Kristene Fortier Author/Syndicated Columnist/Cooking Instructor Kristene Fortier is dedicated to helping people cook healthy family meals. Photo: Kristene Fortier

After 17 years in the computer industry, Kristene Fortier traded in her Silicon Valley career for pots, pans, and an apron to start Health-Enomics, a cooking school specializing in teaching healthy cooking classes to high-tech workers. Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and Oracle are among her clients.

Kristene’s cookbook, The Whole Family Cookbook: Two-Tiered Meals To Please Both Parents and Kids (Birch Lane Press, 1998) is written for parents with adventurous palates and kids with finicky tastes. Each recipe is adapted to two dining styles, kid-classic and adult-gourmet. Kristene writes “Pleasing Picky Eaters,” a syndicated column, based on her unique two-tiered approach to family meals. She dishes out quick and easy weeknight meals at momsrefuge.com, and healthy kitchen.com. “Recipe for Healthy Living,” in the Palo Alto Daily News, features fresh seasonal and vegetarian dishes.

Kristene’s low-fat holiday feast made the cover of Sunset magazine (Thanksgiving 1997.) “Creating Family Fare” was featured in the Oakland Tribune in 1997 and Kristene was written up in the San Jose Mercury News and other San Francisco Bay Area newspapers. As a radio guest, Kristene discusses topics as diverse as eating healthy over the holidays, the art of low-fat cooking, and the challenges of dining with picky eaters. Don Weeks of WGY Albany, New York calls her “an angel in an apron.”