Artist's Cookbook: What's Cooking with Kristine Mirelle?

As a five-year-old in Podunk, Pa, I spent my days worrying about missing Scooby-Doo, why Amish people don't own televisions and how to use scissors. When independent singer/pianist/entrepreneur Kristine Mirelle was a five-year-old she was already hard at work learning her family's tortilla chip business and planting the seeds for a fruitful future in both the food and music world.

In 2009, Kristine decided to start making and selling her own brand of tortilla chips. She called them Lil' Kristie's. With next to no money to help her get things rolling, Kristine sold her chips to small gas stations and friends. She would stand in line at grocery stores and hand out samples of her product in hopes that people would buy some. Sometimes Kristine would also set up performances in these stores. She would sing about her product and gain attention to her brand. Now-a-days Kristine's chips are doing pretty well. You can find them in over seventy-five stores in New Mexico. These include Whole Foods and Sprouts Markets. What's Kristine cooking up in her kitchen currently? Pretty much anything and everything that will be enhanced by her chips. Take, for instance, this chicken that is marinated and then breaded with the crumbs of her tortilla chips:



With the cooking done and Lil Kristie's on somewhat more stable ground, Kristine has been able to focus some of her energy back on her music. As a youngster, Kristine had a pretty successful classical piano career. This included winning the National Sonata competition four years in a row and being inducted into the International Piano Guild at the age of 12. In recent years, Kristine has taken her piano talents and applied them to covering other people's songs as well as writing her own originals. Her covers include, amongst others, Kanye, Beyonce, Imagine Dragons and One Republic. On Halloween, Kristine released her brand new original single "Freakin Mess." The track comes with a video that features Kristie and her four foot pal riding around in Hot Wheels, wasting popsicles, holding up bakeries and stealing cupcakes. It is exactly what I could see myself doing if I wanted to go all Bonnie and Clyde on the world. The banks would be safe, the bakeries, not so much. Check it:



Just the sounds:



Aside from making music, selling tortilla chips and going on cooking shows, Kristine works tirelessly to help those in need. To learn more about the causes that are important to her and the people that she helps, check out the about me section on her website.