Brianne Hattum and Simple Spoons Nutrition Studio

I’m Brianne Hattum, a Certified Culinary Nutrition Expert based out of Buena Vista, Saskatchewan. I absolutely love sharing my passion and the importance of “real” food with the world. I specialize in combining my culinary skills while focusing on the nutritional content of each ingredient I put into the recipe. I make healthy food come alive and taste great! I believe that fresh, whole foods contain tremendous power and are the key to feeling healthy, energetic and joyful.  I am here to show you how to clarify and simplify healthy eating, no matter how busy you are.

What brought me to where I am today:

I come from a family who loves to cook!  My greatest childhood memories are in the kitchen with my mom and grandma.  I loved to eat great, homemade food!  As I grew up, I continued to enjoy cooking my own homemade food.  I assumed it was healthy since I prepared it all myself.

After having children, things in the kitchen started to shift.  I was blessed with “picky” eaters, so this is initially what brought me into the kitchen for a different reason.  I was broadening my culinary skills while continually trying new foods, new recipes, new ways of hiding foods, new ways of delivering food, foods I had never heard of, trying anything to get my kids to eat nutritionally and enjoyably.   I will admit these were very stressful years in the kitchen but it did open a whole new window for me. I began to really enjoy the challenge.

I started to look forward to trying new techniques that I had never used before. I felt success when something was gobbled up and I heard the word “more please”. I felt proud taking on new ingredients and figuring out how to use them.  I looked forward to creating, developing my own spin on the recipes. I loved sharing the creations with friends and family and seeing the enjoyment on their faces. I loved learning anything I could about cooking and food!  During all of this, it also was a huge shift for me on the way I thought about food.  I had come to realize that my previous homemade cooking wasn’t as healthy as I thought it was.  When I was with my Grandma on the farm helping her in the kitchen, we went and collected the eggs from the chicken coop.  We also went to the garden to pick which veggies we needed, or to the cellar for the canned food that was persevered earlier in the year. We used real butter and cream from the cow. We cooked with what was in season, we ate meat that was raised on the farm.  There was no margarine, no package food, no mircrowave and no convenience.  It was all fresh, local, whole food.  My “homemade” meals were not.

After my new found knowledge of the food industry world I figured it was more important to be a role model like my grandma was for me and educate my children instead of focusing on every bite they were taking (or weren’t taking).  I figured if they see me in the kitchen and filling my plate with colours, nutrition and real food they will eventually follow suit, and they do.   This was when I wanted to share this philosophy, my passion, my experience and my knowledge and opened up my kitchen to children and created the program “Little Chefs In Training”, cooking classes for children.  I knew not every child was being exposed to what my kids were, or not every child gets a chance to play in the kitchen. I wanted kids to know how creative you can be through food, how much fun you can have cooking and that it can be exciting to try something new.

I got so much enjoyment and inspiration from cooking with all the little chefs.  It also opened my eyes that is isn’t just the children that need some guidance, it is the big people as well. We have been raised in this industry where now over 80% of our food in the grocery stores are prepackaged, full of chemicals and shouldn’t even be termed food. I knew I needed to do more with my skills and knowledge.  I collided my passions together, the love of teaching , cooking and nutrition and signed up for a Culinary Nutrition Expert Program through the Acadamy of Culinary Nutrition.  I graduated, with honors, in July 2014.

And this is the beginning of Simple Spoons Nutrition Studio.