Love this light and creamy dessert!

CHERRY RAITA

Serves 3

1/3 cup dried cherries

1/2 cup boiling water

1/2 cup plain Greek yogurt

1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lime juice

3 tablespoons sunflower seeds, toasted and chopped

Soak the cherries in the boiling water until plumped, about 15 minutes.

Drain and coarsely chop the cherries.

In a medium bowl, combine all the ingredients.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

The foods we eat tell many stories.  It tells our story, as well as it’s own.  It tells the secrets of our heritage, our likes and dislikes, our mood, how and what our mothers cooked when we were young, and where we are in our lives.  But, most of the time we don’t really see this story, we just do what’s easiest to get food on the table or feed our families.  Most of will just throw something together without thinking about it.  But, our food has it own story too.  For produce, its story starts with a seed that a farmer decided to plant, the water he decided to feed it with, the use of pesticides that farmer decides to use or not use, the farm workers that nurture and pick the produce.  For meat and poultry it starts with the raising of the animal, whether or not it has access to outdoors, the feed it is fed, how it is treated.  The story continues with processing, packaging and shipping and ends with us going to the market to purchase and prepare it.

Our food also tells the story of its travels.  We have strawberries in the winter from Holland and Belgium, tomatoes from Holland and grapes from Chili.  We have become accustomed to eating foods that have never grown in local soil.  In fact, most produce grown in the US travels an average of 1,500 miles before it gets sold.

When was the last time you thought of this?  Does anyone actually think about the story their food tells or where it came from?  Well, we should.  Because eating this way is destroying our planet.

Trucking, shipping and flying food from around the country and the globe takes a toll on the environment and on our health.  Every year, nearly 270 million pounds of grapes arrive in California, most of them shipped from Chile to the Port of Los Angeles.  Their 5,900 mile journey in cargo ships and trucks releases 7,000 tons of global warming pollution each ear, and enough air pollution to cause dozens of asthma attacks and hundreds of missed school days in California.

There is a new food movement, it goes by many names.  You may have heard of locavores, sustainable foods, slow foods, or eating local, well they all mean the same thing, to eat foods that have been produced within 100 miles from where you live.

The story of food within this movement starts as I mentioned before, with seeds, water, animals and feed, but instead of processing, packaging and shipping, it jumps right to an end story of the consumer and then the dinner table, cutting out the middle man and thousands of pounds of global warming pollution.

We’ve all heard of global warming, but not everyone really knows what it is.  Global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other air pollution that is collecting in the atmosphere like a thickening blanket, trapping the sun’s heat and causing the planet to warm up. Coal-burning power plants are the largest U.S. source of carbon dioxide pollution — they produce 2.5 billion tons every year. Automobiles, the second largest source, create nearly 1.5 billion tons of CO2 annually.

This doesn’t sound too bad, but global warming is already causing damage in many parts of the United States. In 2002, Colorado, Arizona and Oregon endured their worst wildfire seasons ever. The same year, drought created severe dust storms in Montana, Colorado and Kansas, and floods caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage in Texas, Montana and North Dakota. Since the early 1950s, snow accumulation has declined 60 percent and winter seasons have shortened in some areas of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington.

Of course, the impacts of global warming are not limited to the United States. In 2003, extreme heat waves caused more than 20,000 deaths in Europe and more than 1,500 deaths in India. And in what scientists regard as an alarming sign of events to come, the area of the Arctic’s perennial polar ice cap is declining at the rate of 9 percent per decade.

Buying locally produced food decreases the distance food must travel and reduces carbon dioxide emissions from trucking and requires less packaging materials.  A study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country.

Our local farms

The expansion of industrial agriculture (or factory farming) has made it increasingly difficult for small family farmers in the U.S to stay in business. Instead, the food industry has become dominated by a handful of giant corporations which benefit from government policies that favor large-scale production.  These farms use herbicdes and pesticides.  Studies done by the University of Florida show an increased incidence of cancer and other diseases among farmers who use herbicides and pesticides.  Other major health risks of long-term exposure include the potential to birth defects, while the major health risks include vomiting, diarrhea, blurred vision, tremors, convulsions, and nerve damage. Small local farms tend to be less aggressive than large factory farms about dousing their produce with chemicals making their food safer for consumption.  They also don’t need to give much thought to packing, shipping and shelf life and can select, grown and harvest crops to ensure peak qualities of freshness, nutrition and taste.  And,  if we want to eat food at its freshest, most nutrious, we need to eat locally.  Food starts to loose its freshness and nutrients as soon as it’s been picked.

One of the benefits of eating locally is helping the local economy by purchasing food from these small family owned local farms.  Farmers on average receive only 20 centts of each dollar spent, the rest going for transportation, processing, packaging, refrigeration and marketing.  Farmers who sell food to local customers recive the full retail value, a dollar for each food dollar spent.  Additionally, eating locally encourages the use of local farmland for farming, thus keeping development in check while preserving open space.

I understand that the way most of us live, the thought that there may be a farm within a 100 mile radius of us is absurd, but there are ways to find them.  There are local farmers markets that we can shop at, there are CSA’s (community supported agriculture) that we can join and there are websites that we can research.  Please go to www.localharvest.org to find local farms, farmers markets and csa’s, www.localfork.com also has some good information about local eating, as well as www.foodroutes.org.  There is also www.100milediet.org.  This is actually based on a book that 2 people wrote about their year of eating locally.  A large movement has been started, they have a TV show on PlanetGreen and if you’re interested in trying to eat locally, they can lead the way.

So, next time you sit down to a meal, think about the story your food is telling.  Is it telling the story of fosal fuels, pollution, packaging and chemicals, or is it telling the story of small, family owned farms in your backyard?  The way we eat has an enormous impact on the health of the planet. By choosing to eat lower on the food chain, and focusing on local and organic produce, we can curb global warming and air pollution, avoid toxic pesticides, support local farmers and enjoy fresh, tasty food.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

When we think of herbs and spices, we think of them as plants used by cooks for their flavor and aroma, and yes, they are that, but they are also so much more.  Spices have been used as currency, for their properties as preservatives and for healing for thousands of years.  They are used to stimulate all the senses, not just the tastebuds, through their aroma, flavor, texture and visual appeal.

When it comes to regional cooking, what people ate was largely determined by what they were able to grow in that particular region.  The style of cooking originally depended on local conditions, but what really differentiates the great cuisines of the world is the herbs and spices they use and how they blend them.

Complex flavors are built up in mixtures by using herbs and spices that complement each other.  Some are used for their taste, others for their aroma.  Some have souring properties; in others, the color is important.  The moment at which herbs or spices are added to a dish makes a crucial difference.  They will impart their flavor to the dish if added at the beginning of cooking; if sprinkled on toward the end of cooking, it is their aroma that will be emphasized in the finished dish.

The early use of herbs and spices was medicinal, and in many regions where they are grown, they are still valued for their medicinal properties.  Often their use in cooking was directly related more to their ability to promote health, combat flatulence, or help digest fatty foods then to their appetizing tastes and fragrances.  Fresh herbs and spices provided mineral salts and vitamins long before our need for these was understood.

Most cultrues recognize the importance of providing a balance in food.  Indian cooking follows Ayurvedic principles in using herbs and spices to provide flavor and to create physical and emotional wellbeing.  Chinese cooking is based on a theory that wellbeing is brought about by the careful balancing of the 5 flavors, sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and pungent, with the texture and color of the food.  Similar principals are followed in Iran where the cook strives to maintain a balance between ingredients classed as hot or cold.  Here in the U.S., herbs and spices have become important elements in adding flavor to low-salt and lowfat foods and garlic has gained wider acceptance because it is said to lower cholesterol levels and help prevent heart disease.

In all the regions of the world, traditional flavor combinations, using local ingredients, have come to characterize the foods of those regions, saffron, pimento, garlic and nuts in Spain; wine and herbs in France; basil, garlic, olive oil and anchovy in Italy.  In Britian it is parsley, thyme, sage and mustard; in Eastern Europe sour cream, dill and caraway.  The Middle East uses lemon, parsley and cinnamon; northern India uses ginger, garlic and cumin; southern Indian mustard seed, coconut, chili and tamarind; Thailand has fish sauce, lemon grass, galangal, and chili; China has soy sauce, ginger, and Sichuan pepper; and Meixco has chilies, cilantro and cinnamon.

Food companies are constantly formulating new flavors and trying to synthesize others.  They use electronic noses and tongues and other sophisticated equipment to produce “aroma-fingerprints”.  They gather aroma moleules from spices, herbs, and fruits or from finished dishes for reproduction in a laboratory, eventually to be unleashed in ready-prepared foods.  The results are certainly impressive, but many of the cultural and nutritive values of the original foods are lost.

An herb is the leaf of a plant used in cooking.  Most of the culinary herbs we use today grow in temperate climates.

Many herbs remain essential in classic European cuisines, tarragon, thyme, bay and garlic in France; basil, sage and rosemary in Italy; oregano in Greece; dill in Scandinavia; parsley sage, thyme and bay in Britian.  The traditional uses of these herbs are still reflected in the choices made by today’s cooks, but the foods with which they are used and their flavor combinations are changing due to our own curiosity as well as increased availability.

Generally, herbs are used to add fragrance and flavor rather than to prove the dominant taste.  When cooking with herbs, always add dried herbs at the beginning of cooking giving them time to heat and release their oils.  Herbs with tough leaves, such as rosemary, lavender, winter savory, thyme, and bay, can withstand long cooking, keeping in mind to remove the stems before serving.  To restore the aroma of herbs used in a long, slow-cooked dish stir a few finely chopped leaves into the pan toward the end of cooking.  If cooking with fresh delicate herbs such as parsley, basil, cilantro, dill, you must add them at the end of cooking as the essential oils dissipate when heated.

There are many different herbs, each with their own flavor, smell and taste.  There are those that are well known, such as basil parsley, cilantro, dill, sage, oregano, marjoram, rosemary and thyme.  There are those that I’m sure you’ve never heard of, as they are authentic to ethnic cuisines, such as mitsuba, known as Japanese parsley; epazote from Mexico; Vietnamese balm native to eastern and central Asia; hyssop native to northern Africa, southern Europe and western Asia.  There are leaves that are considered herbs that are usually eaten as salad greens, such as chicory, sorrel, arugula and watercress.  There are herbs that we don’t think of as herbs, such as garlic, fennel, marigold, lavender, geranium, catnip, celery, wasabi and horseradish.  There is sweet basil, purple basil, purple ruffles basil, bush basil, african blue basil, cinnamon basil, lemon basil, Thai bail, licorice basil, lime basil and holy basil, there’s dill weed and dill seed, fennel bulb, fennel seed, green fennel, bronze fennel, there’s peppermint, chocolate mint, moroccan mint, apple mint, mountain mint, pineapple mint, about 8 different varities of oregano, 8 different varities of sage and 9 different varities of thyme.  There are herb flavor combinations that absolutely work together: bouquet garni – bay, parlsey and thme, fine herbs – chervil, chives, parsley and tarragon, herbes a tortue – basil, chervil, fennel, marjoram, savory, and Herbs de Provence – savory, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, sage and fennel.

Spices are aromatic roots, bark, seeds, buds and fruits, usually in dried form, whole or ground, used in cooking.  The orginal use of spices in cooking was introduced by the Byzantines.  They preserved foods in spiced sauces, sometimes to hide the fact that the meat was rancid and other times to replace the flavor lost after lengthy boiling.

Most spices come from the East.  The first spice to be introduced to Europe was pepper, from India, which long remained a rare and expensive commodity.  Roman food was always liberally spiced, with ginger being a favorite.  The practice of adding spices continued throughout the Middle Ages.  Supplies increased as a result of the Crusades, and control of the “spice route” caused much rivalry.  Venice managed to obtain a near-monopoly over the distribution of spices in Europe, and the quest for alternative sources of supply was one of the reasons for the voyages that lead to the discovery of America and the West Indies.  Spices became more plentiful and less expensive when British and Dutch companies started trading them.  But, not all spices were spread due to trade.  Some resulted from the breaking of monopolies, as well as French botanists and exploeres smuggling plants to new destinations where they planted plantations.  Mirgration also has had an effect on the spread of spices.  Ships from southern China carried ginger to the Pacific region and immigrant communities brought their own traditional ingredients to their new homes and married them with local produce to bring to us new types of cusines, including many South American cusines, as well as the most famous, Cajun.

As with herbs there are spices that are associated with certain ethnic cuisines.  In Italian cooking it’s nutmeg, saffron, and coriander; Chinese is ginger, cloves, cinnamon, fennel and star anise and sesame; Thai food uses sesame, nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, cinnamon, cumin and turmeric; Vietnamese is dried chilies, turmeric, cardamom and tamarind; Carribean cooking uses nutmeg, tamarind, chili peppers, and allspice; African is sesame, turmeric, cumin, coriander, ginger and chiles; Moroccan is ginger, black pepper, paprika, cinnamon, turmeric, cumin and saffron; Mexican is anise, saffron, coriander, cloves, cinnamon, cumin  and in Indian they use fenugreek, turmeric, coriander, cumin, ginger, tamarind, cloves, cardamom and chiles.

And again, as with herbs, we have our familiar spices cinnamon, cloves, paprika, pepper, allspice, ginger and nutmeg.  We have our spices that we have never heard of such as akudjura from Australia, Zedoary from Southeast Asian and Indonesia, Asafetida from Iran and Armenia and Grains of Paradise from West Africa.  We have our spices that we don’t normally think of as spices such as vanilla, mustard, sesame, poppy, capers, caraway, rose, pomegranate, licorice and chilis.  There is black pepper, white pepper, Indian Malabar pepper, Tellicherry pepper, Indonesian lampong pepper, Sarawak Pepper, Brazilian pepper, Vietnamese pepper and mountain pepper, there is fresh ginger and dried ginger, fresh lemon grass, dried lemon grass and ground lemon grass, cardamom pods, cardamom seeds, white mustard seeds, black mustrd seeds, yellow mustard seeds, and 100’s of different kinds of chili peppers all having different heat indexes that are sold fresh, dried, ground or flaked, as well as in products such as chili oil, chili powder, chili sauces and chili pastes. There are spice mixtures such as curry pastes used in Thailand prepared with chili peppers, cumin, clove and coriander seeds with lemon grass and galangal, there’s gomasio used in Asian cooking made with sesame seeds and sea salt, Chinese 5-spice powder made with star anise, sichuan pepper, fennel seeds, cloves and cinnamon, in India they use garam masala which is cardamom pods, innamon stick, coriander and cumin seeds, whole cloves and black pepper.

To get the full aromatic flavor of herbs and spices, they need to be as fresh as possible.   Fresh  herbs release their essential oils when they are chopped or rubbed.  The tender green plants not only add flavor, but also the nutrients that other green vegetables have.  Buy whole spices and grinding them as needed gives food a flavor punch that can’t be compaired.  The flavor will be about 3 times more intense as preground spices.  Herbs and spices should not be overused, and only their skillful blending leads to a successful dish.  Just as too much of a specific herb or spice can ruin a dish, flavors in herb and spice mixtures can cancel each other out.  Experiment with combinations you think you might like, but do so with caution; you will find that herbs and spices can bring subtlety, harmony and complexity to your cooking.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Love this summer recipes.  It’s light and tart and yummy!

APPLE SLAW

Serves 4

3 tablespoons cider vinegar

3 tablespoons lemon juice

1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon agave

4 cups green cabbage shredded

2 large Golden Delicious apples, cored and cut into thin matchsticks

1 cups red onion cut into half moons

½ cup fresh mint, chopped

2 teaspoons caraway seeds

In a large bowl, whisk the vinegar, lemon juice, agave and salt.

In a separate bowl combine the cabbage, apple, onion, mint and caraway seeds, and mix well.

Drizzle the dressing over the cabbage and toss to combine

Taste and add more salt, if needed

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Gone are the days when all it took was some good unprotected sex in the backseat of a Buick to create a healthy baby.  Why is that??  I’ve done a lot of research and really haven’t found a very good answer.  I do have my thoughts on the issue, but since I’m extremely opinionated on the state of our “medical” treatment, “food” supply and “big-pharma/agra” I’m going to keep those opinions to myself.  Here’s what I do know; research suggests that if you follow a good pre-conception care program you are more likely to become pregnant more quickly, have less of a chance of a miscarriage, maximize the chance of having a healthy pregnancy and birth as well has having a healthy child that has a very good chance of avoiding cancer, heart disease, depression and diabetes.  So, how do you do this? You need to eat to nourish your body properly and give it the nutrients it needs to build itself and function properly, as well as exercise to keep off extra weigh, keep sugar in check, prevent heart disease and a whole slew of diseases, conditions and aliments.  ’Nuf said.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules.  She specializes in helping couples achieve optimum health to increase their chances of getting pregnant, a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby by offering in-home cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services.

Some people hear that word “holistic” and think “oh god, she’s one of those people”.  They believe that holistic people are tree-hugging, hairy-armpits, save-the-whales, non-meat-eating, rabbit-food-eating, health-nuts, granola-munching, health-food-store-shopping,  meditating-and-yoga-doing, save-the-planet-homeless-hungry-Africa-whales-elephants, crazies that want everyone to become vegan and not wear fur.  Although I do believe in many of these causes I shave often, eat meat, don’t meditate (although I probably should), have no balance or coordination for yoga and don’t believe that eating a vegan diet is all that healthy.  In my world the word holistic means not only the body, but the mind, spirit, relationships, career and environment.  Now, to some of you that may sound a bit out there, as if I am one of those people, but my track record stands for itself.

When a client with gestational diabetes is able to cut back taking her insulin from 5 times a day to just 1, I’ve done a very good holistic job.  When a client with PCOS loses weight and gets pregnant, I’ve done a very good holistic job.  When a client that is pre-diabetic and one step away from insulin shows me her last blood test with her sugar numbers down, I’ve done a very good holistic job.  When a client with gestational diabetes gives birth to a healthy baby, I’ve done a VERY good HOLISTIC job!

So, if you want to call me one of those people, so be it.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules by offering cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services

I have been a personal chef and personal trainer for the last 8 years with a background in nutrition, I’m a holistic health coach and certified with the American Association of Drugless Practitioners.  I’m not your average, every day personal chef who goes into peoples’ home and prepares a months’ worth of meals to be frozen. I don’t believe that what I do is just feed people; I firmly believe that what I do is nourish people.  I nourish my clients down to the very basic thing that makes them exist, and makes them healthy or unhealthy.  Everything you take into your body helps to form the building blocks of every cell that makes up who you are as well as how healthy you are.  When a client eats the food I prepare I am helping them create a healthy body for today, as well as the future.  I have worked with clients that have had pre-diabetes, diabetes, gestational diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, anorexia, PCOS, wanted to lose weight and just wanted to eat healthy.  As a personal trainer I develop customized exercise programs for people based on their fitness level and goals.

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules by offering cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services

Stefanie Lester Coslow is yoga instructor who came to the practice as a skeptic but was being supportive to a dear friend who had just completed her teacher training. She didn’t believe she possessed either the flexibility or the strength to practice yoga, and, she wasn’t sure she considered yoga a workout. I mean, doesn’t a workout mean sweat? Haha, joke was on her, it was a heated class and she sweated more than she ever had in her life! Now, she can’t live without yoga. Not only is it an incredible workout that allows her to eat her favorite thing, chocolate, without guilt, but it also helps to keep her grounded and centered emotionally, which is not always an easy feat for a busy stay at home mom of two. Over time she found flexibility and strength, both physically and mentally, that she never knew she had. As a teacher, Stefanie hopes to inspire others to find both their inner and outer strength and flexibility.

Having a hard time squeezing a work out into your already busy day? I get you, I really do. It’s hard enough finding the time pre-kids, but once you have little ones, the time, and energy can be nearly impossible to come by. If you’re anything like me, there’s always a long list of chores/forgotten projects to get to in you’re “free time”. Not to mention, when said free time does occur, kicking back and watching Real Housewives with a glass of chardonnay and some chocolate doesn’t sound so bad either.

I used to view exercise as a necessary evil that would allow me to eat my chocolate and drink my chardonnay yet still fit into my designer jeans (which, let’s face it, on my stay at home mom salary and with preschool tuition to pay, I can’t afford to buy new ones all too often). But, in the past couple of years, I have become somewhat of a dedicated yogi, so much so that I am now a certified yoga teacher, and my attitude towards fitness has changed drastically.

That hour or so I take a day (no, not every day, but as often as I can), is the best thing I do for myself, and my family. Physically, I’m probably in the best shape of my life, not the skinnest per se, but the most fit. As my dear hubby likes to show off, I now have “guns” (buh bye granny flab when I wave). And, while all that’s well and good, it’s my mood that benefits the most. Taking that time out for me grounds, it centers me, and those endorphins really do help ease stress. Things that were a huge deal, post workout, no longer such a big deal. I think it’s this therapeutic aspect that truly helps me to be a better mother

Believe me I know the mommy guilt about taking time for oneself away from kids, possibly even putting them into a day care at a gym. I hardly ever did it for the first 3 years of mommyhood, but what better message to send your kids than taking time to put yourself first and doing something so good for both your physical and mental health?

So my advice to you, make some time and get out there and get moving (or pop in a dvd at home, find a podcast…) Try something new, something you’d never thought you would like or could do. (Lord knows I felt that way about yoga). Keep it varied and keep it interesting, just be active. There’s nothing better you can do for your mind, body, soul & your family.

Just remember, baby steps, no one was born a marathon runner….. With practice and dedication, you’ll get where your going.

And, just in case you were curious, I still very much enjoy my wine and my chocolate just as much as ever.

Namaste

Stefanie Lester Coslow is a native New Yorker currently residing in Chicago with her husband and two kids and teaches at CorePower Yoga throughout their Chicago locations. In a former life, she was an accountant at a TV Rep firm who studied Psychology at school, talk about yin & yang.

This is a great easy Summer dessert recipe.

BALSAMIC BERRIES

Serves 4

1 pint strawberry, sliced
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar*
2 tablespoons honey
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 pinch ground cloves

Combine berries, vinegar and 1 tablespoon of the honey in small bowl.
Combine remaining 1 tablespoon of the honey, pine nuts and cloves in heavy small skillet.
Stir over medium-low heat, about 4 minutes to melt the honey and coat the pine nuts.
Combine the berries and pine nuts and serve

* The vinegar I use is Vanilla Fig Balsamic Vinegar by Gourmet Blends

http://gourmetblends.us/store/item/2vplz/Products/Vanilla_Fig_Balsamic_Vinegar_6_oz.html

Donna Mintz is the owner of Basil & Barbells, Inc., a NYC based personal chef and personal training service that helps busy people fit healthy meals and exercise into their hectic schedules by offering cooking classes, personal training and personal chef services