Don't let her size fool you. This lady makes a big impact wherever she goes! Eileen (or mom, as I like to call her) earned a Bachelors in Education and Masters in Nutrition, and puts them both to great use. An annual volunteer at a Kenyan orphanage, she introduced French Intensive gardening (space saving gardening techniques), chickens and coops. Her greatest satisfaction however, is teaching the kids board games and having them over for tea.

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A natural born educator, she has been teaching her family how to eat well for years. Beside earning her Masters in Nutrition, Eileen/Mom/Grandma/Mama Eileen, is an avid reader. She loves to study and learn. When other people have health-related questions, they google; when my friends and family have health-related questions, we ask Eileen/Mom/Grandma.

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Always cheerful and ready to help, full of knowledge and compassion, I couldn't have asked for a better 88 pounds of business partner. And I am eternally grateful that she is my mom.

Following a long-lived desire to move to the Okanagan, when our youngest graduated high school, my husband Dwain, my mom (who graciously consented to live with us after her husband went to Heaven) and our daughter Avalon, packed up and headed to beautiful British Columbia. I made the decision to leave my interior design career in favour of a less hectic lifestyle. After two years, it felt right to dabble in a less busy business: creating a few healthy snacks. Well, to say I was unprepared for the explosion that followed is an understatement! Especially because, kitchen prowess is not something I'm known for. 

The first to admit to many kitchen faux pas, I've spent the last two decades in trial and error mode when it comes to cooking and baking. My choice to exclude most North American staples from our pantry resulted in a learning curve that yielded some very odd textures, off tastes and howls from my family. You see, the responsibility to eat those experiments fell to them. At times my quest for a healthy menu backfired and we all piled into the family van and headed for McDonald's. Even I had to admit, "This is not edible."

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An important lesson learned and reinforced more times than I care to remember: healthy food must not only be healthy; it must also be, well ... palatable. So I persevered, determined to follow in my mother's footsteps. All those mistakes and lessons learned have turned out to be a good thing! From the char and ashes (literally), have emerged sweet treats that I'm told are pretty good! It has been most rewarding to help others, even if in a small way like providing snacks and desserts to those determined to follow a sugar free or low carb lifestyle. My "less hectic" life has been anything but, and I'm loving it!