Book me to speak
What I speak about
What a heart attack looks like in a woman. Days after my 53rd birthday I had a widowmaker, and almost nothing about it looked like what I'd been taught to watch for. I talk about what I felt, what I told myself it probably was, how long I waited, and what I know now that I wish somebody had said to me in a room like this one. I'm a chef, not a cardiologist, so what I bring is the part nobody puts in a pamphlet.
Coming back from the year that took everything. Inside of a few months I lost my business, broke my ankle, had a heart attack, and my husband had a stroke. This is the resilience talk, and it's not a tidy one. It took a couple of years and I didn't do it gracefully. What it's really about is finding the one thing you're not willing to give up and building back out from there.
Eating for your heart without the fear. What the hospital hands you on the way out the door, what it leaves out, and how to cook food you actually want to eat when you've just been told your old way of eating tried to kill you. Did I cry over lunch in the hospital. You ‘betcha. You’ll find no fearmongering and no list of forbidden foods, because I've been the person holding that list.
The Mediterranean diet, minus the sales pitch. Everybody's doctor recommends it and almost nobody explains what to do with it on a weeknight. Olive oil, generously. Fish twice a week. Vegetables roasted hotter and longer than you think. Salt where it belongs. What it costs, what it doesn't, and why it's the most pleasant advice in medicine.
Eating well through menopause. Our bodies changed the rules on us in midlife and nobody handed out the new ones. What actually works for women in perimenopause and menopause, what's being sold to us at $60 a bottle, and how to tell the difference. Protein, fiber, bone, sleep, and the food that gets you there. No supplements and no diet of the month.
Cooking for one or two, when you spent 20 years cooking for five. The empty nest is a cooking problem nobody warns you about, and cutting a recipe in half is not the answer. This one gets the most laughs and the most nodding.
Or tell me what your group is chewing on and I'll build something. That's what 25 years of teaching gets you.
The short version of how I got here
Days after my 53rd birthday, I had a heart attack. A widowmaker.
Inside of a few months I also lost my brick and mortar cooking school, got hurt badly enough to need real recovery time, and my husband had a stroke.
It was a lot.
Truthfully it took a couple of years to come back from, and I didn't do it gracefully. What got me through was mostly the same thing that got me into this work in the first place, which is that cooking for people is the thing I love most in the world, and I wasn't willing to give it up.
So I learned how to cook all over again, this time around the Mediterranean diet, because that's the one every doctor keeps telling women our age to eat and almost nobody teaches you how to actually make. And here's the part I didn't expect: the food is better than what I was eating before.
What it looks like
A talk. This is most of what I do. 30 to 60 minutes, virtual or in person, with time for questions at the end, and no kitchen required. Bring me a stage and a microphone and we're fine.
A talk with a cooking demo. Same session, except I cook while I talk and the room tastes a bit at the end. 60 to 90 minutes, and it needs a little more from you on setup. Worth it if you want your group to leave with a bit of an experience as well as thinking.
A keynote or a breakout, a conference or a lunch and learn. All of it works. Tell me the room and the length and I'll shape the talk to it.
My speaking fee depends on the format, the length, and whether there's travel. Ask and I'll give you a number in one email.
I'm Christine. I'm a chef, I've been teaching people to cook for 25 years, 15 of them running my own cooking school in Frederick, MD, and I'm a Certified Culinary Medicine Professional.
I speak to groups about food, midlife, and what it takes to come back after the thing you didn't see coming. And because I'm a chef and not just a person with a story, I can cook while I do it. Your audience can watch, or they can cook along, and either way they leave with dinner figured out.
