Holistic Therapeutic Nutrition Consultant
Tara Carpenter, NC.
Nutrition Consultant for digestive issues, especially localized or systemic yeast overgrowth with The Body Ecology Diet.
Born in 1970’s, I had a natural upbringing and a mother who made our meals from scratch. My brothers and sisters and I attended a Montessori Farm School in Washington D.C. with gardens and a kitchen to make our lunch. When I started public school in 5th grade, I was certainly the only one eating hot lentil soup and cornbread wrapped in a cloth napkin!
We kept chickens, gardened, and drove hours to source organic food which we dispersed to the community around us. My mother, pictured below, was a teacher and home-schooled my younger brother and sister. As a result, we often packed in her bus van for a field trip to Plymouth Plantation where Mayflower II docked. I loved to re-enact the making of a meal made with ingredients the pilgrims raised on individual land plots in the plantation. Summers were spent with an Amish family in Pennsylvania.
Here I am (back to camera) sitting for a family meal. As a girl, I read my mother’s cookbooks from front to back …. Moosewood Restaurant, Ten Talents, and Kripalu Kitchen were my favorites. At 12, I opened Fat Mama’s Cafe with friends and invited neighbors to dine at my family’s dining room table; handing out a rotating seasonal menu. At 14, I bound a small cookbook for parents of kids with allergies.
At 16, I ate pizza and drank beer into college years when I studied abroad in Tasmania and a friend had me for supper. I walked in her home to the smell of bread baking, herbs drying, soup simmering AND immediately brought back to my natural roots of upbringing. Soon after, I canoed the Murray for a 10-day Vipassana meditation where stillness was cut with a knife and the detail of a bird (photo below taken by my oldest son) opened my eyes to the awareness that can arise from breathing into each moment.
In college, I worked at Whole Foods and did wheatgrass shots and colonics in dorm bathrooms. I struggled to focus on my field of Early Childhood Education and diverted to a major in humanities to construct my studies around centuries-old, traditional home remedies designed to eliminate symptoms of disease and strengthen body’s natural healing power. My final paper was on pasteurized milk and the allergic response.
I was drawn to this path of harnessing a body’s healing power because though I grew up with organic natural foods and no sugar, bleached flour, or artificial dye I still had pockets of wadded tissue from a chronic runny nose and on corticosteroids and allergy shots to control asthma triggered by food and environment. Every morning before school I would take a cough/cold syrup called Triaminic because was the one bottle in medicine cabinet that dried up my nose, eyes, ears, and lungs! Now I know this is an antihistamine and I was walking around with high histamine levels in my body. At the time I only knew I wanted off so much drugs that brought unwanted side effects (i.e., bone loss, joint loss, tissue lining loss).
On the day of college graduation, I packed up my belongings and drove cross-country to Chico, California to apprentice with master cook, Cornelia Aihara. This sharp as a tack woman showed me how to cook in a medicinal manner according to dietary principles of natural healing and the uniqueness of each person. I chanted, walked barefoot in morning dew, administered ginger compresses to people with cancer, and fasted in various methods up to 30-days. She taught yin~yang healing principles and how to run a working kitchen above a root cellar full of traditional foods stored at cooler temperatures (i.e. kraut, pressed pickles, umeboshi plums/vinegar, wooden vats of soy sauce/miso paste).
My early twenties were spent as a natural foods baker at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California where I baked sourdough bread, made yogurt, and wholesome sugarless desserts for a community of 250 people. Perched on the cliffs of the wild, rocky ocean, I also trained as a masseuse, Hatha yoga practitioner, and The 5 Rhythms Gabrielle Roth dance facilitator. In 2000, I had the honor to cook and chant at Tassajara Zen Monastery.
I dreamt my whole life of being a mother, yet at the age of 28 learnt I am part of 1% of women with a rare prenatal condition called hyperemesis gravidarum. This condition lasted 12 weeks with my first child, 17 with my second (baby girl miscarried), and 40 with my third for a total of 69 weeks. I was unable to lift my head, drive, watch t.v., read, or drink more than a teaspoon without feeling extreme nausea. Each pregnancy implanted inside of me a resiliency to focus on the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel.
When my first child started eating solids he had awful diarrhea, weight loss, and dehydration until he turned two and admitted to Intensive Care because his bodily functions had regressed to that of a 2-month old. This was 2002 when Celiac Disease was not well understood. The doctors said “your son has borderline Celiac and you should remove most gluten from his diet”. Thankfully, I was versed in nutrition and fell back on this knowledge to remove ALL gluten plus top allergens (i.e., soy, nuts, dairy). He bloomed! This transformation showed me food can harm and heal.
Since 1996, I have been a Personal Therapeutic Chef in kitchens through the hills of Hollywood to where I now make home in the valley of Vermont. Though I no longer offer a chef service due to a condition in my hands, I do offer nutritional consultations and meal plans customized to meet unique individual dietary and health needs.
To schedule a consultation or complimentary call, please email tara@happybellies.net
Reclaim your inner smile.
May all bellies be happy!
