Cancer Connections in the Kitchen
- Shelia Johnson is living successfully with cutaneous T-cell lymphoma.
- Kitchen time with her family growing up inspired her to be a better cook as an adult.
- She is the host of the YouTube cooking show, Gangsta Goodies Kitchen.
Growing up in a Black home, the kitchen was a place of connection for Johnson's family, and dinner time was about bonding and building and communicating. After Johnson’s diagnosis, however, her daughter helped realize just how important the quality of the food she was putting into her body was, and she started experimenting more with healthier foods.
Read MoreShe says even collard greens can be healthy.
"I grew up on collard greens,” Johnson tells SurvivorNet. “My mother was from the South, and collard greens when I was growing up either had neck bones or a fat back or ham hocks or something like that in it. Now I have it that way, every blue moon, maybe two or three times a year. But for the most part, I put collard greens in a wok. I cook them about five or 10 minutes, add some spices, not salt, and then the crowd, they are amazed at how good they are, you know, uh, without that meat, I’m like, yes, we don’t need all of that to have good collard greens."
This past February, Johnson also shared her learnings in a panel discussion with the Lymphoma Research Foundation to speak about cutaneous T-cell lymphoma and her experience with the rare form of lymphoma.
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