I learned to make accessible recipes for the average person. While these jobs taught me so much, something always felt off about helping these companies sell more processed foods to Canadian consumers…

 

My childhood was a rollercoaster both emotionally and physically. Growing up during the low-fat craze of the 1980s left me obese by the age of 13; topping the scales at 238lbs (108kg) Being both taller and heavier than most of the teachers and all the other kids at my elementary school made me the target of relentless bullying; which only deepened my attachment to food and the temporary comfort it provided. Having inklings of being gay almost as far back as that didn’t help with the bullying. Being the “fat” kid was one thing, but the “fat, gay” kid was a whole other level of torment. Around 13 I decided to become a vegetarian; looking back this was a desperate attempt to change my diet to lose weight. Through a combination of starving myself and then bingeing on the highly processed vegetarian foods of the time, the number on the scale went down but it had a dramatic negative impact on my health. It was around this time I developed Binge Eating Disorder that send me on a weight rollercoaster for decades. As my teenage years progressed I started to develop severe cystic acne. Before the age of 20, I also had repeated knee injuries that led me through two surgeries removing much of the cartilage from one knee and leading me to severe arthritis before I hit 30. The foods going into my body left me riddled with inflammation, overweight and miserable.

 

I’m not saying all this for sympathy or to sing my victim story. The fact is that these struggles made me who I am today. Life’s struggles gave me deep compassion and empathy, propelling me down this path fueled by a passion to help others find their way out of the darkness and into a new experience of their own bodies and minds. Today I value all my life experiences; they taught me to respect everyone’s own personal journey. This passion drives me to help anyone open to make that journey lighter, mindful and more empowering. Food is medicine and brings people together. I founded Plant-Based Food Bites and an access point to get us into our kitchens, start shifting our dysfunctional relationship to food/diet and unlearn the common misconceptions about what a whole food plant-based life-style means. Am I fully Vegan? NO! I still consume some ethically sourced eggs, dairy and meat from time to time. My goal isn’t to make you feel bad about the way you’ve been eating, but to show you how delicious and nutritious incorporating more plant-based options can be.

 

The average person thinks plant-based eating is bland, raw and devoid of taste and that variety and global flavours is limited. This is absolutely not true, when you see the recipes Plant-Based Food Bites creates we will blow your mind and your taste buds! ALL the recipes in my classes are fully vegan, gluten free and refined-sugar free.