This blog is full of recipes and information on how to eat a plant-based diet that is free of added salt, oil and sugar. The focus is not only on consuming a vegan diet (avoiding animal foods and ingredients), but one that actually *promotes* excellent health. Toward this, the recipes are based on whole foods (still in their naturally grown state) except for a handful of minimally processed foods used for convenience (such as canned beans, frozen produce, non-dairy milks). Substitutions to lower fat, and all recipes are gluten-free are often noted. Recipes are easy to prepare and call for ingredients that are easy to find.
Who are you?
I am a cooking instructor at TrueNorth Health. I started working at TrueNorth in 2010. I started this blog in 2010 to offer my students more of my gluten-, salt-, sugar- and oil-free plant-based recipes. I made a serious commitment in 1999 to begin changing how I ate, and have continued to learn and fine-tune my diet in the years since. I have a certification in basic nutrition, and am a self-taught chef, having learned on the job.
Who is this blog for?
This blog is for anyone interested in shifting to a whole-foods, plant-based diet, and it's especially for you if (1) your health has been in the dumps for a while and you’re ready to try a new approach, (2) if you’re a parent who is concerned about raising your family in today’s world of overly engineered and processed foods, or (3) if you’ve been vegetarian or vegan for a while but want to clean up your diet even further.
What kind of vegan chef are you?
I consider myself a whole-foods vegan chef. This means that I do not use many of the packaged and processed foods you may have seen in some vegan cookbooks and restaurants, such as foods that look like meat but are soy- or wheat/gluten-based (like hotdogs, burgers, Tofurkey). I also avoid vegan mayonnaise, vegan cream cheese, and plant-based butters (made from soy and olive oil). These products are often stepping stones for people transitioning from the standard American diet to a vegan diet, but I don’t recommend them longterm since so many of them are highly processed and full of salt, sugar, oil and other unhealthy fats, chemicals, preservatives and/or other ingredients that do not promote health. —Cathy Fisher