DC: Tell me what you hope to accomplish with your new cookbook Eating Well to Win, Inspired Living Through Inspired Cooking.
ChefRLI: I want to let people know that they can eat healthier, but still have flavor. The cookbook consists of a lot of dishes that I grew up on. Being from Miami and having an island influence, I included dishes that a lot of people have never tried or heard of before such as conch salad. I Introduce people to new things, techniques and new ways of making food. For example, there is a pancake recipe with chia seeds and flax seeds. A lot of people don’t know that chia and flax seeds do great things for the body. The book gives people a different way of eating healthier and with flavor. The main goal of the cookbook was to make people comfortable with cooking again, that’s why there are so many pictures within the book. I tried to look at it how I would want a cookbook to be if I was purchasing it. I wanted it to be an easy read and for the pictures to look vibrant, helping to guide people along as they’re cooking a recipe.