Marianne Blaesing
Executive Editor
Marianne uses her more than three decades of cooking experience and study to provide insightful commentary and suggestions on all things revolving around home meal planning.
Marianne studied at Madonna University and Eastern Michigan University, and has taken numerous courses on cooking and diet related subjects. She was a humor writer whose eponymous column appeared in Ann Arbor Family Press for many years. Marianne was also the Ann Arbor Family Press restaurant reviewer in search of family friendly restaurants, which furthered her belief that the best meals are those prepared in the home. As the mother of two busy teen-agers, Marianne relies on meal planning to keep the family fed well and on schedule.
Russ Blaesing
Founder & Chief Technical Officer
Russ has worked in the software industry for more than twenty-five years. He dreamed-up MealMixer one day when he heard a friend tell him "I love to cook, I just can't stand figuring out what to cook." Solving this problem was just a small part of what drove him, as he saw the health of our citizenry in decline.
Before founding More Thyme, LLC (owner of MealMixer.com), Russ was Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Menlo Innovations, an Ann Arbor software product development company specializing in a unique and highly effective methodology for determining software requirements called “high-tech anthropology”, as well as agile software development methodologies. Prior to Menlo, Russ held the positions of: Director of Automotive Business Development for Framework Technologies, President of MyMealPlan, Inc., (the pre-cursor to More Thyme circa the dotcom-bubble), Major Account Executive and Manager of Software Development at Open Networks Engineering (ONE)
Russ earned his Bachelor of Science degree (1985) from the University of Michigan, where he majored in both Computer Science and Philosophy, and conducted independent research on the efficiency of Artificial Intelligence algorithms.
Contributors / Advisers
Staff and consultants to MealMixer include chefs, dietitians, nutritionists, naturopaths, and a great team of website/database developers.