I was born in Saskatchewan to a farming family. My parents had very strong values and amazing work ethics. As the Alpha sibling I had the wonderful advantage of getting to know my parents well before the other 7 children came along. Mom would take me with her in the garden from the time I was a baby. We would take a wholesome hot lunch to the field where my father grew beautiful wheat. It was an amazing way of life as we spent lots of time outdoors and ate incredibly nutritious and delicious food. My brothers and I had to start helping in the garden at a very early age but we never thought of it as work. We were allowed to eat as many fresh vegetables as we wanted. We barely cleaned the dirt off. My Naturopath attributes some of my great health from eating a little dirt because there is lots of acidophilus in the soil. I had a wonderful start.

Needless to say my mother needed help in the kitchen to feed all those mouths, so from the time I was old enough not to cut or burn myself, I was cooking.

My parents made the decision to move to Calgary when I was 15. The farming industry was becoming very challenging and my father was opposed to the wide use of herbicides and pesticides. He instinctively knew that these chemicals were not good.

My first career was dental assisting where I learned the importance of oral hygiene. But more importantly I worked for a young dentist who took a more holistic approach to dentistry. He believed in prevention not only through keeping your mouth clean, but by eating the right foods and keeping your whole body healthy. He sent us to wonderful seminars with lecturers from great universities. Preventative medicine was relatively new but the idea excited me and made a great deal of sense to me because of my upbringing. I absolutely loved Biology in high school. The science of life. At this stage in my life, I considered going back to university but low and behold I fell in love, got married and had children. It was wonderful. I was very comfortable with babies since I had helped raise my siblings and I could cook and understood what a balanced whole food diet was. My children did not eat processed foods and the sugar they got was from my homemade cookies. The girls were rarely sick. The middle child had ear infections as a baby and the doctors tried so many different antibiotics which she reacted to badly and the approach never took care of the ear problem. I knew I had to find another way, so I sought out alternative medicine. After one year of dietary changes and acupuncture, she got well. From that day forward we adopted an even cleaner diet and a very active lifestyle mostly outdoors just like I had as a child.

I started taking nutrition courses and going to every free seminar provided by health food stores. Fitness became a big part of my life as well. I studied yoga, running, swimming and skiing. The children were in a ski program in our beautiful mountains and I skied with great athletic adults. One man that skied with us on a regular basis was a chiropractor. He was so helpful with our injuries and whatever life brings, but more importantly, he and I discussed holistic medicine constantly.

Once my children were old enough I eventually did go back to school to become a nutritionist because I wanted to help other people.

I also received a diploma as a Natural Health Consultant where I studied all of the alternative modalities and therapies available to us today. Both my family and I have benefitted greatly from this. My husband and I moved to British Columbia 2 years ago where we have a beautiful organic garden and orchard. I purchase all my food from local producers. We enjoy the great outdoors, skiing, hiking, fishing and drinking wonderful BC wine with friends.

My area of expertise will always be nutrition. I continue to study this field. There is new information coming out fast now because of technology. It can be very confusing, so it is my job to help you understand and have a great relationship with food.

- GiGi

From a young age there has always been an interest in food and plants. My mother’s family had all been raised on fresh foods from gardens they themselves tended. My father’s grandmother was an amazing cook and showed us traditional methods of cooking Italian cuisine straight from Italy. She would show my mom great soups and broths while keeping my sister and I entertained eating wonderful salads. We would all work together rolling out strips of homemade pasta on her little pasta machine and hang it on a rack to dry. I will never forget the texture and the way it tastes, what a great comfort food. I grew up in a household where consuming whole foods was very important. We were taught early about the dangers of eating too much sugars and things like pop and treats were not often kept in our house. We had the joys of getting to create our own treats by playing around together in the kitchen baking and doing that as a family made it so much more enjoyable to eat. I would spend time with my mom’s mother at the age of six helping her roll out buns and make homemade bread that I always got to enjoy with her homemade jam, it was a fantastic treat.

Throughout my years in grade school I followed my interests in food learning tips, tricks and methods for cooking followed by bits of nutritional information. All of this eventually led me to move to Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island to attended culinary school. There I had the opportunity to spend two years learning about traditional French cuisine. It was so exciting, there were so many new aspects brought to the kitchen. There were so many varieties of fish and meats and they showed us how to butcher them. It was wonderful to take such simple ingredients and change them into soups, broths and sauces and incorporate different components to enhance flavours. There were so many new fruits and vegetables, herbs and spices and it was so rewarding learning how they would all come together.

When I returned home to Calgary I had the chance to work in a variety of restaurants and learn even more about the foods our world has to offer. Now as glamorous, yet competitive as that was, there was something missing for me. Coming from a background where nutrition was equally as important as the quality of food, it wasn’t something that was as important in the culinary scene, or to most of my colleagues. I noticed because of the lifestyle we were all living, and not having time to eat properly at work, our health was suffering. It was time to make a change and I signed up for the Integrative Nutrition program out of New York city. Since then, my views of cooking have changed even more and I found that I really enjoyed sharing my nutritional findings with family and friends. So I am here today to help people with a mixture of all the knowledge I’ve acquired to help people transform their lives to be better as well.

- Jules