Hello, I’m Bobbi, culinary explorer and owner and lead instructor of Conscious Crumbs.

This isn’t the way it was supposed to be.

In 2007 Crain’s Chicago Business named me as one of their 40 Under 40, a prestigious reward for my fifteen-year love affair with corporate America. I was good at what I did--a top executive for a national trade association—and generously compensated. It was a glamorous job from the outside, rife with stylish hotels, expense accounts, and all the shoes this girl could want. But I was empty on the inside. My little secret was well-hidden until spring 2008 when I got a wakeup call—the kind that makes you want to live each day like it’s your last—and I quit. My resignation didn’t feel like the climactic point that it turned out to be. I had every intention of returning to the corporate world with a job that filled me with a stronger sense of purpose, but I wasn’t in a rush. Corporate America would always be there. So I put my shiny MBA on a shelf and with my husband Greg’s support and wild enthusiasm, I started working on the book that had been rattling around in my head for twenty years.
 

I immediately discovered the perks of working from home. Topping my list was cooking—anytime, anything my heart desired. The kitchen had always been my place to unwind from the tangles of the day. As a frequent business traveler, I’d often return home from a trip, leave my unpacked bags at the bottom of the stairs and head straight to the kitchen, anxious to try the latest Saveur Magazine recipes that I’d devoured on the plane. Unfortunately, the perks became distractions and finding the discipline needed for the sedentary lifestyle of a writer was challenging.

 

So I moved to Hawaii with my laptop and my 10-inch chef’s knife. I spent six months living on the beach and writing my heart out. I worked as a private chef in return for room and board, grilling fresh fish with names I’d never heard of that were so big their tails would often hang over the edge of the grill. I baked bread from scratch every day, and we slathered it with the tropical jams and preserves that I was becoming an expert at making.
 

I returned to Chicago for the summer, and by fall I was off again on another combined book writing and culinary adventure. This time my travels took me to a goat farm in the Hudson River Valley. I apprenticed with an artisan cheese maker and learned the finer points of raising chickens and acorn-noshing Berkshire pigs when I wasn’t working on my book. My evenings were spent in the kitchen perfecting my technique for roast chicken and experimenting on every cut of goat and pork meat that the farm produced.
 

At home again in Chicago, I kept writing. And I kept experimenting in the kitchen, sharing my recipes and stories on my food blog www.bobvivant.com. Family, then friends, then mere acquaintances began asking me for advice and hands-on lessons—bread making, canning, pizza, pies. One day I was teaching a friend how to make bread (with fewer than five minutes of hands-on time!). She was wrist deep in sticky dough and beaming with satisfaction and pride. It was as though I could watch her love for cooking and her kitchen confidence growing together in lock step with every turn of the dough. In that moment, I understood what I love most about cooking—sharing. Whether it’s cooking for someone or showing them how they can do it themselves, helping people find joy in food and their own kitchens fills me up in a way that fancy job titles and fat paychecks never could.
 

Corporate America can wait a little bit longer, if not forever. I’ve got a book to finish and you and I have so much to do together. So let me help you make your kitchen your favorite part of your home, or maybe just make you dinner.