H.E.A.R.T. – Welcome 07-11-11

Hi and welcome to the H.E.A.R.T. Program,

I’m very excited to have you participate in the launch of Healthy Eating Always a Real Treat with me!

Growing up in Greenwich Village, the heart of New York City, I’ve long considered myself a foodie due to my sincere love of food of all types, from all cultures. My experience of New York City is truly as a melting pot of delicious tastes and flavors, where social interaction is nearly always punctuated by sharing a bite, a brunch, a schmear of this or that. Sometimes dining is fancy to “see and be seen,” other times it’s people watching at tables squeezed along peripheries of bustling sidewalks, and many times it’s in a hole in the wall accompanied by families speaking in a foreign native tongue.

New York City is one reason I love food, the other is my mother. She is also a “native NYer,” she grew up in St. Albans, Queens and has been in NYC her whole life. She taught me most of what I know about food. The rest we shared learning from some of the classic greats on TV, like Julia Child and Jacques Pepin. This was before the Food Network became just another aspect of revenue-generating showbiz. I remember these shows as kind of white noise backdrop, when home from school I’d be doing homework and the shows would be on. I had an education on food and cooking by osmosis as I divided my listening to them with my school studies on a regular basis.

In our household, tasty and healthy food was the norm. Our refrigerator didn’t contain soda and our cupboards didn’t contain much in the way of junk food. That’s not to say I didn’t try it at friend’s homes. I had my fair share of chips and chocolate chip cookies, and given a choice I’d take a Ring Ding over a Twinkie hands down. Although my preference was for David’s Cookies – housed in a store front franchise near 34th Street and Macys. It was guaranteed every time you’d walk past it you’d smell the fresh baked cookies and just had to go buy at least a couple. Somehow the cookie was always warm, and the chocolate chips were chunks of melting gooey decadent chocolate, so big that it was like eating a cookie dough chocolate bar!

Overall though, my upbringing around food has been very health-full, and always with an eye for the artistic and enjoyable. So my goal for H.E.A.R.T. is to impart this love of food in such a way that you can find fun, creativity and healthy eating as simple and affordable as I do.

I will be communicating with you weekly through email, and a H.E.A.R.T. Blog. The blog will contain the database of our lessons, tips, and recipes. I’ll also be sharing information from “H.E.A.R.T. Contributors,” whom I am interviewing to bring you the best value from food experts on topics such as:

juicing
smoothies
detox
professional chefs
living foods
raw living
spiritual nutrition
and more!

Stay tuned for an email on our first exercise. We will all take the Ayurvedic Dosha test and post our results on the H.E.A.R.T page in the Invigorate U Community on Facebook. This way those in the same group will know who each other are.

Invigorating U,
Valerie
www.invigorateu.com