Where did the name Maoomba come from?
When I was a child, my father called me Maoomba-goomba Queen of the Jungle. As if Stormy wasn’t unusual enough, right? The interesting thing, is that it wasn’t just a name; it was the title of my story – the story he told me about where I came from.
He claimed that he and my mother once journeyed through Africa, and that along the way they made a surprising discovery among a pile of coconuts: the knobby, fuzzy, little head of a baby girl. They brought this little girl home to live with them as their daughter. That little girl was me.
While the story was just my loving and humorous father’s invention, I proudly claimed it and the nick name. It has fueled my imagination and sense of curiosity, made me want to travel to far-off lands, and fostered an appreciation in me for the natural world.
In honor of the story and what it means to me, I call this site Maoomba. I believe that I bring my curiosity, experience, and gratitude to the resources I share with you here, and that our team recognizes the value of a good story – like my father’s – in making those resources fun.
How are you qualified to talk about cooking, eating healthfully, and navigating the world of food allergies?
So here’s the deal and the disclaimers.
I am not a doctor. I have a master’s degree in public health, and have worked in the health care system for many years helping doctors and their staffs improve the way they work, communicate, use technology, and incorporate current clinical science into their busy practices so that patients receive the best care possible. It is my goal with Maoomba to bring this same level of detail and support to people, like myself, who struggle with finding ways to manage their food allergies and sensitivities without compromising their health or the lifestyle they enjoy.
Disclaimer: The resources and recommendations shared on Maoomba.com are ones that I would make to a friend as a result of our own experiences with managing life with multiple food allergies and sensitivities. They are not meant to be a substitute for medical advice - please consult your own medical providers regarding treatment, diagnostic and medical concerns.
I am not a trained chef. I am a home cook, with many years of experience under my belt. I learned to cook and prepare food as a kid by watching my mom make fantastic Mexican food from recipes passed down to her from my grandparents; by helping my dad make dishes from fresh game; and by being a part of our family’s annual efforts to store home-grown foods in the form of juice, canned fruits and veg, and fruit leather (we lived along Utah’s fruit highway).
Over the last 30 years, I have also experimented with all-variety of ingredients; traveled extensively, incorporating spices and flavor combinations into my home cooking, and taken classes locally and during my travels around the world to improve my skill in the kitchen.
I am not a nutritionist. Instead, I am a fervent reader, experimenter, researcher, and learner with a great sense of curiosity and the ability to break complex ideas down into actionable information. Before I found out I had food allergies, I learned how to prepare food for a dear friend of mine with Celiac. When I was diagnosed with a plethora of food allergies and sensitivities, I read everything I could, from food allergy awareness websites, to clinical research, to gluten-free cooking blogs and books about the impact of food on health.
Through all of these experiences, I have learned ways to manage my health, maintain a balanced life supported by, but not ruled by, food that is good for me, and to identify key practices that make living with food allergies easier. I will share them with you on Maoomba.com.
Do you have any training to do what you do on Maoomba?
My formal education has less to do with the resources and advice I share on Maoomba, than my life experience and informal learning through reading, experimenting, and taking classes.
In terms of formal education, I have bachelor’s degrees in Economics and Russian Language and Literature. I studied public health at Emory in Atlanta, GA. And, I completed an MBA back home in Utah years later when I realized I wanted to start my own business.
Boiled down, this education has helped me understand four things that guide how I present information on Maoomba.com:
- Not everybody speaks my language and I try to present information in a variety of easy-to-understand ways and share resources that are helpful in different situations than my own.
- Health affects everyone, and the more we can figure out ways to make it easy to eat healthily – whether through access to information, ideas, ingredients, or support – the better off we’ll all be.
- Keeping things simple and doable makes change more manageable – if I can’t help you in a way that is clear and actionable, then I’m doing something wrong. Please help keep me on track.
What kind of work experience do you have?
I split my time between two activities that I love. I spend half of my time on Maoomba – cooking, writing, making up recipes and developing classes and other resources. The rest of my work time is spent coaching social entrepreneurs through the process of developing ideas for making nonprofit organizations financially sustainable or helping for-profit organizations pursue programs with a mission to improve public good. Basically, I help them bring their good ideas into reality so they can make a powerful impact on the problems they want to solve.
Before this, I did a variety of things, from teaching urban youth to garden and managing community and corporate food drives to spending over ten years working to improve the quality and safety of health care that patients receive as a consultant, project manager, and trainer. I also founded a couple of businesses that allowed me to learn the art of starting and ending a new endeavor decisively.
What ten things best describe your experience with and approach to food?
- The foods I am best known for: My pork carnitas and soups.
- Foods I miss sometimes: Ice cream, sour dough bread, really good cheese, but also mac n’cheese – the kind made with unnaturally orange powder. I know I shouldn’t crave them, but I do.
- Gardening Goal: Grow a tomato in my yard that’s bigger than a golf ball (after 4 years of trying, I’m not sure it’s going to happen).
- Favorite childhood food memories: Sitting on top of the shed in our neighbor’s yard, eating cherries with them and seeing who could spit the pits the farthest; squashing a bucket full of grapes between my toes in a juice-making experiment; watching my grandfather stir pork shoulder, lard, oranges, and milk in a 5 gallon pot with a shovel-sized paddle to make his famous carnitas.
- Worst (non-allergic) reaction to a food: Eating a huge spoonful of caviar that I thought was blackberry jam…total taste expectation chaos.
- Where I find cooking inspiration: Ethnic grocery stores, the farmer’s market, pre-1960 cookbooks (especially Betty Crocker and Better Homes and Gardens), whatever is in my refrigerator.
- Favorite fiction about food: Five Quarters of an Orange and Like Water for Chocolate.
- My favorite fruit that people think is a vegetable: pumpkin. (I eat a LOT of it.)
- Favorite Cuisines: Mexican, Indian, Vietnamese, Thai (I eat very well without grains or dairy).
- What I love about summer: Eating outside, cooking with fresh seasonal produce, and pulling out the Dutch ovens and grills for some awesome outdoor cooking.
