About

Hello, and welcome to my blog! Soul food is not about a pile of comfort food on your plate. For me its about what gets you up out of bed, what keeps you motivated throughout the day, what makes you feel confident, happy and satisfied. In life it is important that we listen to our instincts and intuition in order to live a life that truly feeds your soul.

I started this blog for a few different reasons. First and foremost I LOVE to cook. I constantly hear people say they “can’t” cook. Well, we all didn’t come out of the womb swimming, riding bikes, and rollerblading, so yes cooking may take some time to learn, but it is something everyone can learn! It takes baby steps to get on the level of someone like Mario Batali, but we all have to start somewhere(And I am no where near Mario Batali’s culinary skills, and probably never will be, but that is okay)! It is important to make cooking fun, I always have some music turned on, possibly a glass of wine(or two), and just have fun with it. You’re experimenting, things will happen not everything will come out tasting amazing but it is not the end of the world. Remember you can’t become good at something unless you practice it.

In undergraduate school I studied secondary education with a focus on history and physical education. It was during this time that I realized the importance and benefits that living an active and healthy lifestyle has. I was assigned a variety of internships, going in and out of public schools and witnessed a lot of overweight and out of shape kids. At the time I didn’t know what I could do to help. Yea I could become a physical education teacher(if I could find a full time job, PE is one of the first classes to be cut), but it didn’t seem like that was enough, playing a game with the kids in class wasn’t going to help them learn about the benefits of a healthy diet. All I knew was it broke my heart because kids, for the most part, learn their eating habits from adults around them, and they were having no say in something that was going to effect them for their entire lives.

So after graduation I explored a few different options. I always worked with kids in some type of capacity but never got a “real job” teaching full time(I can’t tell you how much the phrase “real job” bothers me, I was paying my bills and working over 40 hours a week, but most importantly I was happy with what I was doing).

About a year later my girlfriend and I made a drastic decision in about ten minutes, we decided we were going to go to Africa and work in an orphanage.  Why not, we thought? You only live once we had to capitalize on the fact that we couldn’t come up with a good enough reason not to go! So we went.  Moved back in with my parents to save money for a few months, and the next thing I knew we were stepping off on a Tarmac in the middle of Tanzania. It was amazing. Truly an experience that fed my soul. I loved it so much that after two months we came home and I had to go back. Four months later I was back in Tanzania.  I stayed this time for three months, fell even more in love with the country and the people and left a piece of my heart, as I headed back to the US. Read more about my Tanzania trip here http://lindsay-in-tanzania.blogspot.com/

Upon returning to the US I moved out of my parents house lived by myself for the first time in my 25 years of life(everyone should experience this), got engaged, married, and moved across the country all in about a year. Whew!!! Just trying to sum it all up for you, I could go on and on 🙂

So as they say everything happens for a reason. cliche? Absolutely, truthful, I certainly believe in it. I find myself living in a city where I only know my best-friend(husband-Angelo), cat(Macie), and my dog(Reno). I have spent some time researching and reading about the best way for me to help people, and encourage them to live an active, healthy, and fulfilling lifestyle. So I have finally made the decision to go back to school. It is very scary. The spiritual teacher Osho says “Courage is not the absence of fear, it is rather the total presence of fear, with the courage to face it”. So I am facing that fear, paying more money to go back to school,  I have the freedom courage to go for it so I am!

I am using this blog to explore and share my knowledge on health and nutrition.  I hope you come a long for the ride on this exciting journey.  Living a life that feeds my soul is satisfying and exciting.  I hope you come to me with any questions or concerns you have, I am eager to help and assist you!