Flexatarian, Pescatarian, Partyologist

Written by Patty Rasmussen Wednesday, December 28 2011

Snapshot: Nancy Waldeck, chef

Nancy Waldeck published her first cookbook in 2011.

Chef Nancy Waldeck was always a healthy chef, but a battle with stage III breast cancer turned her into a healthy chef with a greater purpose. Waldeck came to the culinary world in a midlife course correction. After establishing a successful career in public relations, communications, and corporate training, she found her niche: cooking, teaching, and promoting a fun and healthy way of eating for groups, classes, and, yes, even for corporate training sessions.

Based in a suburb of Atlanta, Waldeck has a website, Taste and Savor, with links to her “Living and Eating Well” blog and other information including her weekly “Friday Four” e-zine featuring healthy, innovative recipes and other useful tips. She published her first cookbook this year, Taste and Savor: Delicious Healthy Recipes and Tasty Wine Tips, and though she hasn’t fully mastered it, Waldeck is tapped into the power of social media. She can be found on Facebook at Taste and Savor, and by the Twitter handle, @TasteandSavor.

Womenetics: Tell me about your move from your previous career in corporate training and why you decided to make the shift into food and wine and the culinary life.
Nancy Waldeck: In 2000, I was standing in front of yet another group of pharmaceutical representatives telling them how to call on a doctor, and I thought, “I love teaching and I love working with adults, but I don’t love what I’m doing.” I always had a love for cooking so rather than go to culinary school, I decided to work for four years as a consultant; working my way out of my old job and into my new one. I volunteered for four years in the cooking world, and when you volunteer you get great opportunities.

Finally in 2004 someone paid me to chop onions and schlep boxes and wash dishes. I worked mostly in trade, restaurant, or food shows. That’s how I learned that I didn’t want to work in a restaurant. During those four years when I gave my services away I did a lot cooking classes. I went to the Culinary Institute of America, to France and Italy to cook, and I’ve kept that up as I went along. In more recent years I’ve gone to Africa to cook and Hungary. I enjoy learning about cooking different cuisines, but the thing I enjoy the most is taking recipes and making them healthy.

Womenetics: Your website says that you are an “effective product spokesperson; hold imaginative and fun cooking and wine classes; write expressive and innovative articles; style original and beautiful food for TV and print; and create, produce, and edit ingenious recipes.” Is that the type of career you envisioned when you left the corporate world for the culinary world?
Waldeck: I had no idea what I wanted to do other than to cook. I’ve kind of felt my way through it. At first I thought, because I have an artistic bent, that I would do food styling, which I’ve done and it’s fun, but I soon realized that I wasn’t with a lot of people. I was with the photographer, the client, and I was moving a piece of rice over one-eighth of an inch and then taking a picture then moving it back. That gave me the ability to do food styling for my own pictures so everything I’ve done I’ve learned from it. I feel like I’m still learning.

	Waldeck surrounded by assistants at Cook's Warehouse in Atlanta.

Womenetics: How do you describe your culinary style?
Waldeck: I only do things where I can make healthy food for people and tell them about it, tell them what they’re eating. I do events, for example, a women’s leadership group at a local hospital, where I design the menu so that I can tell people what they’re eating. Everything is fresh, everything is healthy. I don’t do the setup, the breakdown, the audiovisual equipment. I just provide the food and tell people why they should like it. The thing I love about what I do is that I teach people different ways and techniques to make their food taste better and be better for them. I feel like I don’t just have them in my classroom or at an event, but that I get to go home with them, too. The people part of my business, taking care of people, is the most important part of what I do.

Womenetics: Didn’t some of this healthy-cuisine focus come out of your own battle with cancer?
Waldeck: It did. I was healthy chef before I had cancer, but I found in that first four years in the business I gained 30 pounds. It’s hard to not eat everything when you’re in the kitchen all the time. It took me two years to lose that 30 pounds, and that was in 2006. I wasn’t diagnosed with cancer until 2008. Between 2006 and 2008 is when I began developing my style. Now my style is even healthier. I eat chocolate and pizza every now and then, but that’s not what I want to showcase in my food. I’m not a vegetarian either. I’m what I call a “flexatarian.”

Womenetics: What’s a “flexatarian”?
Waldeck: I get about 80 percent of my food from plant-based sources and 20 percent from animal-based sources. I find the more I get into it, the more I enjoy making vegetarian or pescatarian (fish) dishes. I’d say I get less than 10 percent of my diet from meat-based sources. It’s a challenge to make things better and healthier. I continue to evolve.

Womenetics: What type of cancer did you have and what were your treatments like? Were you able to cook while you were going through your treatment?
Waldeck: I was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer in July 2008. Because I had a large tumor they wanted me to have chemotherapy first. I was diagnosed on a Monday, and 11 days later I was in my first chemo session. I had 16 weeks of chemotherapy. It was interesting because when you’re actively going through treatment it’s one day at a time. One of the things that gives me so much empathy is that I know how tough it is to keep it up. I worked all the way through my chemo. I taught classes. My surgery was on Dec. 1, and I had six weeks of radiation starting on Jan. 1 and my surgery and reconstruction on April 1, 2009.

Surprisingly, considering the severity of the cancer, I got through it very quickly. I know I was lucky. I’m also an exercise enthusiast so I walked every day from my diagnosis until the end of my treatment. I still walk today, but I’m not as rigid about it. Even when I went through chemotherapy I walked because I wanted to get it through my system and make it work. That’s my cancer story, and it’s rewarding for me to be able to say (to a cancer patient, “When I was in treatment, this is what I would take to eat during chemotherapy.” I have so much more empathy and an ability to really help others.

Womenetics: I imagine it gives you a lot of credibility, too.
Waldeck: Absolutely. That’s something that’s very important to me, authenticity and credibility. If I stand up (in front of a class) and say, “Don’t ever eat French fries,” or, “You can’t have chocolate,” then I’m not being credible. I think my approach is achievable and doable. You don’t have to become a vegan, just eat a little bit better every day.

Womenetics: What are some of the ways you adjust recipes to make them healthier without losing their appeal?
Waldeck: I use a lot of herbs and spices. They are the only two things that you can buy from a grocery store that have no salt, no fat, and little to no calories. I use a lot of citrus fruit and citrus zest because that cuts down on the salt content of things. I use fat substitutes if I can; I’ll use less solid fats, usually substituting a mixture of butter and canola oil. I use a lot of olive oil. I even look for substitutions of bacon or smoked meat. I’ll use smoked paprika for that because it creates the same meaty taste and has the same aroma that bacon or ham have. There’s nothing wrong with using pork, but I don’t want to use it every day. I’ll substitute two egg whites for a whole egg. I often use prunes, dates or black beans. I make a gluten-free cornbread with white beans. I try to add things that add flavor without adding fat or calories.

Womenetics: Teaching is a big component of your work. What about it appeals to you?
Waldeck: It’s the people element. I get to interact with people, share my enthusiasm for cooking and help people. There are so many tips and tricks that make it easy and fun to cook healthy. I get such a kick out of when someone comes up to me or sends me an email and tells me they made my white bean and kale soup and it was so fabulous. I love it. You see the light bulb go on.

Waldeck, right, with sous-chef Lea Bowen, center, and dietician Shayna Komar.

Womenetics: There’s been an explosion of chefs, cooking television shows, cookbooks. It seems that it’s become more important than ever for chefs to “brand” themselves, to establish their unique identity in the marketplace. How did you do that? Was it intuitive or intentional?
Waldeck: I’d like to say it was intentional, but I feel like it’s been very organic growth. I came up with that “healthy chef partyologist” concept that seemed to say exactly what I do; I’m a healthy chef that likes to have a good time. I have a wine and spirits degree in addition to my food experience so I combine them and hopefully show people that it’s possible to eat healthy and not have the experience be boring or dull. I think that message is finally starting to get through.

Womenetics: You seem to have embraced the power of marketing via the internet, through your blog, weekly e-newletter, Facebook, and Twitter. Were you already tech savvy or did you realize, I’ve got to do this?
Waldeck: I did have some technology training, I knew a little about Facebook. And I don’t tweet very much because it takes a lot of work to do all those things by myself. My sous-chef, who is wonderful, has begun guest writing on my blog. Like most people, I’ve seen that advertising is going away from the traditional or mainstream and moving toward social media. I don’t do as good a job as I’d like, but I’m doing as much as I can.

In 2007 I started the Friday Four with just 35 names. They were friends – people I didn’t think would mind getting a newsletter on Fridays. They passed it along to other people. For the first two years I managed the whole thing, and then I got on Constant Contact so people could sign up on my website. Now I have almost 5,000 names, and the Friday Four goes all over the world. I see where I’m sending it to. I get the kickbacks that say I’m out of the office and things like that.

I saw an email address from UNESCO, and it turned out to be the secretary general of UNESCO in Lithuania. That tickled me so much. It stuns me. I know that social media works. One of my goals for 2012 is to capitalize on what I’ve got going. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I want to do something.

Womenetics: You published a cookbook this year, Taste and Savor: Delicious Healthy Recipes and Tasty Wine Tips. Are these recipes that you developed over the course of your culinary career?
Waldeck: They’re a compilation of the cooking I’ve done, especially the first two years of the Friday Four. I didn’t think I would enjoy doing the cookbook as much as I did, but I loved telling the stories. Somebody said, “I don’t like to cook, but I enjoy reading your stories.” I had a very good graphic designer I found from a friend of a friend; you know, smart women hang together. She was able to take my pictures off my point-and-shoot camera and make them look good enough to put in the book.

Womenetics: Did writing the book feel like a culminating event or a “wow” moment for you?
Waldeck: Yes, and now when I go to an event, not only do (the guests) get recipes, but they can buy a cookbook. I self-published, and my goal was to sell 5,000 copies this year, and I’m almost there. I figured if I could sell 5,000 copies in a year, without a publisher, then next time I can go to a publisher.

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Patty Rasmussen is an Atlanta-based freelance writer. She spent 12 years covering the Atlanta Braves for ChopTalk Magazine and has written for Major League Baseball publications, Georgia Trend magazine, WebMD, and Blue Ridge Country.