Susan Crowther

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

I’ve worn a lot of hats: chef, nutritionist, herbalist, massage therapist, manager, caterer, teacher, mother, single mother, wife, and always, writer. My path is exploring links between lifestyle factors and ways we define “success”—health, happiness, academic performance, vocation, etc. I continually seek to dissolve illusions that personal and professional identities are separate. The roles that allowed me to play with these concepts have been varied and related. These stories illustrate my writing and teaching.

Life began with the question, “Is it healthy?” My mother remembers me asking this, as a young girl. I would persist: “What’s more healthy, bread or broccoli?” Then, I’d eat the broccoli, with a big smile. I’ve spent a lifetime answering these questions. Some hats of distinction:

* Graduate, Culinary Institute of America

* Owner of Susie’s Menu, Catering company and healthy meal delivery service

* Taught First Semester courses at Landmark College-- a school designed for students diagnosed with Learning Disabilities. Think Lou Gossett, in Officer and a Gentleman.

* Wrote, received, and researched grants, focusing on cool links between metacognition and lifestyle.

* Led college groups to Costa Rica for Service Learning (baby sitter, mother, carpenter, doctor, lawyer, drill sergeant, fool) Think Lou Gossett again, but with a Spanish accent.

The No Recipe Cookbook is my first published book-- beyond offering submissions in magazines and periodicals: Cooksource, Pioneer Valley News, and the Brattleboro Commons.

My biggest accomplishment in writing, before this book, was receiving an A+ on my 10th grade personal journal for English— Thank you, John Hayward.

Whatever it is I have done, am doing, or will do, these elements remain: health, creativity, and intuition, and above all, to listen to one's voice. I continue to write, teach and share this message.