Linda Yu eats healthy in Ambitious Kitchen
She was 9 years old when she rolled out the dough, roasted the filling and put together her very first pumpkin pie. Monique Volz’s mom and dad both loved to cook, so she spent many hours of her childhood with them in the kitchen. Dad particularly liked to bake, so that’s where her pie- making skills came from.
During college, when she was searching for a balanced way of eating, Volz started sharing pictures of the healthy food she was creating simply because she enjoyed it. She found others enjoyed learning about her healthy dishes, and as social media sites emerged, Volz found her calling. Ambitious Kitchen ( www. ambitiouskitchen.
com) is just seven years old, but it’s already amassed more than 250,000 followers on Facebook and another 151K on Instagram. Fans of the site like Volz’s “good- for- you meals,” which they can choose to pair with her exercise programs, and tips on how to buy the healthy ingredients she puts into her recipes. Volz gives lots of credit to her Puerto Rican mom and grandmother for teaching her about the spice of life … as well as lots of different spices to add flavor to her recipes.
Volz admires her grandmother, Gloria Rivera, a senior citizen who doesn’t believe she is one: She salsa dances, line dances and flies down water slides face- first! Many of grandmother Gloria’s finest dishes make it onto Ambitious Kitchen, but always with Volz’s healthy touches — changing to a more robust ingredient here, taking away some calories there, adding spices you never thought of — to enrich the taste.