Meatless Movement had a chance to chat with Chef Abbie from Texas recently. She told us about her story behind her transition to a healthy whole food diet and how she and her husband made the decision to go totally plant-based right after Hurricane Harvey.
I started my journey to a healthy lifestyle, eventually becoming solely plant-based.
@abbiesplantbasedcuisine
When I became an empty nester in 2014, I decided it was time for a serious lifestyle change. I had spent the last 18 years of my life raising my two daughters and when they left for college, I knew it was finally time to focus on me and get my life back!
I joined a weight loss program and started my journey to a healthy whole food diet and living my best life. The program taught me proper portion control, how to combat cravings and healthier ways of cooking my favorite foods. Over a two-year period, I lost 67 pounds and loved the new me!
So I started doing some research on ways to continue my newfound lifestyle.
@ abbiesplantbasedcuisine
I joined Vegan Facebook sites and started following and chatting with Vegetarians, Vegans and Alkaline Vegans to gain more knowledge on plant based eating. Once I convinced my husband to come on board, we both started noticing how much better we felt, how much better we slept, how much energy we had and the clarity of thinking and the alert consciousness we had since giving up meat, and not to mention the weight my husband started losing, over 27 pounds!
We decided to go totally plant-based right after Hurricane Harvey. While I was cleaning up after the flood, I cleaned my fridge and pantry of all items that were not plant-based and started over from scratch restocking my kitchen. That was the beginning of our plant-based lifestyle. I don’t like to use the word Vegan, Vegetarian or Alkaline Vegan because I don’t totally follow their regime, we choose to use the word plant based or whole foods. I’m a Facebook fanatic so I started posting about my journey and posting pics of the meals that I prepared. A dear friend of mine reached out and asked if I could help her with meal planning since she had given birth to twin boys and had her hands full. I was ecstatic to say the least that someone wanted me to prepare their meals, so I agreed to help her. One thing led to another, she told a friend, that told a friend, that told a friend and before I knew it, I had clients that I was preparing meals for, not to mention a fan club on Facebook, and from that, Abbie’s Plant Based Cuisine was born.
Preparing and serving plant-based cuisine to my clients is a way that feeds my spirit…
@abbiesplantbasedcuisine
Now, I have a large following on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter and I’m elated to say that we own our own small business! I still work full time, I’m afraid. I’m not ready yet to give up my day job, we still have a daughter in college working on her PhD in Chemical Engineering in Florida. But if God says the same, we will start doing Pop Ups around Houston, servicing out of a Food Truck, then eventually opening our very own Restaurant!!! My passion is cooking, and I love doing it, I love creating food that’s both appealing to the eye as well as taste good but meatless. I’m from the south, Mississippi, and grew up with wonderful cooks that know how to cook that deep south, down home southern comfort food. I challenge myself to recreate those dishes that I grew up on without the meat, cheese and dairy products.
I can spend hours, days or weeks in my kitchen and would not be one bit tired or bored. I’m in my haven, my good place, my peaceful place, my sanctuary when I’m in my kitchen. I can cook from sunup to sundown. I have a serving spirit and preparing and serving plant-based cuisine to my clients is a way that feeds my spirit and feeds the bellies of my clients.
Now I love cooking and it’s a passion of mine so turning our favorite foods into plant-based meals was a challenge that I relished and if I must say so myself, I’m quite good at it because people are seeking me out to try it!
@abbiesplantbasedcuisine
We are a small company that prepares prepped plant-based meals to clients on a weekly basis that are portion controlled and healthy. Most of our clients are families with busy lives that want healthy meals but don’t have the time to make groceries and prepare the meals themselves. We also have clients that just like the convince of grab and go meals that don’t have to worry about if they are eating the right portion as well as are the meals plant based and healthy.
@abbiesplantbasedcuisine @abbiesplantbasedcuisine @abbiesplantbasedcuisine
We are proud of us!! We found our passion, we believed in it, walked in faith, put in the work and made it happened!! We are so very proud that we serve clients that trust us, believe in us and love our food. We are a small family business that prides ourselves in honesty, integrity, trust, deliverability, healthy conscience and certified food preparers. We will never serve anything that we wouldn’t eat ourselves.
Right now we are an online weekly meal prep service, in hopes of having a brick and mortar spot in the future. We post new menus every Monday, orders due by 6 pm on Wednesday, pickup/delivery on Sunday.
We have other items for sale such as walnut meat by the pound, vegan salad dressings and soups/chowders/stews by the cup, quart or gallon. We now have frozen meatless products as well, like the Frozen Vegan Pork Chops, Chick’n Breast, Drumsticks, Veggie Burger Patties and Crab Cakes
White Bean Chili Wild Rice Mushroom Soup Sausage/Potato Kale Soup Bake Potato Soup
We also offer Holiday menus for Thanksgiving and Christmas, in individual portions as well as Family Dinners.
I would say that our “Static Menu” would be our signature meals, these are available every week and are the first meals that we started making.
The Ultimate Veggie Burger on a Plantain Bun is a fan fav even though we have replaced the bun with a vegan brioche bun we sometimes feature the plantain buns.
The Loaded Vegan Nachos are a hit as well, huge portions that will feed two easily, We offer 3 meat substitutes, Vegan Beef Crumbles, In House Made Walnut Meat or Roasted Jackfruit.
Our Two Healthy Hearty Salads are the SW Taco Salad and the Big Fat Greek Salad, full of protein and large enough to share or get two meals out of them.
SW Taco Salad Big Fat Greek Salad The Ultimate Veggie Burger
Our menu changes weekly to give a variety of selections without eating the same meals week after week, I like to think of myself as a mother that is cooking meals her family. Meals I know that will keep for a week, meals I know what will sustain them for the week and meals I know that they will eat and not be bored of eating them.
Of course, there are meals that our customers wish they could have every week, like the Sweet Potato Cinnamon Buns, the Vegan Chick’n Fried Steak and the Vegan Fried Chick’n, but we are trying to keep them healthy LOL.
All images courtesy of Chef Abbie's Plantbased CuisineAbbie’s Plantbased Cuisine is listed in our Directory. Click here to find out more.
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