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Ali Benjamin

Author, "The Cleaner Plate Club"

Home: Williamstown, Massachusetts

Ali Benjamin is co-author (with Beth Bader) of the critically-acclaimed book, "The Cleaner Plate Club: More Than 100 Recipes for Real Food Your Kids Will Love," which is based on the blog she founded by the same name. Once a devotee of microwave dinners and diet soda, Ali became interested in farm-fresh food after her first child was born. After several failed meals -- and a few too many times seeing her wee daughter hurl a spoon across the room -- Ali got serious and taught herself to cook.

Today, she is proud to know her parsnips from her purslane, and she can roast Brussels sprouts like a champ. For Ali, food was a gateway to a more hand-crafted life in general; more recently, she has been teaching herself to knit, sew, garden, make home-made cleaners, and even do some light carpentry. Her happiest, most unexpected discovery is that beauty and soul can lurk within daily routine. She lives with her husband, two high-energy daughters, and a naughty basset hound mix named Buddy.

My philosophy: Life is too short for fat-free cookies.

If I weren’t doing what I do now, I’d probably be: I once dreamed of being a back-up singer to Duran Duran. It didn’t pan out.

Favorite piece of advice: I’m not sure anyone has ever said it better than poet Gary Snyder: "Stay together, learn the flowers, go light."

My website: cleanerplateclub.com