Biography | Chef Laurie LLC.

Getting To Know Chef Laurie

Hobbies and habits are often things acquired as we grow older. Yet passion-those essential elements that make us the happiest and which make us who we are-are more likely rooted in youth and which ripen with age to be harvested and enjoyed throughout our lives.

And so it is with Chef Laurie Erickson and her life long, unabashed passion for the trilogy that is food, cooking and health. "As a child, my favorite toy was an Easy-Bake Oven," remembers childhood influences of times with her grandmother, an organic gardener and herbalist. "She was an amazing woman. Just about every time she and I were outside walking, she would pluck a plant or something, pop it in her mouth and begin to tell me about it's flavor and natural medicinal benefits. She opened my mind and really planted the seed."

Nurturing that seed in her college work, Laurie studied nutrition and exercise physiology at Assumption College and Northwestern University, while working as a chef and certified fitness instructor. After apprenticing at several fine restaurants in New England, Laurie started her own business: The Holistic Fitness Center for Health, Fitness and Wellness.

In the near three decades since, Laurie's passion has shaped her enviable career of professional achievements and industry accolades while gaining legions of devoted fans of all ages who have joined her in the kitchen, found themselves immersed in her talents, and come away both inspired and changed.

Laurie delighted guests as a pastry chef and demonstration chef during her six years on the culinary team at the famed Canyon Ranch Resort and Spa in Lenox, Massachusetts; her insights and recipes have appeared in Family Circle Magazine, Spa Magazine, People Magazine's Your Diet, Best Life Magazine, Men's Health, The Boston Globe and Restaurant News; she has been the featured chef on the Travel Channel's Epicurious cooking show, on the PBS TV series On The Menu, and on the Tennis Channel; and she contributed recipes and cooking tips for The Canyon Ranch Cooks Cookbook and for the New York Times top selling book, Ultra Metabolism.

Natural Ingredients. Natural Talents.

At the core of her passion is Chef Laurie's relentless devotion to the amazing powers of whole, unprocessed foods without chemicals or preservatives. "It's all about natural foods in their natural states," she says.

And while there are countless, highly skilled professional chefs who have eagerly adopted an understanding of wellness cuisine and more healthy ways to cook, there are very few with Chef Laurie's ability to emotionally engage those who join her in the kitchen. Chef Laurie says her mission is simple: to help people including and especially children, to find their way back to the kitchen. "That's where true health begins," she stresses. “And maybe, even before the kitchen."

Prior to cooking sessions, one may find themselves with Chef Laurie in a local supermarket on one of her eye-opening Intelligent Grocery Shopping excursions, searching aisle by aisle for healthy foods discovering better choices and learning to read and understand nutritional labeling. "The only place we don’t go is what I call 'Death-Row'- the aisle with chips on one side and soda on the other," she smiled. "The secret is to stay focused, seek out the fresh and don't go when you're hungry."

From shopping tips to kitchen tips, Chef Laurie hopes to encourage people to cook at home with a focus on meals, one dish at a time, that are easy, quick, nutritious and highly satisfying. "Many of my most popular recipes have just a handful of ingredients. Cooking that's healthier shouldn't be complicated or intimidating. They need to fit into the reality of busy lives and mealtime schedules. And most folks have an intuitive sense of what we should be avoiding, what we should be eating, and why. My love is in showing people how."