About Us!

The Gals of Nourished

Shelly Vie is a 1996 graduated of Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI, receiving a degree in Baking and Pastry Arts.  She competed in the 1995 annual Salon of Culinary Art Food Show in New York City, and was also the recipient of the annual Johnson & Wales Student Artistic Award in 1995.  She has worked in a specialty Kosher/Parve bakery in Philadelphia, as a private wedding cake designer, and in several resort bakeshops in the Florida Keys, Caesars Palace Atlantic City, NJ and at The Pointe Hilton South Mountain Resort in Phoenix, AZ.

“I was always meant to live Ma Douce Vie.”  When an artful Pastry Chef marries a certified Master Gardener, their household (and partnership) equals a naturally grown, mutually inspiring and beneficial one.  This family often meets in the kitchen to combine ideas on current food trends, foods that are sustainable to their Arizona backyard and recipes that must be pure and simple to prepare for their toddlers.  The couple live on 1¼ acres in Scottsdale that include an orchard of 32 varieties of citrus, 8 varieties of fruit trees, 9 varieties of grapevines, specialty garden beds including heirloom tomatoes and vegitables; an edible flower bed, experimental AZ summer greens, and a rare and exotic garlic bed.  Many the ingredients used in Nourished products come right from the Vie’s backyard.

Inspired by the pure and simple flavors from her garden veggies while making homemade baby food, Shelly was revitalized to return to the basics of cooking again; a lost love for many years.  Building on the herbs, aromatics, and citrus that her husband grew in their backyard, she and her partner Hayley began developing unique flavors of compound butters.  She recognized her desire to elevate her own home cooking, as well as her struggle to do so with limited time, added responsibilities of a growing family, over scheduling, and poor planning – common difficulties shared among home chefs.  But what if someone could bring classic European elements of food to the home chef?  So that all they had to do was drop them in to add incredible depth to their meals.  What if someone else spent the hours crafting these components by simmering, roasting, whipping, and preparing?  How easy it would be if only we had a little inspiration for what to do with our standard protein, starch and vegetables. 

Hayley Ellis received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Arizona State University.  She grew in her love of home cooking as an adult by completing the practical series at Classic Cooking Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona and discovered her respect for classic French cooking.  Inspired by the importance of correct technique and having an overall understanding of basic and classics she is now allowing food to be her new medium for art and arrangement.  On a continuous quest for new nutritional findings after having a son with multiple medical conditions she has done much research on diet and nutrition.  A former vegetarian, now a follower of Weston A. Price and Nourishing Traditions cookbook by Sally Fallon, “It made a lot of sense to me that he found healthy, thriving cultures around the world and sought what they were doing in common."
"We try to eat ‘food’, I shoot for the fewest ingredients and less processed choices.  I buy local and organic when possible but I try not to stress over perfection, I think people give up if they try to do all or nothing.”  Hayley also has a smaller-scale organic garden in the Cave Creek home she shares with her husband and two children.  “I’m fortunate to have a husband who is always willing to try the latest thing I’ve researched.  Desiccated liver, chia, kefir, beet kvass, fermented cod liver oil, he’s tried it all.   We are really trying to pass on knowledge and interest in food to our children too.  I love seeing my kids pass by a cherry tomato plant and grab a snack.  We have made friends with a local couple where we get our eggs.  The kids will go along to pick them up and hold a chicken, that’s cool to me.  Speaking to the rancher where our meat comes from; I love the sense of community you can build through food.”  Hayley is our purveyor of all things truthful and fair, research based trends and nutritional findings.  “I try not to annoy people with the facts I learn about food, but it's so important to me and fascinates me endlessly.”

Why we do this - To Nourish the Soul. 
In many ways, we needed this business to be successful for our social and emotional health. Having babies can be all consuming and can really take from a parent’s sense of self.  In our former lives we were artists and innovators!  It was important for us to remember what we once loved to do pre-kids, and what used to make us feel satisfied and alive.  For us it was often cooking and entertaining with friends!  The kitchen was a place where we lost all sense of time, where it didn’t feel like work!  Nourished became a reminder of many things for us; to always nourish yourself first, remain creative and fresh with your daily interactions and you will be to others as well, and that you will always come back to your passions in life, even though they ebb and flow with time!  It’s also important for other home cooks (and mamas) to be inspired and to get help wherever possible.  If Nourished can help to “Elevate your home cooking” and inspire or excite a home cook at meal time, well then we’ve just helped to nourish your family too!  It's rewarding to help home cooks find some solutions to their kitchen dilemmas. At the markets when we hear a person say, “Oh, I never thought to do that” or “I’m excited to go home and try that” with a new product of ours, we’re happy that we’ve inspired them to try one new thing in one new way.  Each month at Nourished we get to innovate and create by changing the products seasonally and as they please us too.