So, if you don’t cook much, or at all, these days, then consider taking a political stand and embrace the concept of clean, home-cooked food. You can find help on this site – articles to coach and inspire you, weeks of time-saving batch-cook-based menus, tools to navigate the intentionally confusing world of labels and food choices, and lots of basic information and encouraging thoughts on the process of actually buying, cooking and eating very good and very delicious plant-strong food.

If, on the other hand, you’d like to get into the kitchen but aren’t ready to go it alone, I offer one-on-one Culinary Coaching over Zoom (or you could put together 3-6 friends and make it a group course). It’s really easy, effective and fun. In addition to health & nutrition education, many cooking courses, coach training, decades of living and cooking healthy food, I was also trained at the CHEF (Culinary Health Education Fundamentals) Coaching Program for Home Cooking by Harvard Medical School and the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine. I love sharing my passion for clean, healthful home cooking and making it very easy and simple – without a lot of dogma.

Recognizing the need to help with what is perhaps the most challenging aspect of lifestyle change, DIET, a team from Harvard Medical School, the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital created the Culinary Health Education Fundamentals (CHEF) Coaching program for clinicians.

This is an evidence-based training program focused on culinary coaching–a novel approach to improving nutrition that combines culinary training, health coaching principles, and telemedicine tools and resources. The goal is to provide easy to follow culinary instruction and education directly to patients and clients in order to improve the quality – and often reduce the cost – of food preparation in the home.

The program consists of three 60-minute program introductory design session and discussion sessions interspersed by three one-on-one 90-minute Zoom sessions – usually two weeks apart. So that we work together for about three months. (Research has shown that to make any kind of change takes about that long.) Before we move into the kitchen, we make a plan that fits your needs, circumstances and goals –a blueprint. We each work in our own kitchens. Mine is set up so you can see what I am doing – the process and the result. Then, before each kitchen session, I give you a list of ingredients (and any necessary prep) plus tools, pots & pans, etc. that you will need. Along with instructions on setting up your computer/camera/phone so you can show your work.

It’s really pretty easy and a lot of fun. In each session you will prepare two or three dishes that can be utilized in several different meals – each one will build another set of skills – along with recipes, menus, and weekly email check-ins. I am a big believer in batch cooking to fill your freezer or fridge with all-ready-prepared clean, home-cooked ingredients that can be used in a variety of meals – saving you time and money.

A Plant-Strong Diet means that it is primarily plants – but not exclusively. You define and redefine what works for you and your family. For instance, you might reduce the portion sizes of animal protein, move to grass-fed, pastured and wild-caught. Decide that dairy-free plant milks work for but you choose to eat pastured eggs and some specific cheeses. You embrace veggie and Beyond Meat burgers but still eat wild-caught fish. You continue to use oils but are now very discriminating about which ones and how and when. It’s a “scaffolding” approach. In education, that refers to a variety of techniques that move students progressively toward stronger understanding and, ultimately, greater independence in the learning process. Like physical scaffolding, the supportive strategies are incrementally removed by the student when they are no longer needed, as the teacher gradually shifts more responsibility to the student.

Since I am not a Licensed Nutritionist or Registered Dietician, I prefer to coach one of several established Plant-Strong Diets. My client chooses one and then we riff from that as we go along – removing the scaffolding as we move forward. Here is a list of Plant-Strong Diets – some healthier than others:

• Whole-Food Plant-Based
• Pescan, Pegan, Pescatarian (Fish + Plants)
• Mediterranean
• Diabetes Prevention
• DASH
• KetoFLEX 12/3 (plant-strong, very moderate ketogenic)
• Vegan
• Vegetarian

Each program is custom designed for each student or small group, but, basically, it includes the following mix: 

• Introduction to Lifestyle Medicine and Culinary Medicine
• The nutritional science of home cooking; why don’t you cook?
• Mitigating Cardio-Metabolic Risk Factors – Prediabetes, weight-loss, etc.
• Getting you into the kitchen
• Cooking with little time or budget
• Mastering home cooking skills and exploring new culinary practice

And, most important, there will be lots of hands-on cooking based on menus, recipes, hacks, and batch-cooking strategies that will leave you with food you’ll actually want to eat .

If you are intrigued, please reach out and let’s talk about a custom program designed specifically for where you are and where you need/want to go – food-wise.