We recently caught up with New York Times bestselling author and Whole Grains Council Culinary Advisory Ellie Krieger. Krieger helps people of all ages to live life in healthy balance, nurturing a richly satisfying, sumptuous – and attainable – lifestyle without gimmicks and crash diets. After receiving her undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in nutrition from Cornell and Columbia University, she then worked in obesity treatment at the prestigious La Palestra Center for Preventative Medicine.

She’s the author of Small Changes, Big Results (2005) and The Food You Crave: Luscious Recipes for a Healthy Life (2009), winner of both the IACP Cookbook award and the James Beard Foundation award. In addition to her Food Network show, Healthy Appetite, Ellie appears regularly as a guest expert on dozens of programs including Today, Good Morning America, CNN, and CBS’s Saturday Early Show. She’s also a contributing editor and columnist with Fine Cooking magazine and Food Network magazine, and a contributor to numerous publications including Parenting, Shape, Woman’s Day, Self, Glamour, Men’s Journal, Prevention, and many more.  

Kitchen guru extraordinaire, Krieger has lots of exciting things in the works! A collaborator on Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Campaign where she worked with the First Lady on the White House Garden, Krieger is bringing healthy eating to a grassroots level in her hometown of New York. Most recently, she helped organize an innovative way to teach kids about healthy eating at her daughter’s school festival. Coining the program “Play, Eat, Think,” the game invites kids to play for 2 minutes, taste the rainbow (an assortment of bright and beautiful fruits and veggies), and then pick a question about healthy eating out of the fish bowl.

In addition to educating kids about healthy lifestyles, Krieger has a fantastic new cookbook due out later this year called Weeknight Wonders. The book features recipes that can be prepared in 30 minutes or less — perfect for families looking for simple yet delicious (and nutritious!) meals. The book will be broken down into soups, salads, entrees (meat, poultry, seafood and vegetarian), sides, and desserts. One of the really neat features of the book is that it tells you how to make a complete meal; instead of just giving you a list of recipes, Krieger gives pairing suggestions. Another great tool is her method of giving tips on how and when to do each step of the recipe so that you can complete the dish in the allotted 30 minutes. We can’t wait for this one to come out!