Heather Crosby is a former veggie phobe turned veggie-loving cookbook author who lives in charming Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Like many folks who find their way to clean eating, she became accountable for her health because she had to, and she continues to work on it every day.

While she has a plant-based certification from the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, she’s a big believer that everyone comes to the table with varied habits, beliefs, traditions, and dietary needs, and these layers change and evolve over a lifetime.

She’s not interested in being the food police, or telling you how to eat. She’s interested in connecting with other health-minded peeps, sharing resources, and providing inspiration for anyone who wants to simply eat more plants and not compromise the “flavor” in their life to do so.

She’s a recipe developer and wellness advocate who approaches food through a creative, plant-inspired lens—thinking outside of the box a bit to create shareable, comforting recipes that surprise skeptics and simply make the heart and taste buds happy. She’s been featured on NPR “It’s Your Health,” HGTV, Oprah.com, DesignSponge, Reader’s Digest and is committed to creating recipes and resources loved by vegans and meat-eaters alike.

Heather is the creator of GlutenFreeBakingAcademy.com which currently offers the Gluten-Free Bread Baking Course (next session October 2017), author of YumUniverse: Infinite Possibilities for a Gluten-Free, Plant-Powerful, Whole-Food Lifestyle, and the founder of YumUniverse.com, where over 500 free recipes and helpful resources like meal plans for whole-food, plant-powerful cooking can be discovered. Her second book YumUniverse Pantry to Plate released May 16 and is a freestyle cooking playbook with almost 100 recipes as well as 30 mix-and-match recipe templates readers can use to customize 1000s of meals.