Healthy Taste of Sacramento Weekend Part 1

Happy Monday morning everyone. We are coming off a spectacular action packed weekend where we spent oodles of hours with like minded people. We made new acquaintances, saw old friends who live far away and spent more quality time with those who are near and dear. There is a saying that goes “Find your tribe and love them hard” we are doing that! The Healthy Tate of Sacramento event was this past Sunday. Its an all day event sponsored by Chef AJ and her Husband Charles. It was a spectacular line up of speakers and plant based chefs.

We had members of the  Chef AJ’s Ultimate Weight Loss group come in from out of town for this weekends events! It was a delight to meet on line friends for the first time in person and to see old friends again. We are all kindred spirits and feel a tight bond in choosing to live our lives in such a healthy way. Shown here are Heidi Zee, myself, Donna Weifert and Sheri Lee.

The festivities began on Saturday with a whole food plant based SOS free (salt, oil sugar) pot-luck held at the Fair Oaks Library. There was far too many delicious looking dishes to be able to try them all and quite frankly I was so busy chatting I didn’t eat very much at all! I made a huge green salad with a variety of fresh baby greens, romaine, Trader Joe’s Cruciferous Crunch, shredded carrots, baby cucumbers, tomatoes, apples slices, clementines, red onion, Trader Joe’s Healthy 8 Chopped Veggie Mix and Broccoli Slaw. Instead of dressing the salad I chose to offer two different salad dressings as well as flavored vinegar on the side. You can see a video of how I make my Big Beautiful Salads here.

You can get my favorite Creamy Balsamic Dressing and print it out for your files. It is SOS free but big on flavor. The Pineapple Mango Vinaigrette is from Cathy Fisher’s cookbook Straight Up Food but it’s also available on her website.

 

This is one of our favorite easy recipes in the pressure cooker to make it SOS free just skip the salt and soy sauce Black & Red Lentil Chili.

 

 

 

I don’t know if I photographed all of the food that was there but as you can see there was no shortage of healthy, delicious plant based offerings. The whole food plant based way of eating is rich in variety, flavor, texture and just happens to be the most health promoting way of eating!

Andrew Taylor from Melbourne Australia has been making news in the plant based world this past year. He decided to go on an all potato diet for a year to lose weight, curb his addiction to processed foods and reset his life. He has lost over 100 pounds – and he is now eating a whole food plant based diet that is still heavy on potatoes. Andrew was in Northern California speaking at the McDougall advanced study weekend so he decided to stay a bit longer and join us at the UWL pot luck and the Healthy Taste of Sacramento. He is a sweet gentle soul and he blessed us with a talk at the end of the pot luck.

https://youtu.be/LFyd2RnrJRE

Nutmeg Notes

This turned into an epic post! I will post about the seminar in a second blog post later this week. I am still thinking about all the new friends I made, good times with like minded people, how sweet, kind and accepting this “tribe” of people are. How blessed we are to know about eating a health promoting diet to prevent and even reverse diseases and cancer. It also reminds me that we all have a responsibility to teach others what we have had the privilege to learn from a group of exceptional doctors and others in the plant based movement. It’s my hope that this little blog reaches some new people and brings them into the fold of knowing that self care is health care and that we do have a great deal of control over our health destiny!

To your good health,

Tami

A Little Nutmeg Nugget: When I started this blog in January of 2010 I followed what I understood to be a healthy version of the standard American diet, ironically also known as the “SAD” diet. As interest in my own health and how it was affected by the food I ate evolved, I transitioned to a whole food plant based diet also known as “WFPB” diet. I have wrestled with the fact that this blog still contains all those posts and recipes from the SAD way of eating I have left behind. I no longer advocate for anyone to eat that way. At this time I am leaving those recipes and posts here. It is a record of my journey and how I came to follow a WFPB way of eating. It is my hope that those who still come here for those old recipes will be curious about what I am doing now. Perhaps they will dip their toes across the line as I did and try some plant based recipes and learn more about the health benefits.

Please feel free to leave me a comment or ask a question.