My name is: Laura Lea Goldberg. 

My book is called: The Laura Lea Balanced Cookbook, 120+ Everyday Recipes for the Healthy Home Cook.

The publication date is: May 20th, 2017. Available now!

I was inspired to write it when: Well, it has always been a dream of mine to write a cookbook: I consider myself as much a writer as a chef! As soon as I began posting recipes on my blog four years ago, I knew that I wanted to transfer them to paper someday. But, when I met my now publisher, I didn’t consider myself ready. I was convinced that cookbook writers were far more seasoned, but I wasn’t going to turn down the opportunity! So, I went ahead and allowed myself to dive headlong into it—to share the recipes that had been simmering for years. 

It's about: getting people back into the kitchen to make whole-foods-based, familiar recipes with creative twists. It’s about taking back control—of one’s kitchen and health, and subsequently, one’s life. And it’s about taking advantage of cooking as our most affordable and accessible form of therapy. Making your own food is remarkably empowering, and I want to give my readers the tools to experience that for themselves. 

My hope is that readers will: be able to answer questions about what works best for them to live their best, healthiest lives. We all suffer from small—or even large—ailments that we spend too much money trying to fix with this lotion or that pill. There is such information overload that we often freeze and go back to what’s familiar. One way to counteract this is to make our own food, become our own health detectives, try a little of this and a little of that. We’ll never know what makes us feel truly amazing if we’re relying on someone else’s idea of amazing. I also hope that bringing back an emphasis on home cooking will help families to gather more consistently around the table, technology free, and talk to each other!

My next book might be: I’m waiting to hear what my readers like best and least about this one, so I can adjust accordingly. I think my next book will be similarly along the vein of healthy twists on traditional home cooking, but I’ll continue to introduce new foods and ways of approaching health. 

The title of my autobiography would be: I am too young to decide this! Maybe: Everything is Better with Peanut Butter On It?

If I was a character from fiction, I’d be: Meg from A Wrinkle in Time.