I want to introduce you guys to a new company based in NYC, started by a friend of mine, which is right. up. my. alley. (And no, I am not being compensated for this post, but I may will pester said friend into writing a guest post for me in the future!)
the sweetbean experience. It’s a company devoted to healing through food. This philosophy makes total sense to me. You all know I am a devotee of making sure the food I eat and my family eats is minimally processed. I prefer organic, I prefer ingredients lists that list actual foods I recognize rather than crazy chemicals. My friend and the founder of the sweetbean experience, Sarah Pachelli, likewise believes that good food not only nourishes us, it can also make us well by promoting healing.
A little background: A few years ago, out of nowhere, Sarah suddenly began to suffer psoriasis. Fed up with a long experience of not being healed by conventional methods (and some not-so conventional methods), Sarah began researching the effects of food on the body and auto-immune system. As an experiment, she tried cutting certain potential ‘trigger’ foods from her diet and voilà! No more psoriasis. Inspired, Sarah then attended the chef’s training program at the Natural Gourmet Institute in NYC and has since started the sweetbean experience, devoted to holistic cuisine and counseling.
So what is the sweetbean experience? What does it offer? As well as private chef services and catering, sweetbean offers kitchen interventions which are a form of health food counseling. Except Sarah also goes through your cupboards and makes you start from scratch, which is a great opportunity for making sure you have everything you need (and only everything you need) to cook and eat healthy meals. Case in point: about a year ago our fridge died. Just died. One morning I went to get milk out and realized everything was warm. It was gross. (Did I mention it was summer??) Anyway, once I had gotten over the tears shed over ounces and ounces and ounces of once-frozen pumped breast milk being unceremoniously dumped (I’m talking about 60 ounces total, it was a terrible day for me), I found myself getting excited about the idea of restocking my fridge from scratch. You get to actually think about what you need to have as staples for healthy cooking and healthy eating and it actually did make such a difference to our cooking and eating habits. So the idea of a kitchen intervention, where a professional would do the same thing for my kitchen cupboards, sounds uh-mazing.
Of course, sweetbean is also about finding trigger foods and allergy-causing foods and eliminating them from your diet. Luckily, I have no allergy issues, but I do know people for whom this is a really big deal. I have one friend who is celiac, I have another friend who can’t digest seeds, I have yet another friend who is lactose intolerant (and consistently forgets to check if there is dairy in his meal when we eat out together – Hi Eddy!) 🙂 While those friends all know what their triggers are and what to avoid, how many people are out there who just feel crappy on a daily basis, or suffer like Sarah did with an auto-immune disorder they just can’t treat?
Sarah also does Skype sessions, for you non-New Yorkers who may be interested. She’s had a lot of experience, both on the holistic side, as well as the making-things-delicious side (um, she worked at Blue Hill in the West Village. I mean, if it’s good enough for Barack and Michelle’s anniversary dinner, I’m sold!). She’s smart and empathetic. I can’t imagine that her business is going to be anything other than a raging success, because it’s based on passion, as well as her desire and drive to heal.
In conclusion – more of the sweetbean experience food porn:
