About Alma
Alma Schneider, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Chef, is founder of Take Back the Kitchen, LLC. Take Back the Kitchen is dedicated to helping people recognize and overcome the common and unique psychological and practical obstacles to being everything they hope to be in the kitchen.
Think Rachael Ray meets Dr. Phil.
Alma has presented at the prestigious TEDx Talks and is the recipient of The American Red Cross award for Community Service. She has been featured on the Today Show, TV Land and is a frequent contributor for CBS local.com. Alma has appeared in Family Circle magazine and has a weekly recipe column in over twenty paper and on-line NJ newspapers under Worrall Community Newspapers. She has written for Woman’s Day online, Parent Times Magazine and numerous other websites and publications.
How did Take Back the Kitchen come to be?
Well, it all started while viewing Richard Simmons as a chubby fifth grader. Watching how Richard got so many people to talk about their struggles with obesity and overcome their challenges inspired Alma and planted the seed to become a Social Worker years later (but we talk more about that in Alma’s posts on her blog…Can someone PLEASE introduce her to Richard Simmons????).
After a childhood filled with home cooked balanced meals made by her mother for her family of nine, Alma had the cooking modeling to help her become a healthy and confident cook.
Fast forward to adulthood. For nearly fifteen years as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and self trained chef, Alma saw in her clients and personal community that intelligent and even motivated novice chefs struggled with making a five minute recipe. How could this be with all the media tools to learn? After countless discussions and surveys with struggling home cooks and numerous failed attempts to teach her friends, Alma made the discovery that would change her life:
Many people have psychological as well as practical obstacles to cooking.
Combining her love of cooking and her background and passion in counseling others to overcome challenges in their lives, Alma shifted her practice to help people overcome the obstacles to cooking through exploration of past and present experiences in the kitchen as well as practical instruction at the stove.
Alma provides individual sessions and group workshops/demonstrations in both private homes and larger settings such as schools, camps, day care centers, teen drop-in centers, new Mothers’ groups, senior centers, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, staff trainings and conferences.
Alma is a native New Yorker, transplanted to the suburbs, where she lives with her husband and four children. She is also the founder and President of Parents Who Rock, a non-profit organization, recently featured in Family Circle Magazine and CBS News, which raises money for charity through concerts performed by musicians who are parents.
Alma has been known to pull out her guitar at workshops and sing Springsteen’s Chicken Lips and Lizard Hips…
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