Jennifer

About me:

Jennifer Cornbleet is a nationally recognized raw food chef and instructor. She offers classes, hands-on workshops, and consultations in the Chicago area and nationwide. Her first book, Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People, has already sold over 50,000 copies and is consistently on the Amazon.com bestselling cookbook lists. She has recently released the companion DVD, Raw Food Made Easy. Jennifer is a guest instructor at the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute, a raw food chef school in Northern California. She also directs the school's satellite program in Chicago, where she teaches the certification courses Fundamentals of Raw Living Foods and Essentials of Raw Culinary Arts. Jennifer lectures extensively--in natural foods markets, bookstores, culinary schools, and colleges throughout the world. Her current projects include a television series and a new book, Raw For Dessert, to be published in 2008. My life-long love affair with good food began at age 7, with cooking lessons from my dad. As a teen, I became a vegetarian for several years, which fostered my interest in fresh produce and natural ingredients. After high school, I studied music history at the University of Chicago, and spent a year in India on a Fullbright to study classical Indian violin. Living with a family in Benares gave me the opportunity to learn first-hand how the women prepared local vegetarian delicacies. Back in America, I discovered my passion for teaching. I earned an MAT at University of Chicago and taught high-school English for three years. Then, in 2000, after attending a course at Living Light, I realized that I wanted to combine my interests in teaching and food, and I switched careers to teach raw food classes full-time. As I began to meet more and more people interested in improving their diets, I saw a fundamental problem with the existing information about raw food "cooking". Preparations tended to be time-consuming, labor-intensive, and expensive. Many raw food recipes required dehydration, sprouting, and fermenting, which most of my students did not have the time and equipment for. The recipes also made 4-8 servings, which added to the cost and resulted in waste. Finally, many students were not interested in radical dietary changes, but simply wanted creative ways to get the fruits and vegetables they needed. I began developing time-saving techniques and tasty, familiar dishes that could be made with common ingredients and basic equipment, and that would appeal to mainstream America. My book, DVD, and other projects are all geared toward making it easy and enjoyable for anyone to eat a healthier diet.