Still Standing - Hardcover

Karen Nicolas built her career in the kitchens that define the profession. She spent decades managing kitchens and practicing her craft, earning national recognition along the way as a Food & Wine Best New Chef. The industry taught her discipline, precision, and speed. What it didn't teach her was how to listen to her own body, until she had no choice.

An autoimmune diagnosis changed the course of her career, her diet, and her life.

Still Standing is Karen's account of that change. The book moves between personal narrative and a full collection of anti-inflammatory recipes developed for a body in recovery. Chapters like The Five Rules of Efficient Cooking and The Wellness Pantry translate professional kitchen discipline into something sustainable for home cooks managing their own health, energy, and time.

This is a cookbook written by someone who spent her career at the top of an industry that nearly cost her everything, and who kept cooking anyway. Karen writes with the authority of someone who has run a professional line and the honesty of someone who has had to relearn how to feed herself.

Part memoir, part working cookbook, Still Standing is for anyone rebuilding their relationship with food, their body, or their work, and for anyone who has ever needed proof that it's possible to still be standing.