Food has always meant more to me than what is on the plate.

Growing up in Detroit, some of my earliest memories around food were also some of my earliest lessons about health. I remember sitting at my grandmother’s table and watching my Grandma Carrie and my father, both living with Type 2 diabetes, inject insulin side by side while our family gathered around familiar soul food. Even then, I understood that food, family, culture, and health were deeply connected.

Those memories stayed with me.

As I moved deeper into nutrition and dietetics, I began to notice how often health advice seemed to ask people to separate themselves from the foods they grew up with. Traditional foods were sometimes treated as the problem instead of being understood in the context of family, history, access, and identity.

That never sat right with me.

Why I Created Nourishing the Culture™

I created Nourishing the Culture™ because I believe better health should not require us to leave our culture at the door.

My goal is to bring nutrition science and cultural traditions together in a way that feels practical, respectful, and personal. I am especially interested in culturally responsive care, food sovereignty, Black maternal health, and the ways food can support both individual and community wellness. My experiences with the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network and Village for Healing have only deepened that commitment.

For me, nutrition is not just about protein, fiber, vitamins, or calories.

It is also about memory.

It is about the recipe your grandmother never wrote down.

It is about the dish everyone expects to see at the family reunion.

It is about the smell of something cooking and immediately feeling like you are home.

Sometimes Being Seen Is Part of Being Nourished

One experience during my dietetics training changed the way I understood this completely.

While working in long-term care, I met an older Black patient who had refused to eat for four days. His medical team had tried several approaches, but nothing seemed to reach him.

So I sat with him during lunch and played “Before I Let Go” by Frankie Beverly and Maze—a song that immediately brings to mind Black cookouts, family reunions, aunties setting food on the table, and everybody eventually finding their way to the dance floor.

His expression softened.

He sat up.

And he began to eat.

It was not simply the food in front of him that made the difference. It was familiarity, cultural connection, and the feeling of being seen.

That moment captures so much of what Nourishing the Culture™ means to me.

What You’ll Find Here

This space is where nutrition, recipes, history, and storytelling meet.

You’ll find evidence-informed nutrition education, culturally inspired recipes, conversations about health, and stories about the foods and traditions that have nourished communities for generations.

Through At Grandma’s Table, I also want to help preserve family food stories—because recipes disappear when we stop asking where they came from and who taught us to make them.

And through nutrition counseling, my goal is to help people care for their health in ways that actually fit their lives, rather than handing them another generic list of foods to avoid.

Pull Up a Chair

I believe food can nourish the body while also connecting us to family, identity, and community.

I believe science and tradition can exist together.

And I believe our cultural foods deserve to be part of the conversation about health—not pushed outside of it.

That is the heart of Nourishing the Culture™.

Honor the past. Nourish the present. Change the future.

And wherever you are starting from, there is always room for you at the table.