Plant-Based Culinary Courses

Plant Academy are excited to partner with Megan Hallett again after her super popular Hormone Health Masterclass last year! This time Megan is doing a deepdive into balancing blood sugar on a plant-based diet. 

Blood sugar, or glucose, is a hot topic right now but when it comes to plant-based food the information can be a little confusing, so Megan will be giving you the facts and simple solutions for the best ways to keep your blood sugar stable using her rules, recipes and hacks. You’ll leave feeling confident and empowered about making a real impact on your health.

In the class Megan will cover:

• The three macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates), their roles. A deeper dive into types of carbohydrates and sugar

• The relationship between sugar and the body

• Sugar and its impact on our hormones - sex hormones and stress hormones

• Balancing your blood sugar levels: the basics 

• Rules and hacks for balancing blood sugar: small tips you can implement everyday 

• Balancing your blood sugar on a plant-based diet vs standard diet

• Simple recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks

If you're interested in starting your own retreat business or have already organised retreat days but want to expand your offering, then Lauren (Founder of Plant Academy), Anya Lily Montague (Founder of Meadowsweet Retreat) and Peter “Chippy” Grant (Founder of Trewhitts) are here to guide you.

Drawing on decades of combined experiences and being on both sides of retreats our hosts will share their knowledge so that you leave feeling prepared and inspired.

The 2 hour session will cover:

• Creating retreat concepts: how to make retreats different

• What financial considerations you need to make and how to organise payments and costs

• How to set a price points according to your offering

• How to market your retreats to the right audience

• Creating exciting menus

• How to go about selecting venues and what to consider

• Planning an itinerary 

• Managing relationships and division of work between the event team

Meet your hosts:

Peter "Chippy" Grant // Trewhitts

Peter "Chippy" Grant is a chef with a massive love of flavourful, experimental food and a huge passion for using local well sourced organic and biodynamic (toxic free), seasonal, healthy food, with over 12 years of experience in the catering industry and a love of cooking different cuisines from all around the globe.

Chippy has completed a number of courses in nutrition and herbalism. This has formed his path into a holistic approach towards cooking and working at yoga and wellness retreats. He sees food as medicine that can prevent illness and strengthen the immune system and other vital human functions. Chippy has catered at a number of different festivals and retreats across the globe, creating some exciting nourishing dishes along the way.

Anya Lily Montague // Meadowsweet Retreat

Anya Lily Montague is the founder of Meadowsweet Retreat, a place where people can truly immerse themselves in the wild, reconnecting with nature and their souls' purpose. Anya grew up in the English countryside with her mother, who is an intuitive herbalist and master forager. She spent much of her time as a child in nature with her mother, learning about the magic and medicine of plants. Anya's time was split between England and living in India with her dad, who trained as a yoga teacher in the early '90s, with her sister and her living with him at an ashram near Kerala.

Later in life, Anya travelled the world working as a restaurant consultant, specialising in the farm- to-table movement and a "garden-to-glass" approach to mixology. She fell into hospitality for her love of hosting and creating magical experiences. Anya has worked in some of the world's best restaurants and resorts, including 2 Michelin star farm restaurant Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York, where she also learned beekeeping. This led her into the Path Of The Pollen, an ancient shamanic practice connecting honey bees with the divine feminine.

Meadowsweet Retreat is a collaboration with a 2000-acre nature reserve in Tuscany. Anya's vision was to create a space where people could truly immerse themselves in the wild, reconnecting with nature and their souls' purpose and bring newly learnt skills in permaculture, beekeeping, wildcrafting and homesteading into their day to day life. She and her team have spent the past year working the land and getting to know the forests, waterfalls, springs, meadows, and orchards. The land is spread across 4 mountains and is truly untouched wildness.

According to Anya, retreats are a place of self-love. They are a place to find the answer to your deepest questions, a place to dream, to connect, to learn, to grow, and to nourish oneself. She and her team wanted to create such a space, a space so connected with the divine wisdom of nature that people visiting would themselves feel like a seed being tended by their careful gardening hands growing into a plant blossoming flowers. Anya's passion for nature, hospitality, and self-love has come together in the creation of Meadowsweet Retreat, a truly magical place.

Lauren Lovatt // Plant Academy

Lauren Lovatt is a plant-based chef, entrepreneur, and the founder of Plant Academy.

She is also the creative force behind Feed Your Mind Candy, a project dedicated to delicious food that feeds your mind as well as improves your mental health. Her first cookbook – Mind Food – is available to purchase now.

Early in her career, Lauren joined the aspirational vegan restaurant Asparagasm as Chef Creative, hosting plant-based pop-up nights and gaining a wealth of experience in developing recipes, writing menus and curating culinary events.

She now teaches worldwide from Bali to Barcelona, as well as curating food concepts (such as HOY Paris). She has a keen eye for plating and a passion for the most vibrant, seasonal ingredients with sprinkles of adaptogenic herbs and tonics.

Lauren is the curator of all the courses run by Plant Academy and acts as the lead instructor.

Plant Academy are so excited to partner with Anne-Laure, founder of Primesautier, to share all her knowledge about plant-based event catering. This on-demand masterclass is designed to arm you with all the information you need to feel confident catering for events.

In the masterclass Anne-Laure will cover:

• How she founded Primesautier and what her main aims for the business were

• Top five things to consider when planning event catering

• How to manage relationships with your clients

• What the most important capital investments are

• How to price your catering and the different methods to do so

• How to overcome any hurdles that you may face

• What things to consider when designing a creative menu

• The process of recipe development

• How to work with suppliers and get more local food in your dishes

• The future of Primesautier

Primesautier

After many years working behind a desk as a product manager in French luxury fashion houses, Anne-Laure decided to change path, moved to the countryside and started building her own food business. This was 5 years ago.

She quickly specialised in catering, focusing on weddings but offering her services for business events as well. Anne-Laure focuses on organic and locally sourced ingredients, always on the hunt for products you wouldn’t expect to be grown in this area (think mushroom in an old church or artisanal miso for example).

Creativity is what drives her and she loves to show how interesting plant-based food can be to wedding guests (mostly not used to eat that kind of food!).

She’s also working with a zero-waste ethic, which can be quite challenging when you do catering!

If you're interested in writing about food or want to broaden your remit, Rachel de Thample is a great source to draw on for knowledge. Not only has she written five books published under her own name (with two being written as we speak), she's also written books for ethical brands and food stalwarts such as Abel & Cole and Borough Market. She's contributed to many books too, such as Miranda York's Food Almanac. 

In this engaging 1.5 hour session she'll highlight her route into food writing and offer practical advice on not only how to write a cookbook proposal. She'll tell you what publishers seek in a proposal, how the process works, and how to structure writing the book start to finish.

The course will also cover other avenues of food writing, such as the more obvious magazines, newspapers and online content, but also things like curating copy to link in with TV productions (Rachel worked with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on the lasted River Cottage TV series) and writing content for food brands.

You'll also learn how to use social media to help support your food writing ambitions. Rachel is very candid and open. This session will offer a true behind-the-scenes insight into the life of a successful food writer.

RACHEL DE THAMPLE is an award-winning author who has worked in food, health and sustainability for more than 20 years. She the author of five published books under her own name, including the River Cottage Fermentation Handbook which won a Guild of Food Writer’s Award and the best-selling Tonics & Teas.

She has two more books in progress and has also edited and contributed to several other books including The Borough Market Book: From Roots to Renaissance and How to Eat Brilliantly Everyday, published by Ebury for Abel & Cole, where Rachel was Head of Food for a decade. Rachel trained as a journalist at Emerson College in Boston, where she worked in television as a field producer.

On coming to the UK, she moved into newspapers, magazines and online content editing and writing. She’s written for The Times, Locavore, is a regular contributor The Simple Things magazine and was the Commissioning Editor of Waitrose Magazine.

The Ice Cream Class X Beau’s Gelato

We are excited to be joining forces with Beau’s Gelato - the award-winning vegan ice cream. Have you ever dreamed of creating decadent vegan ice creams? Then now is your chance to learn all the tricks from the experts.

Amber, the co-founder of Beau’s Gelato, joins us to share her ice cream tips and insights to complement our Plant Academy recipes; from ice cream floats to lollipops and everything your hot summer heart desires to keep cool this season.

In this class you will learn to make:

• Chaga Affogato Ice Cream and Caramel

• CBD Lollipops

• Acai Ice Cream Sandwich

• Matcha Ice Cream Float

• Botanical Granita

Get instant access to the recording of this ever popular class.

This self-paced Flatlay Workshop is with the gorgeous Sara Kiyo Popowa. This workshop focuses on developing your professional and creative skills.

Sara will guide you through how to style colourful ingredients that you have selected into an eye-catching flatlay and how to get the best images using natural light (even with your phone!).

Our super popular series is now available self-paced!

This three part series is designed to help you navigate the complex world of CBD so you feel confident selecting the right products, know how to dose correctly and understand the effects you might feel. We will also be delving into growing community and business using hemp.

Receive instant access to the recording and recipes of this extremely popular class.

Foraging is not only free and the perfect way to connect with nature, gathering wild ingredients also provides you with some of the best kick starters for vivacious ferments as their deeper perineal roots can access a richer source of bacteria to get your kimchis, krauts and kombuchas bubbling with gut-friendly goodness.

In this masterclass, you’ll learn how to forage and use wild ingredients in ferments, including how to harvest and use sea water which has the perfect salinity to use as a brine in fermented pickles.

Plant Academy is delighted to bring you a special Hormone Health Masterclass with Megan Hallett. Megan Hallett is a women's health expert, nutritional therapist and cookbook author. This class is part of Plant One and Plant Two, and is open to everyone to join to get a taster of the course.

Megan specialises in women's hormone health and nutrition, from endocrine and reproductive conditions such as PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), endometriosis, hypothalamic amenorrhea and fertility/pregnancy, to addressing the root cause of symptoms including acne, PMS, hair loss, low mood/mood swings and fatigue.

Just in time for your summer picnic spread, we are so excited to be sharing a new class on the art and design of vegan cheese!

In this masterclass, food artist and Plant Academy founder, Lauren Lovatt, will be sharing her favourite fermented cheese recipes and teaching you how to create the most beautiful cheeseboard at home.

Expect a fast-paced class filled with food styling tips, tricks and insights to elevate your summer table.

Foraging is not only free and the perfect way to connect with nature, gathering wild ingredients also provides you with some of the best kick starters for vivacious ferments as their deeper perineal roots can access a richer source of bacteria to get your kimchis, krauts and kombuchas bubbling with gut-friendly goodness.

In this masterclass, you’ll learn how to forage and use wild ingredients in ferments and really make the most of the hedgerow bounty that is available at this time of year.

This class is a recording of our live event that can be watched in your own time.

Plant Academy is proud to partner with the three friends and founders of Club Cultured for a special masterclass as part of our Focussed Fermentation course.

Club Cultured are the UK's top Tempeh & ferments brand, producing the highest quality Tempeh, and now Kimchi, that is not only Organic & Non-GMO, but also waste-free. They also have the UK's first Tempeh factory.

How tempting is Tempeh? Not only is it a completely natural source of all nine essential amino acids (protein), it also provides a meaty & tender texture. It's nourishing, versatile, and incredibly tasty.