Today we’d like to introduce you to Keri Connell.
Hi Keri, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I have always loved food- cooking it, smelling it, foraging in the wild for it, traveling for it. As a kid, I was lucky enough to have a mother who almost always put a homemade meal on the table each night. Some of my earliest memories are of my Italian American grandfather teaching me how to hunt for wild edible mushrooms on our land and then enjoying the fruits of our labor on pizza and in pasta. I guess it’s no wonder how I ended up where I am today: married to a chef, running a culinary nutrition-focused teaching kitchen, counseling others on how to eat to stay healthy, and spending my free time in the woods searching for dinner ingredients.
When I went to college, I really had no idea what I wanted to do. By luck or divine intervention, I stumbled upon an elective course called “People, Plants and Medicine” where I learned how cultures have been using herbs, plants, and foods for healing purposes for thousands of years. It was the first time in my college studies that I was really enthralled and excited. Maybe some of it had to do with my upbringing, being surrounded by nature, and all that food! From that point, I couldn’t get enough. I took as many classes on herbal medicine, nutrition, and cultural health studies as I could. I did a semester abroad in Hawaii and studied Ethnobotany, the science of how people make use of the plants around them. Finally, when it was time to figure out what I wanted to “do” as an adult, I chose to move to Maryland and attend the then Tai Sophia Institute, now Maryland University of Integrative Health.
In 2010, after 3 years of immersive studies in herbal medicine and integrative nutrition, I graduated with my master’s degree and set out looking for a job on Craigslist. By luck (or divine intervention again?), my first application was accepted for a position at the Crossroads Apothecary in Ellicott City, MD and here I still am, 13 years later.
I’m now also partnered with the medical team at Integrative Medicine at Crossroads, an insurance-based primary care practice that shares space with the Crossroads Apothecary. In the first few years, I put my herbal medicine expertise to work by helping patients of Crossroads navigate the confusing world of natural health care supplements and herbal medicines. Pretty quickly thereafter, I could see that something was missing from the overall picture. I knew that suggesting someone take XYZ supplement without addressing their diet or other lifestyle factors was a losing battle. While some supplements may have immediate positive effects, that’s usually not the case and there is typically more work to be done. I mean, supplements are called “supplements” for a reason.
In 2015, Dr. Warren Ross of Integrative Medicine at Crossroads and I put our heads together to create a more holistic approach to preventative lifestyle medicine. We figured out a way to SHOW people how to eat and cook by opening the Crossroads Teaching Kitchen. Since then, we’ve taught over 500 cooking classes to thousands of Marylanders specific to the concepts of “culinary medicine” or using food as medicine. Our classes focus on making nutrient dense meals as delicious as possible and easy to implement. It’s been wonderful to show people how to prepare meals versus just telling them to do so which is typical of traditional nutritional counseling.
We’ve also launched other nutrition and wellness programs over the years to help people stay accountable to their health goals while learning new positive habits. This year, we launched “Graceful Aging,” a one-year program based on research in longevity medicine which focuses on helping people 30 years and older how to age well and increase their “health span” using diet and lifestyle.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Creating nutrition programs with only a background in clinical herbal medicine and nutrition has been the most challenging! I now wish I had double majored in business and/or marketing. Outside of that, I’d say it’s been very smooth because I’m getting to do and talk about what I love (food!) while helping others make a difference in their health.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I think I answered this in the first section! I most proud of two things. The first is creating and fostering an alliance between my nutrition team at the Crossroad Apothecary and the medical providers at Integrative Medicine at Crossroads. We’ve created a system that easily opens up routine nutritional counseling to patients of a very large primary care practice. Instead of a patient just hearing their doctor say, “You need to lose some weight, goodbye,” we have these patients booked for a nutritional consult before they leave, and then they have access to regular one-on-one counseling or cooking classes in the Teaching Kitchen. It’s a seamless process that helps more people take action on advice.
The second thing I’m most proud of is opening the Crossroads Teaching Kitchen, which is very different than your typical cooking school. Our classes are taught exclusively by licensed nutritionists who love to cook. In fact, right now, both myself and my colleague Alexa, who also teaches, are married to chefs, so we bring a little of what we learn from our loved professionals into our classes too. Don’t expect to learn how to steam broccoli, boil brown rice, bake chicken breast and call it a night. For example, we’re showing people how use anti-inflammatory herbs and spices in everyday cooking, how to take king oyster mushrooms and turn them into “pulled pork,” how to increase veggie intake while decreasing starch by using “cabbage noodles” for their pasta dishes, how to make healthy and affordable versions of comfort foods like Chicken Pot Pie and Mac and Cheese. It’s been most rewarding to get feedback from patients and customers that their families are loving the recipes too, or that they’re finally losing that weight they’ve been told to lose, and that delicata squash is now their favorite veggie too!
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
Where they can learn more about the Teaching Kitchen, our integrative health services, and programs: https://crossroadsapothecary.com/
Where they can learn more about joining our insurance-based primary care practice- https://integrativemedcrossroads.com/
Pricing:
- Cooking classes can be covered by insurance if they are a patient of Integrative Medicine at Crossroads.
- Without insurance, cooking classes are $65 each and include a dinner with full tastings of all of the recipes demonstrated that evening.
- Cooking classes are done demonstration style, not hands-on.
- Nutritional counseling is covered by insurance if they are a patient of Integrative Medicine at Crossroads.
- Out-of-pocket nutritional counseling is $135 for 1 hour and $75 for 30 minutes.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://crossroadsapothecary.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/crossroadsapothecary/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crossroadsapothecarymd
- Twitter: https://www.yelp.com/biz/crossroads-apothecary-ellicott-city
