Cook's Chat
Catering to a more healthful lifestyle: Traci Higgins
By GraceAnn Walden


Her five-year-old company, Dining [In!], delivers fresh, healthful, balanced, organic dinners to singles and families in the Bay Area. Higgins is adamant about wanting her service to be accessible. She gets referrals from and works with nutritionists and personal trainers to help people change their lives. 

“Many people are trying to get fit, working out, but don’t have the time or the knowledge to make low-calorie, healthy food,” said Higgins.

Her service can also help people with Type 2 diabetes.
One of her clients awhile back was a 49er football player. The team employs a nutritionist to carefully analyze their players’ blood to determine if a player needs more potassium, for example, in his diet. It’s all about peak performance.

From forensics to food
Although she didn’t start out to be a chef, while going to school, she was a private cook for a couple of families.

Born in Texas, Higgins was on track to become a child psychologist; her particular area of interest was forensic childhood psychology.

Curious, I had to ask what that is.
“That is studying the behaviors of children as they grow and start becoming deviant, or have criminal records. It strives to understand the trigger points. I wanted to study gang-related kids and how children, as they grow, become abusive, who are not from an abusive environment,” she explains.

Higgins went on to say that she became interested in this specialty around the time of the Columbine shootings.

“Here were two kids who weren’t beaten or locked up, but they were violent,” she says.
Fascinated, I ask her what she thinks was their “trigger.”

“I think the trigger was a lot of loneliness … I think a few of these guys got together looking for a way to express themselves. Another big factor was a strong lack of parental involvement. I mean, how do the parents not know about the guns in the closet and their online messages?”

We’ve been so deep in conversation, we almost forget to order lunch. Morning Due, formerly only a cafe, added food about six months ago, so I want to try it and I’m hungry.
Higgins opts for the vegetarian burger, which she says she likes because they make the mix here, and it includes shredded beets. I get a regular burger; for me, always a good test of a casual place.

“When we had to make the move to San Francisco,” she says, “my husband had to go on a business trip, and I took a couple of weeks to reevaluate my life. I believe you have to do something that you love.”

She identified the three things she liked the most, which are working with kids, photography and food.

“When my husband came back from his trip, I said, ‘Honey, I need $45,000 to go to cooking school.’”

After graduating from the California Culinary Academy, Higgins did her internship at Cooking Light magazine, because she really wanted to learn how to cook healthful food.
Then, and later as she built her business, she was lucky to have a husband who made a good income.

These days, Higgins has many clients and four delivery trucks. She will soon extend her business to the San Jose area.

Our burgers arrive, and also a Caesar salad with pistachios. I like the salad, especially the inclusion of nuts, but the croutons are too big and not toasted.

My burger is just fine, but I’m impressed with Higgins’s, which is much more flavorful than any run-of-the-mill veggie burger I’ve had.

The owners of the Morning Due, the Jordanian-born Joel and Reham Haddad, spontaneously send out an absolutely heavenly piece of pumpkin bread made with walnuts and chocolate chips – yum! We also tasted a brownie made with good quality chocolate. Higgins confessed chocolate is her downfall as we happily munched on some of both desserts.

Her business is booming; she’s just built her own 4,000-square-foot kitchen in Bay View, and she has a husband and a toddler – I have to ask her how she juggles it all.
“For one thing, I use my own service,” she says and smiles.

Dining [In!]: 415-255-2433, www.dininginsf.com
Morning Due Cafe: 3698 17th St. (at Church), daily 7 a.m.-8 p.m., 415-621-7156

E-mail: graceann@northsidesf.com