I am a Cook, performer, teacher, and coach. I provide encouragement, instruction & ongoing support in learning how to cook delicious plant-based meals!
I’ve been a professional actor and singer since I was 15, and have appeared in Broadway musicals, national TV commercials, soap operas, and films. From the beginning of my career, I realized the importance of looking good and staying healthy and fit in order to perform at my best.
But it wasn’t until 1991, when I was living in Toronto and performing in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Aspects of Love,” that I began learning about the importance of the food I was eating. I started shopping at a New Age food market that specialized in organic produce, health books, holistic “alternative” supplements and medicines. It was an epiphany: the first time that I ever thought about where my food came from, and how it was grown and processed. I also discovered Prescription For Nutritional Healing, an essential reference book that revealed how food has healing and curative powers far beyond its basic nutritional values.
Around the same time, I saw a documentary called “Diet for a New America,” that disturbed me deeply. It showed how farm animals are raised, dosed with growth hormones, antibiotics and slaughtered. This compelled me to become a vegetarian, and was the beginning of my questioning the “wisdom” of the traditional medical and health practices I’d grown up with.
When I was 30 and pregnant with my first daughter, Lena, I decided against the standard hospital birth protocol and used a midwife, and a licensed Nurse Practitioner. I gave birth naturally in a birthing suite, without the use of painkillers or other medications. It was an amazing, positive experience that I repeated when I had my second daughter, Lisa.
I breast fed each girl for a year. Afterwards, I made all of their baby food, roasting, baking and cooking fruits and vegetables, which I pureed and froze in ice cube trays. When I stopped breast feeding, I gave them soy and rice milk rather than dairy. My most important priority has always been making sure my family has a healthy, natural diet.
In January, 2020 I had another epiphany, when an actor friend of mine, Carmen, told me about a documentary called “Game Changers,” about athletes who ate vegan diets and performed better than those on traditional “training table” menus. Carmen also confided that he’d been a vegan for 3 months, and felt better than he’d ever felt in his entire life!
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Carmen told me… My husband Tom and I watched the film, and decided to try a vegan diet for one week. Since we were already eating vegetarian meals, it wasn’t a huge or difficult stretch. We easily made it through a week, felt great, and decided to keep going.
From my first vegan meal, I had this instinctive feeling that I’d stumbled onto something that would change my life. Tom and I both felt better than we ever had before; our daily aches and pains were gone; a long-term skin condition of Tom’s simply disappeared. This was clearly some kind of magic! I became obsessed with this new way of cooking and eating, and realized that it had become an integral part of my life that I couldn’t let go of.
I was also convinced that I had to bring this wonderful approach to food to as many people as possible!
When Covid forced us to “shelter in place,” I began a deeper exploration of vegan meals and menus, which inspired me to create my “LindseyLicious” videos and Youtube channel.
In the fall of 2020, anxious to continue my health journey and further my knowledge of healthful food and cooking, I applied to and was accepted by the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City in a program leading to a degree in Health-Supportive Culinary Arts and began September 8, 2021.
In preparation for the rigors of culinary school, I reached out to Cleveland restaurateur Doug Katz, who hired me as a prep chef and line cook at Zhug, an Esquire Magazine Award-Winning restaurant. I gained a lot of valuable experience and learned new skills that have been very beneficial in the early weeks of culinary school.
Looking back on all that’s happened since I walked into that New Age food market in 1991, I’ve come to realize that it all makes sense: LindseyLicious is the culmination of everything I’ve done and everything I am: Performer, Wife, Mother, Teacher, Nurturer and Chef. It is literally the “Performance of My Life.” I’ve created my recipes and videos in the same spirit of love and nurturing that inspired me to make baby food for my children. I really believe that eating and cooking this way has made me happier and healthier. It has changed my life.
If you choose to take your health up to a whole new level, to feel better physically and mentally-you too, can have the
If you’ve been wanting to learn more about plant-based eating and how you can live a healthy and full life, this episode is a must listen!
