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Mother Nature Has Great Taste!
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Eating farm-fresh vegetables will naturally deliver nutrition and provide you with vitamins and minerals, antioxidants, and fiber.
What’s often not mentioned—they include plenty of foods rich in flavor!
Welcome to Plant Forward Dining
Featuring Fresh Farm Flavors
What is Plant Forward Dining?
Plant-forward is a style of cooking and eating that emphasizes vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds. With plants as the star of the plate, animal products can appear in smaller portions, often as a flavoring or garnish.
Why should high quality plant foods be part of our diets?
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February Recipes
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Highlighting – Red Onions
“Slow and Low” Mediterranean Salmon
An elegant melt-in-your-mouth fish topped with pickled red onions
About the Recipe: Cooking the salmon for a longer time in a lower oven temperature allows the fish to stay moist and have a melt-in-your-mouth texture. Since the portions are for individual servings, the fish cooks faster than a whole fish fillet. It is an attractive dish to serve, topped with pickled red onions, fresh chopped cilantro leaves, and pomegranate seeds.
Read More – “Slow and Low” Mediterranean Salmon
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Highlighting – Farm Fresh Salad Veggies and Sweet Potatoes
Festive Granja Salad in Mexican Sweet Potato Soup
Chilled festive salad served over hot, spicy, sweet potato soup
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About the Recipe: This delicious recipe is full of surprises. The steamy hot, lightly spiced, sweet potato rice soup is topped with a chilled garden salad of lime marinated fresh garden vegetables. The unique blend of salad vegetables and herbs combine together, bursting with flavor and a healthy nutritional punch.
Read More – Festive Granja Salad in Mexican Sweet Potato Soup
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Highlighting – The Rainbow of Vegetables and Fruits
Garden Fresh Taco Bowl
What a delicious way to enjoy a Rainbow of Nutrition!
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About the Recipe: Serving a Taco Bowl is a fun dinner since everyone can build their own taco bowl, adding the ingredients that they love the most. This recipe is easy to make because the veggies marinate while cooking the rice for 15 minutes and at the same time, cook the plant based “meat” for about 6 minutes and if using beef, about 10 to 12 minutes. It’s always fun to have a celebration supper that’s filled with a rainbow of healthy ingredients.
Read More – Garden Fresh Taco Bowl
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Flavors of the Farmacy
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Amy Sapola Pharm. D, IFMCP
Amy Sapola is the Director of Farmacy at The Chef’s Garden where she works to help guide consumers towards a mindful relationship with food by connecting the benefits of healthy soil, to healthy food, and ultimately, to healthy people.
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Amy Sapola is a Certified Wellness Coach, Institute for Functional Medicine Certified Practitioner (IFMCP) and Doctor of Pharmacy with a B.S. in Nutrition. She has also completed a 2 year fellowship with honors in Integrative Medicine from the Academy of Integrative Health and Medicine (AIHM)
Read More of Valentine’s Day Dinner Event at the Chef’s Garden
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Plant Forward Dining Recipes
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Highlighting – Beets
Beet Chocolate Spoon Cake
It’s a rich dense chocolate combined soft centered cake dessert
About the Recipe: You would never guess that beets were the moisture producing ingredient in this dessert. It is a very rich, densely chocolate, soft-centered cake-like dessert. It would be delightful topped with whipped cream or a fruit flavored preserve or jelly. It was very filling so I felt that it could be used to make 4 smaller desserts.
Read More – Beet Chocolate Spoon Cake
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Highlighting – Spinach
Spinach Salad with Warm Beet Vinaigrette and Shaved Watermelon Radishes
Popeye’s favorite fresh-from-the-Farm spinach pops with cruciferous rich radishes
About the Recipe: Easy does it! Beautiful to serve! Healthy on a plate! This chef inspired salad has it all. Do try to locate the rainbow radishes and soak them in cold water to give them little curve edges. The fermented salad dressing provides a creamy tart taste to the natural sweet spinach leaves.
Read More – Spinach Salad with Warm Beet Vinaigrette
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Recipes with Farm Fresh Flavors
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Highlighting – Cruciferous Broccoli
Fresh Farm Styled Focaccia
Soft textured flatbread with kale pesto and garden-fresh veggies
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About the Recipe: This recipe is a cornucopia of fresh farm flavors and good-for-you nutrition. Golden potatoes make the focaccia bread soft and moist, like a fresh country bread. Kale pesto with a touch of fresh basil adds that olive oil richness. Generous broccoli florets, zucchini slices, and onions melt into the soft cheese, creating a real farm favorite.
Read More – Fresh Farm Styled Focaccia
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Highlighting – Beets
Savory Healthy Hungarian Stew
Adds sweet, earthy flavor and a vibrant color from the healthy beets
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About the Recipe: This hearty stew is a comfort dish that is usually made with beef chuck roast. We used a plant-based ground “meat” substitute and flavored the vegetables with paprika. Adding the beets enhances the rich color and adds an earthy depth to the dish, and the cumin provides a complex nutty quality. Serve the stew over buttered noodles with a dollop of sour cream or unsweetened yogurt.
Read More – Savory Healthy Hungarian Stew
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Highlighting – Tomatoes
Super Tomato Kale Soup with Pesto Cream
Fiber-filled kale adds a healthy lunch punch
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About the Recipe: A fresh tasting tomato soup is easy to make using a can of whole Italian tomatoes to create a thick consistency and season with Italian seasonings. Stir in a generous amount of fresh chopped kale to create a healthy lunch treat. If desired, add some pesto cream for a creamy light tomato soup.
Read More – Super Tomato Kale Soup with Pesto Cream
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Highlighting – Mini Sweet Peppers
Marinated Mini Rainbow Sweet Peppers
Use for open faced sandwiches, pizza, salads, antipasti platter, veggies
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About the Recipe: Peppers are quite sweet and a great ingredient to use in a salad, top a sandwich, or add to any main dish. Remember to always taste your peppers to see if they are hot or sweet.
Read More – Marinated Mini Rainbow Sweet Peppers
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Highlighting – Sweet Potatoes
Southern Sweet Tater Pancakes
Filled with pimento cheese goodness
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About the Recipe: Living in the South, you soon discover that pimiento cheese appears in burgers, breakfast sandwiches, macaroni, and smeared on crackers or even gingersnaps. In this recipe, it joins the sweet potato and garden zucchini to create a savory tater cake, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. They are so delicious that you even forget that they’re packed with delicious vegetables.
Read More – Southern Sweet Tater Pancakes
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Highlighting – Broccoli-Cauliflower and Carrots
Green Cauliflower and Carrot Gratin
Creamy sauce & crunchy topping with sweet carrots and green cauliflower
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About the Recipe: This is a delicious dish to serve as a side dish or vegetable entrée. The green and orange contrasting colors make an excellent choice as a company or holiday dish. The green cauliflower has a mild, sweet, and subtly nutty flavor, without the bitter undertones commonly associated with white cauliflower varieties. When it’s cooks, they have a tender texture and slightly sweeter, perfect for pairing with the carrots.
Read More – Green Cauliflower and Carrot Gratin
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Highlighting – Eggplant
Orange Blossom Honey Spice Cake
With Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting
The secret ingredient is a caramelized honey spiced eggplant addition
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About the Recipe: This simple cake recipe is full of surprises. It’s hard to believe that eggplant is the magic ingredient. It blends the honey, vanilla, spices, and vinegar together into a caramelized filling and also helps to create a complex flavor and moist cake texture. The dense cake easily slices into dessert wedges and is covered with popular fluffy whipped cream cheese frosting. Simply delicious!
Read More – Orange Blossom Honey Spice Cake
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