Category Archives: Cooking Demonstration

GIVEAWAY – Spork Sister’s 6 Month Spork Online Subscription!!!

You are super lucky!  The lovely Spork Sisters are providing one 6 month membership to Spork Online as a giveaway!!!  Say what???  I know.  Crazy.

The best news is that this giveaway is open to EVERYONE!!!  So often we need to limit the giveaways to the US and Canada and since this giveaway is online-based it is open to everyone worldwide…yay!!!

I have worked with quite a few people in the vegan world now and I must say that these sisters are top-notch.  So friendly, so knowledgeable, so approachable.  I know you will love their teaching style.

While watching their cooking classes online you forget that you are at your computer and feel as though you have been transported to their kitchen.

I can’t wait to find out who wins!

GIVEAWAY ENTRY DETAILS

  1. Become an e-mail subscriber of Veggie Grettie by entering your e-mail address in the e-mail subscriber box at the top right of the page under the header image of corn chowder (If you are already a subscriber, let me know in the comments)
  2. “Like” Veggie Grettie on Facebook (click HERE)
  3. Follow Veggie Grettie on Twitter (click HERE)
  4. “Like” Spork Foods on Facebook (click HERE)
  5. Follow Spork Foods on Twitter (click HERE)

You will receive ONE ENTRY for EACH task completed.  You MUST leave a SEPARATE COMMENT BELOW FOR EACH of the tasks you complete.

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The contest will run through 6/21/12 midnight PST.  The winner will be chosen randomly. Good luck!

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Filed under Cooking Demonstration, Giveaways, Vegan, Vegetarian

SABRINA NELSON’S BERBERE STEW

Last year I attended the Healthy Lifestyle Expo.  Jeff and Sabrina Nelson (of VegSource) founded the Healthy Lifestyle Expo as a means to share the health benefits of a plant-based lifestyle.  Through plant-based eating Sabrina has been able to overcome significant health challenges (click here for her inspirational story).  The Nelson family has done so much to educate others and to further exposure for this way of life.

The last morning of the Healthy Lifestyle Expo began with cooking demonstrations and Sabrina shared her recipe for Berbere Stew.  I was struck by the simplicity of this one pot meal and how tasty it was.  Needless to say I have been eating a lot of Berbere Stew since returning from the conference.  The BBQ sauce makes it taste like baked beans and it is soooo good over brown rice.

I happen to like the Berbere spice, but if you are unsure how your children will react to it, make a batch without it and go from there.

Thanks for such a great recipe Sabrina!

INGREDIENTS

2 ½ cups red lentils
2 jars Muir Glen Portobello Mushroom Sauce (or other fat free, low sodium pasta sauce)
2 empty Muir Glen bottles worth of water
½ cup BBQ sauce of choice
1 Tbs Berbere spice (Sabrina’s favorite Berbere spice is available here.)
2 cloves of garlic, minced

Pour all of the ingredients into a rice cooker.

Press button to cook on “brown rice” setting.

Sabrina uses the Zojirushi rice cooker which takes about 90 minutes to finish cooking, and then it automatically goes into a “warming” setting.

The stew actually improves over time and tastes even better the second day when the flavors have had time to intensify.

For a printable version of this recipe click here.


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Filed under Beans/Legumes, Cooking Demonstration, Crock Pot, Events, Gluten Free, Main Dish, Recipes, Soup, Vegan, Vegetarian

HEALTHY TASTE OF LA 2 – Recap

I attended the 2nd annual Healthy Taste of LA for the first time last month and was very impressed!  The keynote speaker at this year’s event was T. Colin Campbell.  Being the nutrition geek that I am, I will forever be indebted to T. Colin Campbell for the work he has done in the field of nutrition and the discoveries he has made throughout his career pertaining to nutrition and its role in cancer and other diseases of affluence.  It was great to have a few minutes to chat with him about nutrition in general and the plans he has with regards to evolving the Plant-Based Nutrition Certification courses at Cornell.

It was a packed day of amazing healthy cooking demonstrations (NO OIL, SUGAR, OR SALT) by Chef Ramses Bravo of True North, Chef Eric Tucker of Millenium, a live taping of The Chef and The Dietitian, a motivation speech by fitness guru John Pierre (Ellen’s Personal Trainer), more cooking demonstrations by Ann Gentry (pictured with me above) who is the founder of Real Food Daily, Chef Eric LeChasseur of Seed Bistro, and Lindsay Nixon the author of the Happy Herbivore.

Fortunately for us we also had three breaks throughout the day where we were given the opportunity to sample all of the wonderful food that the Chefs demonstrated making.  Another exciting aspect of the day was the fact that the event organizers were short one staff photographer and asked me to fill in which basically gave me an all-access pass to move around and take pictures to my heart’s content!

The first recipe that was demonstrated at the event was Chef Ramses Bravo’s Coconut Vanilla Granola, which is the Granola that they serve at the True North Health Center.   After the event I went home and made the granola and was really impressed with the result.  I had never made granola without oil before and love that I now know how.  Click HERE for the recipe.

At the end of the event Chef AJ announced that the keynote speaker at next year’s Healthy Taste of LA 3 will be Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, the man who has figured out the formula to be heart attack proof (Did you all see Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s CNN special by the same name highlighting Dr. Esselstyn?)!!!

I definitely plan on being there at the event next year (November 4, 2012).  I HIGHLY recommend purchasing your tickets in advance.  This year they had to turn people away from the event because the interest was so high.  Do yourself a favor and purchase your tickets ahead of time.

For more information about 2012’s Healthy Taste of LA3 and to purchase tickets click here.

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Filed under Cancer, Cooking Demonstration, Education, Events, General Vegan, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

HEALTHY TASTE OF LA – Sunday Nov. 6th

Chef AJ has organized and amazing event that will take place next Sunday, November 6th from 9 – 5 at the South Bay Redondo Seventh Day Adventist Church.  I highly recommend this event…Just look at the list of celebrity chefs and experts that will be there…AMAZING!!!

Interested in sampling delicious plant-based recipes from some of the best chefs in the world of Plant-based nutrition like Chefs Ramses BravoEric TuckerAnn GentryEric LechasseurLindsay Nixon and Chef AJ?  How about listening to lectures from experts in the field like T. Colin Campbell and Julieanna Hever?  Healthy Taste of LA II is Sunday, November 6th from 9 – 5 at the South Bay Redondo Seventh Day Adventist Church.

South Bay Redondo Seventh Day Adventist Church 
401 S. Prospect Avenue
Redondo Beach, CA 90277

For more information and to register for this one of a kind event visit: http://healthytasteofla.com/

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Filed under Cooking Demonstration, Education, Events, General Vegan, Vegan, Vegetarian

THE CHEF AJ EXPERIENCE – Cooking Class and GIVEAWAY

Chef AJ and Julieanna Hever recently contributed a Guest Blog for Veggie Grettie where they showed us how to make Chef AJ’s Hail to the Kale dressing (click here to view the post).  Earlier this month I was contacted by Chef AJ and invited to attend one of her cooking classes.  It was great fun to meet Chef AJ in person.  She is wacky, zany, full of life, passionate, knowledgeable, friendly, and kind.  Interesting fact – Chef AJ was once on Johnny Carson playing two flutes with her nose while standing on her head and blowing bubbles out of her nose (I told you she is wacky)!!!

Chef AJ has been a vegan for over 30 years, but has only been a “healthy” vegan for the last 7 years.  During the class Chef AJ took a moment to tell her story and explain why she is so passionate about eating a whole foods unprocessed plant-based diet.  She explained that her typical day was filled with big gulp slurpies (embellished with 8 pumps of vanilla syrup), Dr. Pepper, sugar, pastries, and other forms of JUNK with the occasional serving of steamed broccoli on the side.  Eventually it caught-up with her and her health suffered in a major way.

In January of 2003 (There is no way to say this delicately) she went in to the bathroom to have a bowel movement and ended-up with a toilet filled with blood.  With a strong family history of colon cancer and bowel obstructions she finally woke-up after finding out that she had multiple nasty adenomatous pre-cancerous polyps in her sigmoid colon.  Her colon was so ill that they were not even safely able to remove the polyps.  This was her official wake-up call.

Chef AJ sent herself to the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego (Their organic gardens pictured above) for a total body overhaul.  She ate a 100% organic raw diet while there and it wasn’t easy as she suffered mass withdrawal symptoms within the first 3days .  Despite the discomfort of withdrawing from sugar, oil, and salt (what she deems the “Evil Trinity”) she committed to the program and 6 months later she had the colon of a newborn baby without having surgery or taking meds…what a testament to this way of life!

Chef AJ knew that this was the lifestyle for her and enrolled in culinary school at the Living Light Culinary Arts Institute in order to learn how to make health promoting food as palatable as possible.

The class she that I attended focused on just that.  Chef AJ teaches classes out of her home in Sherman Oaks with the goal of teaching her health promoting ways to as many people as possible.  In the picture below she is channeling her Johnny Carson days while performing a song about health (her sous chefs are also back-up singers / dancers).

During the 3 hour class I attended she made:

It’s Easy Being Green Smoothies loaded with kale and mint…my new favorite green smoothie ingredient

Nutrient Rich Chocolate Smoothies,  fresh almond milk (forgot to take a picture!)…

Nutrient Rich Smoky Black Bean Soup where she added all the veggies WHOLE to a pot of water and then just used the immersion blender at the end (Why didn’t I ever think of that???…MAJOR time saver!)

Raw Dream of Tomato Soup

One of my favorites…Hail to the Kale Salad

Fresh Banana Ice Cream in her Champion Juicer that was so creamy and amazing (I need to get me one of those!).  I have made this in my food processor and it is really good, but NOTHING like what the Champion Juicer makes.  It was crazy good.

Chocolate FUNdue…so good.  I make this regularly and keep it in my freezer in single serve cups otherwise I will eat it all in one sitting!  The picture below is the FUNdue in the processing stage.  It is such a great dip for fruit, truffle filling,  or sauce for desserts.

And last but not least, her version of a very popular Starbucks drink, a Caramel “Fake”iatto (I also forgot to take a picture of this!)

I was also sent home with a giant slice of her German Chocolate Cake that was eaten before I even had a chance to take a picture of it!

To learn more about classes with Chef AJ click here.  I believe she does not have any classes on the schedule at the moment because she is traveling to promote her new book, however you can check back regularly for updated class listings.

* GIVEAWAY * GIVEAWAY * GIVEAWAY *

Chef AJ’s Book Unprocessed

Chef AJ generously provided me with a signed copy of her book Unprocessed as a giveaway.  To enter the giveaway simple leave a comment at the end of this post about either of the following topics.  One entry per comment, so you have LOTS of chances to win…enter as many times as you’d like.

1.  What was your own personal health wake-up call?

2.  Ask me a question for my Ask Grettie column on Chic Vegan.  You never know…your question might be featured!

BONUS ENTRY

If you are not an e-mail subscriber of Veggie Grettie, become a subscriber, leave a comment in the comment section that you are now a subscriber, and that will count as an additional entry.

The giveaway winner will be announced Sunday, October 9th.

Organic garden picture courtesy of Optimum Health Institute

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Filed under Books, Contests, Cooking Demonstration, Education, General Vegan, Giveaways, Vegan, Vegetarian

VEGGIE GRETTIE – Cooking Demo Reminder

As a Brand Ambassador for NEXT by Athena I will be participating in NEXT Week by holding a cooking demonstration and I’d love to see you there!  We will be making three varieties of cookie dough bites…yum!

Vegan Gluten-Free Cooking Demonstration

Thursday May 19th, 7:00pm

Swimspot Pop-Up Shop @ Irvine Spectrum Center (Across from Barnes and Noble) 

I am really looking forward to the demo and hope to see you there.  If you plan on attending, you must RSVP to clohman@rajman.com

See the flyer below for more information.

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Filed under Cooking Demonstration, Gluten Free, Vegan, Vegetarian

NEXT WEEK – Veggie Grettie Cooking Demo

As a Brand Ambassador for NEXT by Athena I will be participating in NEXT Week by holding a cooking demonstration and I’d love to see you there!  The class will focus on vegan gluten free food (There is guaranteed to be a dessert or two)! 

Vegan Gluten-Free Cooking Demonstration

Thursday May 19th, 7:00pm

Swimspot Pop-Up Shop @ Irvine Spectrum Center (Across from Barnes and Noble) 

I am really looking forward to the demo and hope to see you there.  If you plan on attending, you must RSVP to clohman@rajman.com

See the flyer below for more information.

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Filed under Cooking Demonstration, Gluten Free, Vegan, Vegetarian