Hey there! I’m Ilene and I make, photograph (and eat!) all the recipes you see on the site. I’m a certified health coach, plant-based cookbook author, food photographer and mama to two sweet girls.
Before cooking, snapping photos and eating all the colors became my dream career come true, I studied Textile Design at RISD and Photography at OCAC. This blog is my happy place where I combine my love of color, texture and all things rainbow with plant-based cooking.
I live right outside of NYC in a small New Jersey town with my husband Ross, our wild child Baby V and our new(ish) Baby L.
Connect with me on Instagram, Facebook or email!
My Plant-Based Story
You probably wouldn’t guess by looking at my website, but I hardly ate any veggies as a kid. I was an extremely picky eater and the few foods I liked were all colorless (white bread, french fries, chicken nuggets).
I found the taste of all fruits beyond bananas to be too intense and there was no way I was getting anywhere near a green vegetable. Most of the food my family ate came from frozen packages and takeout containers anyways (it was the early 90’s and there was so much less mainstream info about healthy eating!) and my parents were happy to be able to find a few foods I would actually eat.
At age 9, after seeing a live lobster cooked in a pot of boiling water, I fully realized the connection between meat and animals and I immediately decided to become a vegetarian. My parents were supportive but had no idea what to feed me, so I subsisted on a diet of grilled cheese sandwiches and microwavable veggie burgers until my pediatrician told my parents I was malnourished and needed to eat meat.
I experimented with vegetarianism off and on until it finally stuck during my freshman year of college. I was still very much uninterested in most fruits and vegetables and my diet was heavy in dairy and processed foods. Slowly I started to become curious about some of the foods I had avoided my whole life. Believe it or not, I didn’t even try tomatoes, peaches or oranges (to name just a few) until I was 19 years old– crazy, right??
I should mention that I used to have a lot of allergies. In addition to having asthma, I was diagnosed as allergic to grass, trees, dogs, cats, pollen and dust to name a few. I had been on a steady stream of prescription shots and allergy medications since age 7 but somehow I still managed to be constantly coughing, sneezing and suffering from sinus problems. At age 20 (12 years ago!) I finally decided to be proactive about my health and see if there was something I could do to alleviate my never-ending symptoms.
I had heard about the Macrobiotic diet working as a mysterious cure-all for everything from headaches to cancer so I did a little research and decided to give it a try. Macrobiotics center around eating unprocessed whole grains, cooked vegetables, and legumes. I felt completely overwhelmed even looking at macrobiotic recipes but I decided to give it try. I had never even heard of quinoa or millet before and certainly never cooked with kale or chard. My first few days following the Macrobiotic diet were a little rough but by day 4 I began to experience a sense of clarity and lightness I had never felt before.
I noticed another huge difference in the way that I felt: for the first time in my life my stomach didn’t hurt after I ate. I had grown so accustomed to feeling sick after every meal that I never realized that it wasn’t normal to have daily stomach aches. After a month of eating this way my allergies completely disappeared and I went off all my medications.
I followed a strict macrobiotic diet for six months and while I felt better than I ever had before, it seemed that something was missing. I began to experiment with raw foodism and was amazed by how energized all the fruits, vegetables, sprouts and nuts made me feel. I spent a summer eating 95% raw foods but when it turned into Fall I began to crave cooked grains and tofu.
At this point I decided to listen to my body eat the foods that felt right to me during each season. It took me about 3 years of experimenting to figure out which foods make me feel my best and which aren’t doing me any favors.
Along the way I found that I really love spending time experimenting in the kitchen (something I never thought I would say!) and I discovered how amazing and important seasonal and organic food produce can be and learned about the benefits of supporting local agriculture.
I also became passionate about treating our earth, as well as all living beings with kindness, and avoiding foods from the meat, dairy and egg industries. Following a plant-based diet (or eating as much plant-based as possible- no judgement here!) is the easiest way to lessen our impact on the earth’s resources.
My dream is for Baby V and Baby L to grow up knowing all the things about food that I didn’t as a kid- how it’s grown, why it matters where it comes from and that plants are actually delicious. Magical things happen when we listen to our bodies and eat an abundance of colors, and my hope is that my recipes can help make eating plants just a little bit easier!
The Blog, Books and Babies!
After graduating from college, I had an assortment of textile and photography related jobs, including teaching weaving, little league photography, and clothing fabric design- but nothing lit me up like experimenting in the kitchen did.
In 2013, I started this blog as a place to share my recipes, connect with likeminded folks and hone my food photography skills. I loved it so much, that I enrolled at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and became certified as a health coach the following year.
One thing led to another (ok lots and lots of things happened in between but that’s a story for another day) and eventually I was able to leave my day job designing rugs and make The Colorful Kitchen my full-time gig. Yay!
In 2015, Ross and I got married, I signed the deal for my first cookbook, The Colorful Kitchen, and shortly after found out that I was pregnant with Baby V (talk about lots of good things at once!). Life was hectic for a while, then Baby V joined our family and a soon after my first cookbook came out. I must be crazy because 3 months later, I signed on to write my second cookbook, The Colorful Family Table…and immediately found out I was pregnant with Baby L!
As of now (June 2019), Baby V is almost 3-years-old and Baby L is 5-months-old. Life is crazy and colorful and we’re getting settled in our new house (we bought a house somewhere between books and babies!) and I’m a happy lady if I can spend my days with my days cooking in the kitchen with my girls.
