As alot of you know, Chynna's daughter, Jaimie, is a big fan of Jamie Oliver's. There are very few people in this world that little Jaimie makes a connection with so when it happens, we are very excited. 

For those of you who don't know him well, Jamie was born straight into the restaurant business--his dad ran a successful pub in Clavering, Essex. He's said often that all of the excitement in the restaurant inspired him to become interested in food and cooking. He started helping out in the pub when he was a boy and the rest, as they say, is history.

As a young man, he got to work in some wonderful restaurants where he got to learn the valuable skills he still practices today. For all the details about the steps he took in his wonderful career, be sure to check out his biography on his official Website. On his Site, you can learn about his books and TV shows and even keeps his fans up-to-date on what he's doing in his online diary. 

Jamie is inspirational because of his enthusiasm for food, for helping get the world excited about fresh, healthy eating and living and the passion his has for getting the world eating better. And the love his has for his beautiful wife, Jools, and his three gorgeous daughters (Poppy, Daisy and Petal) is . Although we now have a place in the country to spend our weekends at, so I really look forward to Friday nights when we can pack up and spend the weekends together. That's what it's all about!

JAIMIE'S STORY ABOUT JAMIE

As some of you may already know, Jamie Oliver is a bit of a hero in our house. Somehow, from across the pond, Jamie inspired my daughter, Jaimie, to try new foods—something we’ve struggled with all of her life.

Our Jaimie has extremely high sensitivity levels in all seven of her sensory systems with tactile being the most severely affected. I didn’t realize until I had a child with such high sensitivities to touch how many different areas in our lives are impacted by touch. Touch affects who we can bring ourselves to talk to, sit beside or play with; it judges what we’ll wear, sit or lay on, or handle; it can make everyday tasks such as hair brushing, teeth cleaning, eliminating, washing up or changing excruciating; it even influences where we can play, study or rest because temperature, weather and other environmental stimulation can make things uncomfortable. As you can imagine, then, getting a child with tactile issues to eat something can be a challenge.

We smell, taste and touch all work together when we’re eating. And in our house, the most of the challenge is getting the food not only to look good but to feel good too. Quite often, Jaimie likes the taste of what we cook (mostly because we don’t use a lot of ‘extras’ anymore or buy foods with extras already in them…we eat ‘raw’ and natural) but the texture is too much for her and she’ll spit the food out, gag or throw up. We had a little girl living on plain foods, like noodles, applesauce and chicken breasts, and needed to figure out how to get more essential nutrients into her. Then one night, we had an unexpected solution: Jamie Oliver.

When I was pregnant with my third child, Jaimie never slept. She was afraid something would happen to Mum or that she’d wake up and I wouldn’t be here so she woke up often and couldn’t go back to sleep. One night while trying to coax her to sleep, we had The Food Network on. Jaimie was upset and crying, mostly from being so tired, and the theme song from “Jamie At Home” came on. She turned around and stopped crying, asking, “What show is this?” I told her. Then she said, “Hey! His name is Jamie too!”

I let her sit with me for a few minutes as Jamie enthusiastically talked about beans. She sat there without saying a word. I hadn’t seen her that enthralled with someone since we were introduced to the Wiggles and she was drawn to Greg Page. She wouldn’t go to bed until after the song ended at the closing of the show. As I tucked her in, she said, “Mama? Can we have beans tomorrow? And can you make them like Jamie did?”

That was the start of our ‘relationship’ with Jamie Oliver. Then I actually had to start recording his shows for her! I have no idea what it is about him—at first I thought it was just neat to her that they had the same name—but now she’s willing to try new things she sees him prepare on his show. I’m not saying it’s made our eating issues disappear but it’s helping.

Jamie is doing a “Food Revolution” now trying to get people eating and living healthier. He’s showing us how to cook the foods we love in better more nutritional ways and helping us develop a better relationship with food. This is a time where ‘bigger, better, faster’ has even affected our eating and food, something Jamie realizes is a problem. He’s helping to do something about this problem and we say, “GO JAMIE!” We’ve experienced the health benefits first hand from eating better, making wiser food choices and eating naturally. And you all can too.

Go to Jamie’s Website and learn to fall in love cooking and food all over again.

(This post is from our Going For Feingold blog.)