About

Chef Shadia Hawley started her food journey fifteen years ago as a personal chef providing meals for families or private engagements in the DMV area. Food has always been a passion, but a higher evolution took interest when her mother passed suddenly in 2011 of a rare cancer.  Shortly after, her first born, 8-month-old baby was diagnosed with a rare genetic condition. With a sudden, tragic loss of her mother and new presenting health ailments with her daughter, Shadia began to look closer in the Western diet and began to discover the harm in the foods we eat.

In 2016, Chef Shadia had her first “juice cleanse” experience and this changed her life. Through research, Chef Shadia began to explore holistic health and alternative medicine.  She decided to return to school to obtain her M.S. in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM), to obtain education on how foods fuel our body and what alternative methods exist that will help to live a life of vitality and longevity.

Chef Shadia was still focused on providing healthy foods to the community as well as the new desire to offer wellness products to those that can benefit from improving health and living longer. This is when Pleasing Palate was reborn.  It’s Chef Shadia’s goal to help change the health of the community by providing healthy food in the form of lean meats, fresh fruits and vegetables and decreasing stress by giving individual’s back some of their time by providing meal plan’s and health coaching services.