Instructor Information
Lakewinds is always interested in hearing from great teachers! If you have a class idea in cooking, nutrition, special diet needs, gardening, pet care or something else, drop us an email proposal. Include your past experience and current contact information, and we'll get back to you. Thank you for your interest in Lakewinds!
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Instructor Bios
Barbara Bredesen
Barb Bredesen has been making Kombucha Divine for 4 years and sells it to an extended group of Kombucha Devotees. She loves experimenting with different teas, as well as making "2nd ferments" with different flavors.
Larry Caldwell
Dr. Larry Caldwell is the author of “Revealing Healing” Helping your body-mind to connect to your emotional-mind to relieve pain and suffering. He is a Dr. of Oriental Medicine with a Master Degree from Southwest Acupuncture College in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
David S. Cargo
David S. Cargo is a former baker at Trotter's Cafe and Bakery and the St. Agnes Baking Company, and a featured baker in Kim Ode's Baking with the Saint Paul Bread Club.
Ann Cathcart, BSN, RN, HN-BC, LUT
Ann Cathcart is a holistic nurse/healer and SFQ Certified Level 1 Instructor who has
studied with International Qigong Master Chunyi Lin for more than ten years. She also has extensive background in integrative and energy healing. Call Ann at 952-474-9800 for questions.
Greg Dick
Have you noticed the handsome guy wearing a tie behind the meat counter? That would be Greg our illustrious duel store Meat Manager; happily married father of baby Everett (looks just like his Dad). Greg shines bright because he is so knowledgeable and passionate about the meats he carries in his department and he also has some great tips on how to cook them!
Anna Dvorak
Anna Dvorak is a personal guide for living a vibrantly healthy life. She teaches how healthier choices can be attainable for our bodies, skin and home through natural products, organic ingredients, and balanced living. Her cooking classes focus on decadent simplicity in vegetarian, vegan and raw foods. Anna is a Certified Nutrition and Wellness consultant.
Rachael Eide
Rachael Eide has been with Lakewinds for over 10 years. As our Outreach and Member Services Coordinator, Rachael teaches kids and adults both in the store and around the local community about the natural food world we embrace here at Lakewinds. She also leads internal staff trainings. Outside of the office, Rachael enjoys spending time in her kitchen experimenting with new recipes for the family and pulling inspiration from everywhere including travels to Lima, Peru to visit her husband’s family.
Melissa Farris
Melissa is an Herbalist, Aromatherapist & owner of Veriditas Botanicals. She is the founder, formulator, and owner of Veriditas Botanicals, LLC, located in Bloomington, MN.
Melissa works and teaches in Provence, France and Tokyo, Japan, Australia and the USA. She has been a practicing herbalist for 14 years.
Lisa Foster
Lisa has been working in the Healing Arts field for over 20 years. She is a licensed esthetician and part of our Lakewinds wellness team. Her background includes:
• Certification as a sports massage Practitioner
• Certification as a neuro-muscular therapist through the international Academy of NMT
She has also completed advanced training in Paramedical esthetics, Cranial-sacral therapy, Shiatsu, lymphatic drainage massage, colon therapy, and reflexology. Lisa brings a wide range of clinical experience to her work, including working as a regenerative therapist at the U of M Athletics department, as well as, various Wholistic health centers in the U.S. and Canada.
Lette Gamble
Lette Gamble has studied skin care and followed the industry for over 25 years. Her passion for excellent, natural skin care, as well as her genuine interest in helping people make their skin look and feel the best it can, has made her a welcome and knowledgeable addition to the well-rounded staff in wellness at Lakewinds Natural Foods. She has an M. Div, is a cancer survivor and a mother of 3 children.
Mindy Green
· 35 years of experience in the natural products and health care industries
· Nationally Certified Registered Aromatherapist
· Board Member-United Plant Savers
· Director of Education & Director of Research-Herb Research Foundation Medical Library
· National authority on botanicals
· Founding member of the American Herbalists Guild
· Co-author of the book Aromatherapy: A Complete Guide to the Healing Art
· Author of Calendula and Natural Perfumes
Audrey Grossman
Audrey Grossman, MA, LADC currently works in a medical detox /crisis unit with people that have addiction & mental health issues. She is an author, speaker, psychotherapist, teacher and workshop leader. Audrey is trained in Counseling Psychology, Spiritual Principles of Healing, Grief & Loss, Addiction and Reiki. Audrey’s work is based on the foundation of self-love and self-acceptance in the process of releasing painful histories. She blends traditional psychotherapy with heart, mind, body therapeutic techniques and energy healing. For more information you may go to www.mnwelldir.org/docs/interviews/grossman.htm.
CeCe Helsper
As well as being Lakewinds Minnetonka Store and Front End Manager CeCe runs the Minnetonka Demo program. With 40 years of cooking experience CeCe is an amazing on the fly recipe developer! When she is not feeding you at Lakewinds she can be found up at her lake home relaxing? Exactly how much relaxing she gets between entertaining friends and family at the lake, walking Bennie the family dog, and being grandma extraordinaire to her twin granddaughters…she loves every minute of it!
Rebecca Irey
Rebecca Irey’s Bio
Meet Rebecca
Her family calls her "Rawbecca." So goes her story.
Life is full of ironies, and Pure Market Express co-founder and executive chef Rebecca Irey being born and raised on a 3,000-acre cattle ranch is one of them. "I can't remember once having a green salad growing up," she says. "Dinner was meatloaf, hamburgers, steak, goulash—always with boiled potatoes and white bread and butter."
The ironies continue: "I still don't like vegetables," says Rebecca (likely the first raw chef to ever concede such). Yet hers is the appetite that was won over by the life-giving, energy-boosting, weight-melting, soul-satisfying wonders of eating raw.
A taco salad at Ecopolitan, a Minneapolis raw restaurant, triggered Rebecca's conversion. "It had sour cream and cheese—mock, of course—and I thought, 'If this is what raw food is like, okay!'" She became an Ecopolitan regular, trying, with gusto, everything on the menu and taking every class the restaurant offered. Then she headed to New Hampshire to train with and get her certification from internationally acclaimed raw author and educator Alissa Cohen.
Thousands of recipe trials later (her husband and six children are ready repositories for her kitchen experiments), she and her husband launched Pure Market Express as a way to spread, like so much hummus on dehydrator onion bread, the goodness of eating raw.
Lynn Jaffee, Licensed Acupuncturist
Lynn Jaffee is a licensed acupuncturist and the author of the book, Simple Steps: The Chinese Way to Better Health and co-author of The Bodywise Woman. Lynn has worked in the field of health promotion since 1985, and has written numerous articles on health for a variety of publications. She has a Masters Degree in Oriental Medicine from the Minnesota College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine and practices at Acupuncture in the Park in St. Louis Park. You can call Lynn at (952) 545-2250 with questions.
Gabriele Kushi
Gabriele Kushi, BFA, MEA, CHC, AADP, the internationally renowned lecturer, author and photographer of the book "Embracing Menopause Naturally" is a recognized expert on wellness with natural foods and macrobiotics. She provides certified Holistic Health consultations over the phone and in person. www.kushiskitchen.com
Angela Litzinger
Angela Litzinger has had vast experience cooking dairy free (14 years) and gluten free (7 years) for her three children and herself. She understands first
hand the frustrations and joy that comes with a gluten and dairy free diet. Her cooking goals after diagnosis was to develop recipes and menu plans to not
just taste as good at the "pre-gluten-free" days, but ones that would fit the needs of a growing, busy family who loves to eat. She has taught gluten and dairy
free cooking classes, contributed recipes for the book Allergy Busters, ran a GFCF support group, contributed cooking articles for newsletters and worked
as a consultant with a natural food store about gluten and dairy free options. Whether you have a dairy and gluten allergy or are the designated cook for a
household with a celiac, Angela Litzinger combines an extensive knowledge-base and teaching background to guide you though gluten free cooking, so that
cooking can be a joy again.
Dana Lorzel
Meet the woman who creates Chanhassen’s beautiful displays of fresh, organic, local fruits and vegetables; the one who designs the colorful produce display boards and writes the weekly produce blog. She is the woman in charge in the Chanhassen Produce department, Dana Lorzel. Dana started cooking when she was just 8 years old. Her love of real food grew out of growing up with a mother who is a chef. Dana is passionate and knowledgeable about produce; and if you need some stress relief she works as a massage therapist too!
Diane Lutzke
Diane Lutzke grew up in Rochester, Minnesota and moved to the nearby rural community of Plainview fifteen years ago. Secondary to being a wife and mother of three children, she spent her pre-culinary career behind a desk in secretarial and bookkeeping positions. However, her passion for cooking and food preservation has always been woven throughout her personal and family lifestyle.
She was introduced to seasonal cooking and food processing as a young girl staying at her grandparents’ country home. Her quiet observance of grandmother filling canning jars, the freezer and root cellar with produce from their gardens and orchards set Diane on a lifelong journey of using and storing local food. Once on her own, she never lost the reap-and-store instinct that comes with seasonal eating and always put up some amount of seasonal produce to supplement winter meals.
From 1999 to 2004, she owned and operated Rebekah’s coffeehouse café in Plainview using organic products from local farmers to create made-from-scratch meals. Kitchen fellowship was a backdrop to the family of relatives, farmers and employees who shared in this experience. After closing the restaurant, her devotion to using local, organic products continued. She began in earnest to learn all methods possible for food processing and preservation using only locally-produced products.
She is now teaching and encouraging others to eat in harmony with nature and to learn traditional methods of food preservation. Her hope is to empower others to control the availability and quality of the food they eat. She describes this approach to eating as the healthiest, tastiest and safest cuisine possible.
Kathleen Maxwell
Kathleen M. Maxwell has been a licensed aesthetician since 1999, has a Bachelor of Science in Nutrition and has been studying the effects of nutrition for
over all health for 20 years. Her purpose and goal is to bring awareness to everyone that we don't have to look or feel our age. Her philosophy regarding aging
is "if we must age, we may as well look good doing it; relax and age with grace". She currently works at Fusion Lifespa, Deephaven, MN and Nurturing You,
Minneapolis, MN
Mary Moulton
Mary has a long held interest and passion for food, including its ethnic and historic origins. Many Lakewinds’ members and shoppers know how delightful and inspiring Mary is from her nearly 20 year long involvement with the Minnetonka Co-op. Mary’s recent California travels furthered her knowledge of food and expanded her many accomplishments to include several wonderful articles in a west coast food magazine.
"I see this particular time in our economy and in spite of current global challenges, as an opportunity for folks to return to what we've always known. Real food comes from the earth, not a factory, and all of us play a vital role in growing, preparing and sharing wholesome food in a sustainable manner."
Susan Powers
Having been involved with food and wine for
years as a trained sommelier, gourmet food and
fine wines were an every day part of Susan’s life.
Meeting and and working with many top chefs
and studying classical french cooking along with
many other cuisines, inspired her passion and
creativity for food. While dealing with some
health issues, Susan found raw and has never
looked back. She has spent hundreds of hours
studying about raw nutrition and developing
recipes that carry her distinct signature, raw, delicious, and easy gourmet!
Abby Randall
Abby’s cooking career began at age sixteen working in her mother’s restaurant. It was the beginning of her passion for local foods and the food business. She then spent five years working as a Sous chef in Salt Lake City, Utah where she also gained considerable experience in private and large-group catering.
In 2007 Abby was accepted into the accelerated program at the Culinary Institute of America in New York and graduated in April 2009 with a ProChef Level One certification. She has now returned to the farming community she comes from to pursue her career as a chef and to teach new cooking techniques and methods using local foods.
Shirley Rensink
Shirley is a former vice president/ president of the Collie Club Of MN. Member of the Collie Club Of America, Obedience coordinator for The American Working Collie Association. Member of many plant and herb clubs
Se has worked for two vets, wildlife rehabilitator, has experience at several farms with hands on care ranging from feeding, helping as animal mid wife, to treating injuries. Shirley has done research on natural treatments and diets to sustain optimal health for our pets. She is currently writing a book on Natural Recipes' for cats and dogs and has been teaching others how to help their pets live healthier & happier with diet, herbs, training and massage.
The Rensink family includes husband Andrew and two grown sons Mathew & Thomas along with, three cats, three collie dogs, and seven ducks.
Katja Rowell, M.D.
Katja Rowell served as a family physician in urban and rural clinics and at a university student health service. She was struck by the prevalence of disordered eating and feeding problems and was frustrated by the ineffective way these issues were addressed in the traditional medical setting. Rowell believes establishing a healthy feeding relationship– in essence– the HOW children are fed is the missing piece in addressing disordered eating, childhood overweight and damaging dieting behaviors. With prevention in mind, Katja founded Family Feeding Dynamics and teaches the importance of a healthy feeding relationship to health care providers, family therapists and childcare staff. She teaches parents the essentials of the trust model of feeding through group lectures and workshops and coaches individual families struggling with feeding nationwide by phone and locally in-person.
Betsy Sansby & Al Dworsky
Betsy and Al lead the One World Community Choir in Hopkins and Minnetonka—a non-audition, non-performance choir for people who want to sing for the pleasure of it. www.OneWorldCommunityChoir.com.
Kelli Schulte
Kelli Schulte has a masters degree in education. Kelli taught in the public school system for ten years. She took a break from teaching to answer the call of her own family’s emotional/behavioral issues, where she discovered a dietary link. Out of necessity Kelli became totally schooled on organic foods, nutrition and supplementation. Currently her family eats a diet free from sugar, dairy, gluten, and soy. Kelli is an expert on teaching people how to transition into a healthier eating lifestyle through meal planning and smart shopping. She has great tips on how to get kids to eat real living foods. From personal expereince, hours of consultation with natual practioners, and hours of study she is able to share how the foods you put into your body effect your emotional as well as your physical health.
Mary Tellers
Mary has over 15 years of personal yoga study and practice. She has taught classes at Little Earth Indian Center, Running Wolf Fitness Center, University
of St. Thomas, and Dunrovin Retreat Center in Stillwater. She earned her certification in Lakshmi Voelker's Chair Yoga: The Sitting Mountain Series at
the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Lenox, Massachusetts. Mary currently works full-time as a Wellness Associate at Lakewinds Natural Foods in
Minnetonka, MN. Previous wellness work includes: hypnotist and nutrition instructor at weight loss clinic, body/mind therapist and nutrition consultant at
Pathways Holistic Health Crisis Resource Center. She holds a Master of Arts degree in Human Development from St. Mary's University of Minnesota and a
Bachelor of Arts degree in Foods and Nutrition from the College of St. Catherine.
Jennette Turner
Jennette Turner is a Natural Foods Educator who has been teaching people to eat well to improve their health for over ten years. She received a certification
in Holistic Nutrition from the Institute of Integrative Nutrition in Manhattan, and has studied with Annemarie Colbin, Paul Pitchford, and Sally Fallon.
Jennette works with people who are interested in general nutrition and disease-prevention, as well as those working on specific health conditions. She is
committed to providing practical knowledge about the benefits of natural foods, and her insight and instruction on how to best use food for optimal wellness
make healthy eating do-able and fun.
Jennette maintains a private practice in Minneapolis and has published articles nationwide. Her convenient, natural food meal plans and accompanying
recipes are available through Dinner with Jennette at www.jennette-turner.com.
Jeff Woodward
Jeff Woodward is one of the premier natural foods cooking teachers in the United States. Over the last 25 years, he has presented his unique approach to
creating joy and vitality through high-quality food to over 10,000 people in the US and Canada. He currently does nutritional consulting for patients and
clinics in Colorado, Maine, California and Minnesota.