For Sadie Shay, cooking is a means of fueling and healing, and the ingredients are medicinal.
“The foundation of health is nutrition,” she said.
As a mother to Isabella, 19, and Christian, 13, Shay said she’s taken the role of the gatekeeper of her home, children’s health, and her own health very seriously.
As a Master Gardener in both Virginia and her home-state of Hawaii, Shay is able to curate dishes and recipes using organic ingredients she grows right in her very own backyard.
Shay said much of her inspiration of preparing meals with organic and homegrown ingredients comes from her childhood in Hawaii.
“I have these amazing memories of my father coming in from the garden with a bunch of things he had grown and my father bringing in his catch from spearfishing and having meals just straight from the Earth,” she said.
Since moving to Gloucester in 2005, Shay has found herself continuing her passion for utilizing the Earth and all it has to offer. She’s professionally trained in aromatic medicine and practices nutrition and essential oil coaching.
While on a mission to find the root cause to sickness and not just treating symptoms, Shay found herself immersed learning about using botanicals as medicine. She is a distributor and educator through Young Living Essential Oils based in Utah and provides consultation and guidance towards detoxifying diets, homes and lifestyles in general.
“There’s a saying I love that goes ‘you can pay the farmer or you can pay the doctor,’ I’d always rather pay the farmer,” she said.
While she loves connecting with the Earth and using its bounties as fuel and medicine, Shay said she loves to utilize fresh ingredients and produce in her own kitchen.
Shay said she’s known for her homemade apple pie with a glaze crust, loves whipping up homemade tastes with freshly picked blueberries, and makes an impressive pork chop with caramelized apples and onions.
She likes to take different twists on classic recipes, and often incorporates different essential oils into her recipes.
She’s also known for her salads, dressings and sauces, she said.
Despite all of her mouth-watering dessert and supper recipes at hand, it’s her spinach-artichoke-crab dip recipe that has friends and family requesting batches for parties and even weddings.
Shay said her love for spinach-artichoke dip inspired the overall final product. With many dip recipes calling for pre-packaged mixes and seasonings, she said she wanted to make her own recipe that incorporates fresh veggies. She also wanted to incorporate an aspect of the Chesapeake Bay, and voila, her savory and delicious dip was born.
While Shay keeps busy loving her job as a realtor with Liz Moore & Associates, she said one day she might be interested in bottling her sauces and dressings and selling them.
Her biggest dream, she said, is to find acres of land to truly homestead on where she can raise chickens, bees and of course an impressive garden to continue her organic and natural cooking.
Shay said she loves teaching her kids to be good stewards of the Earth and to reap the benefits of the Earth…which she does in the most delicious way possible.
