The Healthy Giraffe – 1st Event Was Cheesy

Wow, what a great time at the first Healthy Giraffe event with some great people! Everyone brought a healthy food/treat and we then had our tasks ahead of us.

First up for us was making a Mac & Cheese dish out of Julia Piatt’s book, This Cheese is Nuts. A few of the ingredients that make this dish incredible are raw cashews, nutritional yeast, and garlic. It was soooooo creamy. Everyone did a great job pitching in and then we got to enjoy the result. This tasty meal is a great alternative to a traditional Mac and Cheese recipe or anything including cheese in general where the typical cheeses are 70% fat, most of which is saturated (“bad”) fat – via Dr. Neal Barnard from the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine and author of The Cheese Trap. I believe Anthony won that trivia question…

Are polishing off our main course, we were then ready to try to make The Happy Pear’s No Bake Oreos. The group was first introduced to the energizing twin brothers via video when they were guests on Ireland’s Saturday Night Show. We had a fun time making and had to get a bit creative with the shape of the tops…more below on that. They turned out fantastic!!! The only thing I would change here would be to make a second batch. I developed a page specifically for more information on The Happy Pear you can find on this link or via the Nutrition page on this site.

What a great night for our first event. Next month’s event will be February 10. More details to come. Look for updates on The Healthy Giraffe Events page on this site and The Healthy Giraffe Facebook page for more information.

Shout out to:

Jamie – thank you so much for preparing/bringing your plant-based dish, master organization and task master skills…and cleanup! I can’t believe how you had that kitchen so organized and clean. So helpful and thoughtful!!!
Sharon – thank you for the kitchen coaching, especially during the Mac & Cheese preparation and adjustments we were making!
Karen – thank you for all the preparation of the dishes in action. You were flying and a great liaison between the kitchen and prep table!
Betty – thank you so much for bringing me a new Kombucha Scoby. That was so thoughtful after I ruined my first one. I cannot wait to try again and will need your coaching for sure!
Michael B – thank you for being really creative coming up with the idea to use the top of the Vitamix lid to shape the circle bases of the Oreo cookies. They were perfect! And all the healthy local restaurant option intel to wrap the night was great…I was getting hungry again…ha
Michael M – thank you for bringing the tasty pickle and cucumber wraps. That took some prep time and not only did he attend the event but managed to send out Tuesday’s track workout on top of it….it looks fast…awesome!
Eva – it was so nice meeting you. Thank you for making the crazy good M&Ms. I may have gained a few pounds from them, but well worth it and Michael will run it off of me at Tuesday’s track workout.
Elia – thank you so much for accepting the invite. I really enjoyed our conversation about so many things if our lives (past, present and future). More to come and can’t wait to learn more from you.
Anthony – thank you for joining us and hope it’s not the last time. I am so happy we got to present you your award and recognition for winning (Overall Winner!!!) the St. Pete Beach Classic 10k earlier that morning. Wow, with you and Michael in the room, we had two of the fastest people in Tampa Bay in the Giraffe’s Den at the same time. We had the star power for sure!