Diana Johnson had no idea that her personal battle with poverty and hunger would morph into in her career.

After a struggle with economic hardship, however, the 29-year-old Auburn resident, food blogger and nutrition class instructor made the decision to use her own experience fighting to make ends meet and eat healthy to help educate others.

It all started in Hawaii.

After years of moving around the globe, to whatever base her father, a U.S. Army serviceman, was assigned to, Johnson fell in love with Hawaii.

So at age 18, rather than following her father to his new assignment in Washington, Johnson decided to plant roots on the Hawaiian Islands.

“I consider Washington home in that I’m happy here and I want to be wherever my husband is,” she said. “But a piece of my heart is still in Hawaii.”

Everything was going swimmingly for Johnson. She had a good job working professionally as a dancer for a cruise ship line. Everything was fine until the reaction to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, put a hurt on the tourist industry worldwide.

“I actually got a phone call on Sept. 11 saying I had lost my job,” she said. “I think they were anticipating something happening (to the tourist industry) and cut their losses.”

Without a steady paycheck, Johnson got a part-time job teaching gymnastics to preschoolers.

“It was a fun job and most of the time could cover my rent,” she said. “But it didn’t leave much for food. It was really hard to figure that out. There was a whole month that I lived off a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter.”

Looking at a paltry buck or two a day to spend on food after the rent was paid, Johnson looked to the cheapest and least healthy alternative to fill her belly.

“That was when I started what I called the fast food diet,” Johnson said.

The dollar menu at fast food restaurants became what she thought was her only option.

“I would try and make it as healthy as I could,” she said. “For lunch, I would get a chicken sandwich and I would add lettuce and tomatoes because you could put them on for free. And if I had another dollar that day, I would get two tacos for dinner.”

Soon, however, the results of poor nutrition began to manifest.

“I could feel the difference, I was still really active, but I could feel the difference in my health,” she said. “I got sick a lot more. Emotionally, it affected me. And my energy levels were so low I wanted to sleep all the time. It was really bad.”

Unsure of how to break the cycle of bad eating, Johnson said she caught a break when a friend delivered her a bag of groceries.

“I think she planned it because she knew I was prideful,” she said. “They brought over a paper bag stuffed full of groceries and I sat and looked at that and tried to think what to do with it.”

Johnson came up with a meal plan, using the food she received from her friend and maximizing the ingredients to stretch through several meals.

“I had a green pepper and I thought, ‘I can use that to make this meal, and that meal,’ ” she said. “And I had condiment packages like soy sauce and ketchup, which I used to make tomato sauce. I learned to be real resourceful. And a light went on and I thought, wow if I can do this with a bag of groceries, I wonder what I could do if I bought groceries and fed myself better.”

She took the challenge by studying and becoming an informed consumer.

“That I feel is where my journey really started, learning how to eat healthy, learning how to cook for myself, learning how to use recipes as guidelines and most importantly, learning that being poor doesn’t have to mean eating poorly,” Johnson said.

It was after Johnson moved to Washington to be near family and married her husband, Eric Johnson, that she began blogging at www.dianasaurdishes.com.

“Because I don’t use recipes I would make something and my husband would want me to make it again, because he liked it,” she said. “I wouldn’t know how.”

Johnson said because of her penchant for “losing pieces of paper and things like that” she was reluctant to just write them down. Instead, she decided to convert her personal blog into a repository for her recipes, embellishing the instructions and ingredients with personal experiences and information about the cost of the elements and nutrition of the recipes.

Before long, she was getting upward of 500 hits a day.

“I started conversations with my readers through comments and e-mails,” Johnson said. “And that was when I realized that my blog could actually make a difference for people, because one of my goals in life is to make a difference. That’s one of my passions.”

Although she was able to affect the health and taste buds of 25,000 to 30,000 people worldwide through her blog, Johnson said her real goal was to make a difference locally.

She volunteered with the City of Auburn’s Cultural Diversity program and after coworkers found out about her blog, was offered the chance to teach the “Eating Healthy on a Tight Budget” food classes.

In June 2010, with the help of the city, the Auburn Food Bank, the Auburn Valley YMCA and Mosby Brothers Farm, Johnson taught her first free cooking class at the YMCA.

It was a success, educating local families and individuals on the basics of eating well on the cheap, all while using examples Johnson said she still practices to enable her to feed herself and her husband on a miniscule $100 a month.

And although Johnson’s intimate blog voice – which provides but a taste of her enthusiasm and dynamic personality – suggest the possibility of a gig on TV, she says no.

“I enjoy watching the Food Network,” Johnson said. “But my family is a priority.”

She said the time and travel commitment of such an endeavor would require too much of a sacrifice of the time she spends with her family.

“My goal is to help people,” she said. “Even though I’m reaching a smaller audience locally, I’m able to see the difference I’m making. And that’s a lot more rewarding to me than being the next food star.”

=====

Follow Diana

Diana Johnson’s food blog can be viewed at www.dianasaurdishes.com.

Johnson will begin a holiday session of “Healthy Cooking on a Tight Budget” on Dec. 10 at the Auburn Valley YMCA.

Classes are free and include free access to the YMCA the day of the class as well as free childcare.

For more information, call 253-833-2770 or visit www.auburnvalleyymca.org.

The classes are sponsored by the City of Auburn, the YMCA, Auburn Food Bank and Mosby Brothers Farm. New partners are welcome.