Chef Kat Humphus: The Recipe For Connection

Award winning Chef and entrepreneur Kat Humphus is on a mission to save the art of at-home cooking by making eating savory, healthy foods more simple. The uncomfortable data is in: with the speed of modern life, men and women collectively are spending less time at the stove than ever before. Everyone knows that eating healthy trumps exercise, yet 6 out of 10 people in the country don't ever make time to cook food for themselves. When looking at the continuum of behavior change and the skill it takes to push eating healthy into the fold, there couldn't be more reasons to throw in the towel. But as Chef Kat explains, cooking healthy food at home isn't about being perfect and burning hours of time on your feet, it's about adding the right ingredients to your food and in your community to help support you along the way. Hungry For Connection What makes cooking more fun and habit-forming? Connection. Not just to the food and where it came from, but to the people in our lives we cook for, including ourselves. What we need now as a society is for food to be something revered, not just ordered from a window. But the paradigm shift back to the art of cooking healthy as an act of self-care is under massive attack. Large food companies, who have made an absolute killing on the country's susceptibility for laziness, aren't helping either. The same corporations that make billions on packaged foods are now capitalizing on the market for GMO ladened and poor nutrient quality "packaged meals." With free time on the decline, the demand has been especially strong for what are called "fresh prepared foods," meals prepared in a nameless warehouse and then served at grocery stores, bodegas, and mini-mart's around the country. Sales of these nameless, tasteless, and obesity yielding foods now spike above $25 billion annually that point towards a lack of cooking skills in parents are also on the rise. Turning Up The Heat In The Kitchen The reasons for the slow death of cooking in America are many, but a few big flames stand out. For one, women, who traditionally have carried the brunt of the cooking load, are working more than ever, and therefore spending less time cooking at home. In 2008, women spent 66 minutes per day cooking, almost 50 minutes less than in the 1960s, when they spent upward of 112 minutes on average. Men, by comparison, are actually spending a bit more time at the stove, albeit only a meager eight minutes more. So men have hardly made up the difference. As Chef Kat explains, making healthy cooking simple is just the first step, and what will really make the difference for busy families is adding in the the right ingredients at the right time. More About Chef kat Katherine Humphus is a classically trained Chef, a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, France. After working in Manhattan kitchens under famed chef Wylie Dufresne at WD-50, she also cooked under world-renowned chef Thomas Keller at The French Laundry in Napa. Upon returning to her hometown of San Diego, she began working under the Cohn Restaurant group umbrella, opening up 3 restaurants as Executive Chef—BO-beau kitchen + bar in 2010, 100 Wines Hillcrest in 2012, and BO-beau kitchen + roof tap in Long Beach in 2014. Chef Kat has been honored with the title of Best Chef 2014 by the Peninsula Beacon, in addition to winning Top Female Chef by Riviera Magazine and also Best Local Chef 2012 by Ranch & Coast Magazine. Now back in San Diego with Kat’s Kitchen Collective, she cannot wait to bring exquisite cuisine to the everyday kitchen. From the kitchens of Paris, New York, and Napa, Chef Kat is on a mission to make cooking healthy possible again right in your home. Resources Mentioned In The Show