Working out at the Plantz St. Culinary Gym!

I was pleased to get a chance this evening to try out a plant based cooking class at a cool new business in Santa Rosa, Plantz St. Culinary Gym.  The gym is located in downtown Santa Rosa in an adorable little mews development off B street near Mendocino complete with iron gates, cobbles, a bike rack and a couple of benches. The owner / operator of Plantz St. is Katie Mae, who holds a Master of Science in Nutrition and is a core cooking instructor for the TrueNorth Health Center and the McDougall program. Mae just launched the brick and mortar cooking school side of the business last month, after spending the last year working on her online business. The goal of Plantz St. is to transform people’s quality of life through plant foods, kitchen fitness, and mindfulness. This is the world’s first culinary gym, a hub for locals to build their kitchen skills and learn how to cook with fresh, whole foods.

Plantz St. teaches a type of plant based eating often known as SOS  – so no or low in Salt, Oil and Sugar. Yes, I know what you’re thinking – it sounds terrible, but there are plenty of ways to season your food without salt, and you can add fat using natural fats like avocado and add sweet tastes via dried fruit, and so on. This class was part of a six week group class called Plant-based Cooking 101. It was the second class, which was titled “Delicious Simplicity with Grains, Legumes & the Instant Pot”. There are four weeks left of this class on Monday evenings and another series running in August. But if you don’t live in the North Bay, fear not – you can also improve your kitchen fitness and get support in your plant-based adventures online! There are also some reasonably price e-cookbooks available as well as plenty of free recipes on her website!

So without further ado…the pictures!

The store front, complete with Katie’s eco friendly transportation!

Pretty information table…

There were two nicely organized shelves with all the pantry staples for the classes. This side had the beans and legumes amongst other things.

Some of the veggies ready to be chopped with our new and improved knife skills !

Katie Mae explained a lot about nutrition and digestion throughout the class. I really liked her spice rack, too!

Lo practices her knife skills while our chickpeas are simmering happily in the Instapot behind her. The Instapot is an electric pressure cooker.

Katie Mae advised us not to eat sweet foods in the morning as they will set you up for sweets cravings during the rest of the day. Solution: savory oatmeal containing oats, mushrooms, onions, broccoli and seasoning! We chose Indian spices for ours. Yum!

Action shot!

The quinoa is ready! (5 minutes cooking in the Instapot once it was up to pressure)

Ta-da! The main course for this evening, a mexican style Buddha bowl with quinoa, brown rice, chickpeas, salsa, mixed veggies, avocado and salsa! Did you know Quinoa is actually a seed which is why it might be easier for some people to digest than grains.

We were given two recipes and a helpful double sided sheet with info on how to cook legumes on one side and grains on the other.