The kitchen raised me.

I just didn’t realize it until much later.

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As a kid, I was lucky. My mom was a stay-at-home mom, and I credit her for my love of food. Her kitchen was her happy place. Everything she made tasted good — not just because of the ingredients, but because it was made with love.

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I loved helping her. Most nights, we ate dinner as a family around the table. We talked about our day, laughed, argued sometimes, but always came back to each other. That table gave me belonging. That kitchen gave me roots.

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But when it came time to raise my own kids, the story looked very different.

I owned restaurants — a life that left little room for family meals. If I managed to be home for dinner, it was usually chaotic: soccer games, homework, grocery runs, takeout boxes. Cooking — let alone cooking with love — rarely happened.

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Then one day, I stumbled across my son’s college essay on my computer. I opened it, curious… and my stomach dropped.

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The moment that woke me up:

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He wrote that his mother owned two restaurants, his dad worked for a food company… yet there was often no food in the house, and many nights, no dinner on the table.

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For him, it was a story about independence and self-sufficiency — a strength for a college application. For me, it was a heartbreak. How had I, the daughter raised in a kitchen full of love and food, failed to give my own kids that same experience?

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That essay stopped me in my tracks.

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It made me reflect — not just on my own choices, but on the culture we’ve all inherited.

Somewhere along the way, we stopped treating the kitchen as the heart of the home. My mom, without even realizing it, had used that space as a classroom. She taught values and life skills through everyday meals that didn’t feel like lessons. She created memories that still nourish me today.

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And I had taken it all for granted.

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That’s when a question rose up in me:

What if the kitchen — the most used room in the house — is actually the place where we become who we want to be?

What if it’s where we raise responsible, kind human beings — and even shape the kind of world we want to live in?

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When I finally slowed down and paid attention to what was really happening in my kitchen, I began to see how food connects everything: our health, our families, our communities, even our planet. It’s not just about what’s on the plate. It’s about what those choices say about how we live.

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That’s why I believe we have the chance to transform our lives — and our future — by transforming the way we make food choices.

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And that’s where My Mindful Kitchen began.

My mission is to create a world of mindful foodies — using just three ingredients:

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🧘‍♀️ Mindfulness
🫶 Belonging
🌟 Purpose

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They may be simple, but when you bring them into the kitchen, the return is greater than you can imagine.