Chef Rene Johnson releases new vegan soul food cookbook, From My Heart to Your Table

Chef Rene Johnson has released her new cookbook, From My Heart to Your Table, featuring vegan and healthier traditional soul food. Her unique coffee table-style cookbook shares easy to follow recipes your holiday guests will love, along with personal stories and scrapbook-style pages, and some amazing tips on how to make healthier, plant-based versions of everyone’s favorite appetizers, entrees, and of course, desserts.

Chef Rene is known for taking her grandmother’s homespun southern soul food recipes and making them every bit as flavorful and culturally relevant, without many of the harmful fats added to traditional comfort food dishes.

Chef Rene’s has many celebrity followers, with clients ranging from Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris to actor Danny Glover, author Dr. Cornel West, California Governor Gavin Newsom, multi-platinum selling music group, Tony! Toni! Toné, and top execs at Google and YouTube.

“Vice President Kamala Harris has a sweet tooth,” says Chef Rene. “Her favorites were the desserts I made for her event, like my mini sweet potato pies, mini vegan cupcakes, and mini homemade vegan chocolate chip cookies.”

“California Governor Gavin Newson throws a yearly event for Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and they loved my vegan greens, picnic potato salad, mac and ‘cheese,’ vegan candied yams, and hot water cornbread.” But, says Rene, “the vegan quinoa ‘meatloaf’ was Gavin’s favorite.”

“Actor Danny Glover gravitated towards my vegan beans and rice. That was his favorite by far,” says Rene.

As far as more traditionally prepared, yet healthier dishes, Rene shares, “Dr. Cornell West enjoyed the jerk turkey meatballs, mini mac and cheese bites, and he also loved my vegan red beans and rice. Then he dug into my blackberry jam cupcakes.”

From My Heart to Your Table features all of the celebratory holiday food appetizers, entrees, and desserts Chef Rene Johnson is famous for, from Hollywood and Silicon Valley to Washington, DC.

A true pioneer of the healthier soul food and vegan soul food movements, Chef Rene’s food is so flavorful and delicious, you won’t miss the meat and dairy, or the excess fat.

Some of Chef Rene’s vegan soul food dishes include: fresh tomato succotash, smothered cabbage, vegan dirty rice, vegan fried okra bites, cashew “cream” sauce, vegan butter beans, mini-quinoa and spinach cakes, and quinoa meatloaf.

More traditional fare featured in Chef Rene’s cookbook includes: hot water corn bread, junky black eyed peas aka “cold day chicken soup,” sticky barbeque wings, big ol’ pot of gumbo, grandmother’s fried chicken, off-the-hook ox-tails, the “mac attack” mac and cheese, salmon croquettes, stewed salmon and grits, and more. “The beautiful part is that you can mix and match traditional and vegan dishes for the holidays. It doesn’t have to be one or the other,” she says.

There is also a healthy mix of dessert recipes for staples such as sweet potato pecan pie, peach cobbler, blackberry jam cupcakes, vegan chocolate chip cookies, and her signature “Mama Cake (yellow cake with chocolate icing).”

TasteTV’s TASTEABLE Television Series releases Season 7 Episode 702 Intro

TasteTV’s TASTEABLE television series, Episode Intro, Season 7 Ep 702, is about the pollinators like bees and butterflies that bring us our great foods, and especially honey and wine.

Features Bonterra Vineyards, San Diego Zoo, Seka Hills Honey, the Clift Hotel, Kiss the Flower Honey, Beekind Honey, and True Gold Honey.

This food, wine and travel television series takes viewers on a lifestyle tour of California and beyond. TASTEABLE can be watched on these PBS-affiliate television stations in Northern California, reaching over 2.5 million households from the San Francisco Bay Area to Wine Country.

Veggie Hotels is a Coffee Table Guidebook to the Best Vegan Hotels around the World

It’s hard not to love a travel and food book that includes page-sized photographs of beautiful places you can visit and delicious meals that you can eat. Especially if you are a vegetarian or vegan looking for that a special spot where you can be all that you can be without compromising your uniqueness. VEGGIE HOTELS is one of those books.

What is a veggie hotel? The answer a simple, it’s a place where vegetarians like to stay and resort. The luxury guidebook VEGGIE HOTELS is a collection of over 60 vegetarian, vegan, and vegan-friendly hotels and bed-and-breakfasts from all around the world. The hotels range from the United Kingdom to Peru, from Spain to India, from Croatia to do United States. Many profiles also include delicious recipes of a healthy and vegetarian nature, such as fennel in Apple Salad, Black Venere Rice with Carrot Aioli, and Vegan Nut Cutlets with Beet-Horseradish Carpaccio and Quinoa.

An example of hotel selections is the Essentis Ecohotel in Berlin, which is an entirely vegan hotel in the center of the city, and is the first organically-certified hotel in Berlin. The hotel’s restaurant is called Amaranth, and only serves organically-grown and created food.

If you’re looking for something a bit warmer, head down to the Mani-Sonnenlink in Greece. The hotel is considered an oasis built around feng shui principles, and is the first organically-certified hotel in Greece. The location offers both bungalows and apartments. The founders originally installed themselves in Greece to live the simple life of olive farmers, and to follow those daily rhythms and practices. Now, they own the globally-distributed prize-winning organic Mani Olive Oil family of products. The hotel follows that purity of spirit of the olive oil farmer, and is 100% Mediterranean in nature and appeal. The water at this boutique resort is deep blue and turquoise, and is where guests can get together for company, meditation, music, or privacy.

If this wets your appetite, there are plenty more veggie hotels to discover.

Teneues, 978-3961710454, Hardcover, 272 pages‎

Find it here

 

Looking for Natural Honey? Try these 3 Family-Owned Brands from California

Most honey is good for you, but the kind that comes from small family-owned producers is often the healthiest, and the tastiest. California is world renowned as being an excellent source of artisan honey. It is also one of the largest honey producing states, right Behind North Dakota and often ahead of Montana, South Dakota and Texas. Each year California produces almost 14,000 Pounds of Honey. In fact, for this reason as well as sustainability, all bees are considered valuable that in California even wild native bumble bees may become protected under the California’s Endangered Species Act.

We’ve tried many honey producers from the Golden State, and here are three family-owned brands you should try right now:

3 FAMILY-OWNED CALIFORNIA HONEYS

TRUE GOLD HONEY

True Gold is owned by mother-son duo Sarah and Tyler Sample, both of whom are 3rd and 4th generation beekeepers. They’ve grown up in the apiary business, and know their way around the hives with skills and experience.  Their bee farm is called the Sample Family Apiaries, with their separate honey business called True Gold.

ORANGE BLOSSOMEZ HONEY & WILDFLOWER HONEY

The True Gold Orange Blossom honey is a golden color with a citrus element of course, plus some zest. The Samples say that it can only be harvested where the weather is mild enough for orange trees to survive. Fortunately, the trees for their orange blossom honey basically come from around their own homes.

True Gold is well recognized for excellence, and has won Good Food Awards, Cal Expo Awards, and others.

https://truegoldhoney.com

 

KISS THE FLOWER HONEY

Kiss the Flower Honey Company was founded in 2010, and focuses on best practices for bees, people, and the planet. They use only natural methods, and have several hives in Sonoma County, including a Santa Rosa property, as well as in the West County. The flowers used in the honey include eucalyptus, Himalayan Blackberry, apples, and acacias. 
Kiss the Flower produces only about 3,000 pounds of honey per year.

WILDLFLOWER HONEY

The Kiss the Flower Wildflower is classic honey. Their wildflower honey comes from hives on Mount Taylor in Santa Rosa.

STARTHISTLE HONEY

The Kiss the Flower Starthistle honey is a light gold color, with a mild and flowery flavor profile, as well as a bit of anise and cinnamon.

https://kisstheflowerhoney.com

SEKA HILLS HONEY

Seka Hills has a line of tribal products that honor Northern California’s Capay Valley. The Native Tribe is known as the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation
meaning ‘Home by the Spring Water.’ In the native Patwin language, ‘Séka’ means ‘blue.’

The Tribe’s product decisions are based on good environmental stewardship, with over 22,000 total acres in production in Yolo County

WILDFLOWER HONEY

The Seka Hills Wildflower Honey gets its taste and dark amber color from variety of wildflowers, such as redbud, rose clover and ceanothus, which are found on over 9,000 acres of tribal land. They produce the artisan honey in partnership with beekeeper John Foster

https://www.sekahills.com/

Fortnum & Mason’s Sailboat Chocolate is Bringing You 99% Emission-Free Luxury Chocolate

If you think things are moving too fast, then Fortnum & Mason has some news for you. They not only get their own chocolate direct from the source in the Caribbean, but they also do it on their own sailboat! That’s right, a slow-going sailboat. A luxury sailboat.

The general idea is that this helps make the brand the world’s first ’farm to store’ 99% emission-free chocolate. The project is a collaboration between Fortnum & Mason, and the Grenada Chocolate Company in partnership with Chantal Coady OBE.

In addition to the wind-powered boats delivering the chocolate made from Trinitario Cocoa beans, they also come in fully-recyclable boxes.

We’re waiting for the client option to sail on the boat in the Caribbean while eating bars of this sustainable chocolate. (hint, hint)