Student Spotlight
Elaine Mamary, M.S. in Holistic Nutrition student and Founder of Novella Cuisine
This native New Yorker and former caterer feels as though she has spent about 20 years standing up and running around. “Whether you’re cooking for five people or 500, everything is geared to performance, to meeting a very precise deadline,” says Elaine Mamary. “Clients expect beautiful food that tastes great, is presented creatively, right on time and at the best possible price.” Throughout this lifelong working relationship with food, Elaine adds that she always strives to give each customer a lagniappe: a little something extra.
“I’d shop the markets for hours, myself, and select each ingredient with the same care I give my own family,” she recalls. Elaine wanted to create such healthy dining experiences that her clients would catch on. She wanted them to seek out organic food choices and she wanted them to become more conscious of the joy and art of nutritious nurturing. Some would notice, but most did not.
“Life goes so fast and people get too busy to eat. Then they get ravenous and just mindlessly gobble down whatever they get their hands on. Then they eat too much because they aren’t attuned to their body’s subtle cues.”
As Elaine became more and more aware of her own subtle cues, she wandered away from poorly-ventilated hot kitchens, 15-hour workdays and the operational grind.
Looking no further than her bookshelf – with aromatherapy, herb and holistic nutrition books that she had been reading for years – one day she decided to bring her hobby to life. So, the entrepreneur who had been building her business for many years, followed her intuition and hasn’t looked back. Studying holistic nutrition became a calming oasis that called forth her natural artist and led her into a delicious new life.
Novella Cuisine is her new enterprise, a consulting and coaching company that explores the intricate relationship between food, health and happiness. Her new customers are individuals who want to set up a healthier kitchen, who see the need to read labels and to change old patterns of eating.
Elaine teaches busy urban families to slow down and prepare their food with love, appreciation and awareness. Teaching others that “how we choose to fuel our bodies can result in much higher levels of mental energy and a sense of well-being,” she knows that a conscious integration of this relationship significantly improves one’s quality of life.
First inspired by a cousin who loved to bathe in hot springs, steep calming herbal teas and chew roots instead of taking antibiotics, Elaine recalls a deep, abiding family wisdom that helped her release unhealthy attachments. She learned to disengage from the psychological judgments that we often associate with eating.
With affirmations and meditation, she sets into motion the daily intentions of differentiating between physical and emotional hunger, and releasing old habits. She is happy to have short-circuited a mid-life crisis with gentle determination, “and a knowingness that I had taken the right path.”
Nowadays she’s a fan of holistic nutrition author Annemarie Colbin, founder of the Natural Gourmet Cooking School. “Colbin demonstrates that healthy food isn’t boring – and that simple menus can be quite outstanding. Every meal doesn’t have to zing, but every meal can be cooked with such love and enthusiasm that you just know you’re being nurtured.”
For more information, please contact Elaine at novellacuisine@optonline.net.
 |
|
 |
|
|
|