Natural Foods Cooking Retreat – Day One

In the spring of 2009 I took a great Natural Foods Cooking Class in Santa Cruz, California from local natural food guru, Chef Jennifer Brewer. It was such a great experience that I made seven posts about it that you can read right here. So when Jenny contacted me recently to try her new three day condensed version of the program I knew I just had to be there to see the redux.

Baked Sweet Potato Fries with Garlic Chipotle Aioli Dipping Sauce

WHAT!?! Since when did fries and aioli dipping sauce make it onto a list of healthy foods? Since Chef Jenny Brewer has come along to show us how foods that taste great can also make you feel great. And that bit of word smithing is exactly how Jenny began our three day journey into more healthy cooking that really appeals. She asked all of us to make two lists and bring them to the first class:

 1. What are your three most favorite foods?

 2. What are the three food that make you feel GREAT when you eat them?

The difference between these two simple questions is not only profound but exemplifies a huge contradiction in our diets. So many of the foods that people crave and make them happy to eat actually make them feel awful after consumed because of their high fat content paired with lack of nutrients. Jenny put our answers to these questions into two columns on the white board.

Jenny Brewer's Taste Great vs. Feels Great Foods Chart

I kept flashing on the popular the Miller Lite Beer campaign from a few years back, "Great Taste, Less Filling." Most of the foods in the left hand column called Taste Great are comforting because they are so high on the flavor scale. But with that flavor normally comes runaway fat content so our body isn't nearly as happy as our mouths. Notice all of the whole foods that are rich in vitamins and minerals on the right hand column called Feels Great. What I love about Jenny Brewer's approach is that she never denies that the Taste Great foods are delicious. Jenny is the first to admit she too has a weakness for many of them, especially great breads. So instead of preaching to us or scolding anyone for loving tasty foods she focuses on bridging the gap between the two lists with her three "F"s: Fat, Flavor and Fun. When you know how to combine a little fat, a lot of flavor and make it fun then a nutrient rich diet of natural foods is not always a compromise.

After a short lecture we broke into groups to make our Day One Menu. Clockwise from the bottom of the plate here was the fare:

1. Nori Rolls filled with Sunflower Seed Paté, carrots/cumcumber/avocado/sunflower sprouts
2. Baked Sweet Potato Fries with Garlic Chipotle Aioli dipping sauce
3. Twice Cooked Tempeh Chunks with Cilatro-Hemp Seed Pesto
4. Kale with Avocado Salad and simply Olive Oil and Lemon Juice
5. Kale and Tahini Salad with Brown Rice

Natural Foods Cooking Retreat – Day One Sampler Plate

The other thing I really like about Jenny Brewer's classes is the heavy emphasis of hands-on. Jenny had two assistants and seven attending this retreat so the ratio of staff to students was almost one to two. Everyone got lots of hands-on time.

Chef Jennifer Brewer in the middle flanked by her assistants, Erin (left) and Elizabeth (right)

The staff had all of the recipes nicely prepped for us upon our arrival. Prepping ingredients and tools makes cooking half the battle. One really cool advantage of taking a class at New Leaf Market on the west side of Santa Cruz is the kitchen right is inside their incredible store. Any ingredient you could possibly ever need is just a few steps out the door of the kitchen.

All recipes are good to go and ready for execution.

"Fries" right out of the oven with just a pinch of potato starch to give that crunchy "Fry Feel"

Steve and Nancy from Sacramento work all the veggies for the Cilatro-Hemp Seed Pesto sauce

Dueling Kale Salads – Tahini/Miso on the left and simply Olive Oil/Lemon Juice on the right

Victoria peels a Bosc pear for our nutrient dense dessert.

Even though we were all completely satisfied by our first five courses of vitamin and mineral rich recipes there's always room for dessert, right? Jenny came up with a real winner that included two classic cooking techniques, poaching and reducing. First we poached Bosc Pears in their own juices, cinnamon and vanilla bean and then reduced the cooking liquid to a thick rich sauce. We also made a Cashew Date Cream by just blending soaked cashews in water and giving them a good pulverizing in the blender with filtered water, dates and vanilla. It was 100% dairy free and tasted unbelievably rich. Topping both these tasty sweets was a Ginger "Crumble" combining walnuts, flaxseeds, coconut, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and dates. It was the perfect texture punch to create a really decadent dessert that was actually nutrient dense.

Poached Bosc Pear with Cashew Date Cream and Ginger Crumble

After learning, cooking and eating all of this great food there was not an unsatisfied customer in the house. But as Jenny says NSNS..."Never Starved Never Stuffed" is the way of the healthiest diet. And all of this tasty food left everyone with the same great feeling. We were completely satisfied but also eager to return for Day Two and so the story will continue in my next post.