Your facilitators are well-versed in preparing, demonstrating, and discussing the nutritional qualities of a wide variety of vegan whole-food plant-based foods.  Everything will be fully plant-based, vegan.

Dishes will vary but breakfasts may include an oatmeal bar with organic fruit, scrambled tofu, homemade granola, freshly made creamy soy yogurt (we’ll show you how and send you home with starter if you want!), or fruits. Lunches may include tortilla wraps, massaged kale and cranberry salad, panzanella bread salad, celery soup, cold gazpacho, chickpea salad, or sushi rolls. Dinners may include manicotti, fajitas, chunky vegetable-seitan stew, stuffed peppers, 3-bean filo bake, various salads including an heirloom from Dilip’s family in India with ground/roasted cumin, or quesadillas. Desserts and snacks may include creamy fruit “ice cream”, parfait, watermelon ice, carrot cake, black bean brownies, chocolate hummus; nachos, almost no fat potato chips, popcorn, or fresh fig spread with sweet or hot pepper.

If and when you register, we will have a questionnaire which will ask, among other things, about any food allergies. We will work with any allergies that you have. For example if you are gluten intolerant, we may make some items with gluten but will always have a gluten-free alternative. If your allergy is such that you can’t be near certain foods or can’t have cookware that has been in touch with those foods, please let us know to see if we can accommodate you.

We will be using pans, blenders, and pressure cookers that have never been in contact with non-vegan ingredients. However we will use the venue’s serving ware.

You should always work with your primary healthcare provider to address your specific healthcare needs. Although we have food and nutrition certifications, none of us is a medical doctor.  For immersions with Carolyn, her husband, who will also be attending, is a doctor but isn’t licensed in North Carolina. There will be an intake and an outtake where the facilitators will listen to your health concerns and goals with a focus on desires for dietary change. We will give general advice based on evidence.

Need-based scholarships are available. We set the price competitively and believe that we are offering excellent value. However, we don’t want to turn people away who may have circumstances that prevent them from affording the program. Please contact us if you would like to discuss the possibility of a partial scholarship.

We will have paid staff at the event helping with cleanup, getting folks checked in, helping if you have any shipping needs, etc. We love volunteers but want you to soak up the material. If opportunities arise where we could use a quick hand, we’ll ask!

Payment in full is due upon registration but please do contact us if there are any financial difficulties. Registration is not refundable. However, if you need to cancel, we can open up your registration and, if we fill it, refund your registration less a $100 administrative fee.

Please bring your curiosity and questions! We look forward to meeting our participants.

If you wish, you can bring some leftover containers in case there is extra food that you want to carry home with you. We will demonstrate how to make a creamy, almost-no-fat unsweetened vegan yogurt and if you want to take a little bit home with you as starter to make your own, you may want to bring a little container. We will try to have some food containers as well.

Each venue will have towels, linens, etc. We’ll have some quality vegan toiletries in case you forget or want to try ours. We recommend a bathing suit, comfortable walking/hiking shoes, a notebook, and pencil or pen. Each venue has a self-service washing machine and dryer and we will have laundry detergent that you are welcome to use.

Each venue will have internet connectivity which we will use to bring in guest speakers and share online resources. We believe that one aspect of healthy living is to have “disconnected” time.  We won’t ask you to “go offline” but we also won’t encourage online activities. You will want to bring your phone to stay in touch, but we will not be relying on your having any other electronic devices.

Please contact us if you need assistance. We likely will recommend that you consider established ground transportation but we are glad to help if we can.

If you want to ship materials to or from the venue, please contact us as we can help (e.g., favorite pillows, small exercise weights you use; literature or appliances/pans purchased at the immersion).

Parking is available. Please let us know if you will not have a car. We do hope to get out on the Blue Ridge Parkway for hiking in the mountain immersion but can carpool so that everybody doesn’t have to drive.

If you want to use public transportation possibly coupled with a taxi or ride sharing service and not have a car, that should be very feasible. We want you to relax, learn, and have fun, and not worry about getting around.

The mountain location has stairs. Please contact us with any of your needs.

If you register, details like emergency contacts, location address, facilitator contacts, etc. will be provided. We will also ask for your emergency contacts.

We rely on the tremendous body of peer-reviewed evidence that demonstrates health-promoting and restoring benefits of whole-food fully plant-based eating with limited fat.  Excellent resources include websites such as pcrm.org, nutritionfacts.org, and
forksoverknives.com.

Each of the facilitators is a Cook in the Kitchen and puts on monthly food and nutrition shows.  We are part of a team with extensive monthly recipes available at somanycooks.com. We recommend many other recipe sites and authors as well, such as Brenda Davis, Neal Barnard, Julieanna Hever, fatfreevegan.com, and ivu.org. We heartily recommend the many resources and programs at rochesterlifestylemedicine.org.

The resources listed in the previous question above are accessible and valuable to both lay audiences as well as healthcare providers. Conferences that may appeal especially to healthcare providers include Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine ICNM Conference,  Plant-based Prevention Of Disease P-POD Conference, and Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute (RLMI) offers free programs and resources for healthcare providers seen HERE.

Sorry, that is not likely to be possible. We recommend that you find alternative accommodation for extra days before or after the immersion. But do check with us to see if we can make it work!

We will ask about your typical bedtime and any preferred napping.  One of the facilitators will typically offer a stretch or yoga session with simple breakfast items like fruit and hot drinks as early as 6:30 or 7:00 AM, and will start the day otherwise with preparing breakfast as we launch into food and nutrition discussion at 9:00 AM. Our day will typically end with dinner winding down by 7:00 PM or so.  We expect to offer an evening walk and then a topical film viewing and discussion wrapping up roughly around 9:00 or 10:00 PM with participants welcome to retire earlier if they so desire. One of the facilitators will be available to relax with any interested participants until around midnight or a bit later.

We will take each immersion group’s collective schedule into account in planning. We encourage proper rest and will do our best to accommodate each participant’s preferred sleeping pattern.

Dilip has over 1000 of his recipes on his blog dilipdinner.blogspot.com. Pictures of some of his dinner plates are available at photos.dilip.info/Food/SamplePlates.

Cody is frequently a guest on a variety of cooking and nutrition shows.

Carolyn has a YouTube channel called Stricklands & Friends – a Seasonal WFPB Cookbook at bit.ly/StricklandAndFriendsYouTube. She is also a guest on a variety of programs.

All of them are regulars with somanycooks.com. Their monthly videos are viewable and recipes are downloadable.

Facebook:  Carolyn: @MeatlessMondayMontgomery & @VegOutMontgomery, All: @somanycooks

YouTube: Carolyn: bit.ly/StricklandAndFriendsYouTube, All: bit.ly/SMCKyouTube

Twitter: Dilip: @dbarman

Instagram: Carolyn: @TofuChic

Rochester Lifestyle Medicine Institute’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: @roclifemed