A Beautiful Heart Cookbook

Elizabeth grew up in Thousand Oaks, California, where she learned that happiness lies in simple pleasures enjoyed with those you love: hiking the Santa Monica Moutains, picnicking on the front lawn, making seasonal paper garlands, baking cookies, and enjoying a cup of tea in the afternoon. She graduated from La Reina High School armed with an equal sense of self-confidence and humbleness thanks to the Sisters of Notre Dame and their keen insight into what is important in life. From there, she headed off to Berkeley in search of inspiration and diversity of ideas and found her perfect major: integrative biology. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude, she ventured to Ireland, the land of her grandfather, where she worked as a florist and waitress at Ballymaloe House and Cookery School. She was inspired by their treatment of food as art--as something sacred--and by the use of simple, wholesome ingredients to create something extraordinary and give guests an incredible experience. The act of giving that meal to a guest seemed to her to echo beyond the Irish countryside, to promote world peace in some small way. When she returned to medical school at UC San Diego, her interest in the culinary world and the integrative medicine world collided, and she set out to write a research-based, heart-healthy cookbook based on the American Heart Association guidelines for a healthy diet. She called it A Beautiful Heart after the beautiful metaphorical heart, the spirit within all of us that she sought to nourish, the physical heart she hoped to heal, and the heart of Ireland that inspired her.