Whole Foods Blogger Cooking Class

Hey guys!  I've been needing some new inspiration to help me revive this blog, and Sunday I finally found it!  Katie from Live Half Full invited me to join her for a blogger cooking class she'd organized over at Whole Foods Market Northbrook Sunday, and I'm so glad I did!

You guys, full disclosure, I cannot cook.  Seriously.  My smoke alarm goes off so often that I practically ripped it from the ceiling trying to disconnect.  I eat pbj or microwaved veggie burgers for dinner semi-regularly.  But I actually left Whole Foods Sunday feeling confident about my cooking!

Our wonderful instructors Sarah and Robin taught us how to make a delicious, plant-based meal.  We started with making the dough for whole wheat pasta--super easy!

Pasta Dough!

Then, while our dough was resting, we got started on a veggie-filled marinara sauce.  My cooking partner Valerie and I had so much fun chopping our veggies, including using a trick for chopping onions that Chef Sarah taught us.

Now I know how to chop an onion!  (And hopefully NOT cut myself!)

That is, I had fun until I almost immediately cut my hand!  News flash: chef's knives are HELLA SHARP!!  Second news flash: my knife skills need work.  ;)  That didn't slow me down, though.  I patched myself up with a band-aid and a glove, and got back to work preparing our sauce.  I've never made marinara sauce from scratch, and I loved this sauce.  It was packed with veggies--onion, celery, carrot, pepper, spinach, tomatoes...YUM.  If WHEN I make this sauce at home, I'm going to add some mushrooms to it too.

Injury...

So bright and delicious!

Then, we got started on a dessert.  I was a little apprehensive when Sarah told us the Berry Cobbler we were making would be completely sugar free, but it ended up being great.  We sweetened it with a little maple syrup, date sugar, and of course fruit.

Next, Valerie and I worked on our salad.  We "shopped" for salad ingredients in Whole Foods and had so much fun selecting our ingredients to put our own personal touch on our salad.  We ended up adding pistachios and dried tart cherries--yum!  Then, we got to use a Vitamix blender to make our dressing.  I've only ever made olive oil based dressings, but this healthy dressing was amazing!

Speed Shopping!

I <3 bins="" bulk="" td="">

Loved the dressing we made.  I just might have to make it again!  Recipe: 2 avocados, 1/4 cup dill, 2 T parsley, 3 cloves garlic, 2 T lemon juice, 1 green onion, 2 T nutritional yeast, 1 t salt, 1/4 cup almond milk.  It made a creamy, bright dressing.

The Vitamix is NO JOKE!

Finally, we were ready to make our noodles!  Valerie and I had a great time using the pasta press to make perfect linguini noodles. I hadn't made pasta since I was a teenager, but it's always so much fun.

Then it was time to eat!  Everything was SO DELICIOUS.  My favorite part, though, was the vegetable marinara sauce.  I can't wait to make this recipe at home and to put my own twist on it!

YUM.

I may be a chocoholic, but this healthy dessert rocked.

During the class, we also got to watch two quick food demos for how to use a Vitamix blender to make healthy smoothies and how to use a food processor to make cocoa date truffles.  These were great!

I had a blast at the #WFMPlantProteinParty blogger cooking class.  The best part is that I really feel confident about my cooking and feel that I could make any of these recipes at home!  For this microwave queen, this is huge. :)