Grooming and eating healthily are rarely coupled together in a sentence. The impracticalities of the hours, locations and options – namely horse show food – make it difficult to maintain a nutritious regime. For Angela Baugh, poor diet was not just inconvenient, it was unsustainable. A Cancer survivor and living with Crohn’s disease, Baugh had to find a better way to fuel her body.
“I don’t even have a large intestine anymore,” she said. “If I eat the wrong thing, I feel it immediately. Through my cancer journey, I became obsessed with understanding how food fuels the body, not just because of calories, but real nutrition.”
Baugh draws inspiration from a relative
Baugh was inspired by her cousin who was initially based in Los Angeles and later cooked for professional athletes in Dallas. Covid saw her take up meal prepping and what started out as cooking for herself and her boyfriend at the gym, flourished into a sustainable business. Others noticed the attractive – and healthy – contents of the lunch containers they were bringing to work out. Demand soon turned into supply.
Having witnessed her cousin’s success Baugh began to question why horse shows did not offer quality meals. “In Europe, there are healthy options,” she said. “Here you are too busy and you are faced with whatever processed food is closest or you are left with buying an expensive mediocre salad.”
Last year in the midst of the Winter Equestrian Festival, Baugh made a radical move – she installed a fridge at the showgrounds. “I had no business plan. No real system yet,” she said. “I just knew people were exhausted and they wanted real food so I thought ‘let’s see what happens’.”
Enter the chef
Baugh’s plan – to provide healthy meals for purchase via a fridge on the showgrounds – came to fruition when she found the ideal chef. A close friend from the gym, Katy Yska, was going through some life changes and looking for flexible work. She had experience with eating right, having lost more than 100 pounds after the birth of her second child, just by rethinking how she cooked. Baugh proposed they set out a partnership – a food venture – with Yska providing the food and Baugh, working out how to orchestrate distribution.
“She’s the best cook I’ve ever known,” Baugh says of her friend Yska. “But more than that, she understands food emotionally, physically and practically. And she loves working with people one-on-one, finding out their restrictions on ingredients as well as their favorite flavors – what makes them feel good.”
Convenience through a fridge and a QR Code
Yska handled the food – Baugh was in charge of logistics. They started with a pre-ordering system for a whole week of meals. But the ‘hurry up and wait’ nature of the Horse Show made planning difficult as schedules changed constantly. People forgot to order or did not think they would need food on a certain day – until that day came and lunch was far from ‘on the table’.
Baugh kept the fridge stocked with ‘grab-and-go’ meals so that anyone could stop by, scan the QR code and take what they needed. The last-minute orders and the pre-arranged meals took off quickly and soon entire barns were buying lunches for their staff every day. Horse show Stewards who were provided lunch as part of their arrangement with the show, were preferring to order from Baugh. “That really made me realize that people wanted healthier options,” said Baugh.
The success also came with a learning curve. Last year Baugh and Yska tried to offer a wide variety of customizations that in practice were not cost effective. This season the menu will be condensed to some five to eight items – with a discount for ordering by Friday of the preceding week and Grab-and-Go for those left hungry at the last minute. “There will always be a vegan dish, a gluten-free option, dairy-free alternatives, and of course, plenty of protein-forward choices for athletes,” Baugh said.
Real food comes from paying attention
Baugh and Yska have gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of their meals. “Everything we use is real,” Baugh said. “Organic when possible, fresh from the Farmers’ Market on Saturday mornings. No preservatives, no hidden sugars, no shortcuts.”
She has words of warning for consumers when making the assumption that food is healthy. “You have to look at their ingredient lists,” she said of restaurants and food outlets who tout their product as such. “If you look at their ingredients you will see that nothing is fresh. Even the wraps are full of preservatives. It’s not nutrition. It’s just calories.”
Baugh has to pay particular attention to what she is actually eating. “There are so many preservatives in American food that are known contributors to inflammation and even cancer,” she said. “And why are we eating things that give us no energy?”
A chicken salad wrap that comes from Yska’s kitchen has 300 calories and over 20 grams of protein. “We use greek yogurt instead of mayo,” Baugh said. “And add a little egg-white protein powder, just enough to boost the nutrition without changing the taste.” Popular choices include a Ground beef burrito bowl, a Southwest chicken pasta salad and wraps – “easy to eat with one hand,” said Baugh. Chicken Teriyaki is one of the dishes most in demand, served with a cilantro lime rice – “it’s super light, it’s not salty,” Baugh said.
One woman’s necessity becomes a business in demand
Baugh’s venture was born out of her own necessity to eat healthy food. “If Katy didn’t cook for me, I’d end up eating crackers or Costco hot dogs,” she said. “Not because I want to, but because I don’t have the time or energy to prepare nutritious food.”
As a groom herself, Baugh understands the challenges of horse show meals. “The world doesn’t stop because it’s lunchtime,” she said. “Grooms don’t have time to stand in a 30-minute lunch line. Riders forget to eat until they are dizzy.” At the end of the day, for Baugh, food is fuel and its quality needs to reflect that requirement. When horses are treated like elite athletes in their care, and more importantly, nutrition, Baugh advocates for those people working in the sport to have access to the same quality of care. “I’m not trying to be Starbucks,” she said. “I just want to help people feel better. I’ve lived with what happens when you don’t eat right and I know how much energy affects everything.”
Go to @yourchef.shop on Instagram to see week menus and place orders.
Sarah Eakin has a long history of sports reporting and covering equestrian disciplines – particularly show jumping, polo, racing and dressage – for a range of international publications as writer and editor-in-chief. In 2024, Sarah launched Paper Horse – an online magazine with an eclectic mix of stories from the horse world at www.paperhorsemedia.com. Paper Horse is an official Media Partner of Wellington International. Sarah was born in England and came to the US in 1996 as Sidelines’ Polo Editor; at the time she was chief polo writer at the Horse and Hound and Polo Correspondent to The Daily Telegraph. She married US professional polo player Gary Eakin and stayed Stateside traveling throughout North America while covering equestrian events. She is also an author; Wed, White and Blue, her first novel is on Amazon.
