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Aloha, Welcome to Whole Plant-Based Cooking and Living with Gigi, personal cooking education and nutritional guidance especially designed for individ
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Aloha,
Welcome to Whole Plant-Based Cooking and Living with Gigi, personal cooking education and nutritional guidance especially designed for individuals, families, and communities in our island home towards overall wellness for ourselves, community and ʻāina!
I have been nurturing and stewarding my own healing deeply rooted in the ʻāina for all of these years and happy I can now share that with you.
I provide hands-on community cooking classes, private lessons and nutritional guidance. Thank you for letting me be a part of your journey and helping others and our community on the same path with "more" whole plant-based foods.
This home grown healing that comes straight from lovingly grown and prepared food is what I hope to bring to you when we work and eat together.
Read on and I look forward to sitting with you in your kitchen, classroom or community soon!
Mālama Pono,
Gigi Miranda
Whole Plant-Based Cooking Educator & Nutritional Guide |
Healing with Whole Plant-Based Foods |
I was traditionally raised growing our family's foods in gardens and cooking in kitchens with my elders. They have taught me about the mana of food and how it nourishes the body and feeds the soul. In my earliest memory, gardens flourished and abundantly fed my very big family of 8 siblings, cousins, uncles, aunties, grandpas and grandmas. Although I laid in rows of string beans, picking each one by hand, I still indulged in my favorite convenience store treats of Slurpees, bean burritos and candy. As I grew up, I became very sensitive to the environment around me and suffered years of chronic allergies and illness due to an overexposure of the Western lifestyle. |
There were two events in my life that brought me on this journey. The first was the death of my 59-year old father to heart disease and diabetes. The second was an accident in the fall of 2004. While riding a dirt bike, it flipped into the air and landed on my stomach. This changed my life forever. I could no longer digest food completely. I thus returned to my roots by learning everything I could and deepened my connection to whole plant-based foods and the ʻāina to heal myself. |
On this journey I have had the honor of practicing nutritional therapy with a naturopathic doctor who works with cancer patients to recover and feel whole again. I worked with Queen Liliʻuokalani Children's Center to teach families how to eat their local favorites made healthy on limited budgets and make those small changes in their lives. I worked at Vines and Greens: Raw Vegan Gourmet, a raw food company that's now a restaurant. I teach elementary school kids about healthy eating and making better food choices as a volunteer Nutrition Docent with Kōkua Hawaiʻi Foundationʻs ʻĀINA In Schools Program. I taught a series of Plant-Based Healing Cooking classes for a nurse's "Seed to Table" program where they took harvests from their organic healing garden and learned how to cook nourishing foods in the kitchen. Now I am working towards my degree in nutritional therapy and herbal medicine. |
I have learned and believe that everyone has a unique relationship with food and you have to find out what works for you to make you feel whole, healed, healthy and alive. Everything that is considered “healthy” is not “healthy” for everyone. I teach how to:
▪ create deeper food relationships by knowing your food, where it comes from and how it makes you feel.
understand "true" healing from the inside out.
▪ know friendly ingredients for your body chemistry, lifestyle and condition(s).
▪ understand what alkalinity is and what balance feels like in your body.
▪ choose proper food combinations and know the right preparations for nourishing digestion (raw vs. cooked).
▪ buy and grow affordable and accessible whole, local organic plant-based ingredients.
▪ reconnect with and use local and ancestral, traditional foods.
▪ eat seasonally.
▪ live mālama ʻāina and understand how we can get more affordable and accessible organic food grown locally in your community.
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I was born, raised and worked in community. It is where I come from, who I am and my life's work and purpose. So in my free time, I love being in the ʻāina or kai whether it's knee deep in the lepo of a loʻi in Waiāhole-Waikāne, sailing in the waters off of Kualoa, picking and cooking harvests in the back of Kalihi Valley with the community at Hoʻoulu ʻĀina, floating in Waimea Bay with my ʻohana, dancing with my halau or hanging with my ʻāina-loving peeps talking story, sharing food and our favorite recipes in kitchens and gardens. It's about these relationships we will honor, mālama and deepen as we work and grow together. |
I now know that this work is about so much more than food and cooking. It's about our kūpuna (elders) with heart disease, diabetes or cancer, so they can live a more full and richer life with their grandchildren. It's about our keiki and keiki to come so they have an abundant ʻāina that feeds them and a clean moana they can fish and play in. It is about our stories, culture and language, so it is not lost.
So when I look at my youngest nephew Nikolas, I hope to teach him what his Lolo (grandfather) wasnʻt able to, so he may discover his roots in his budding curiosity of aloha ʻāina (love of this land) and learn to always mālama. |
As an educator for the past 12 years in our community, I love to teach and share my connection to our home in my classes and working one-on-one with my clients and their families so they feel empowered and deeply connected to their food and understand those deeper connections.
I love cooking with our young folks and families in their kitchens; guide you or your ʻohana in healing, can teach you how to make mango, coconut and poi into a healthy baked dessert, can help you visualize and get your kitchen organized so you feel good in cooking in it, outreach and educate in the community with a talk story cooking demo, teach a cooking lesson in your classroom, company, gym, or plan your next cooking party with your friends or ʻohana.
For more information, here is my current Menu of Offerings. You can email me at wholeplantbasedcooking@gmail.com and keep connected with me at Whole Plant-Based Cooking and Living with Gigi for all the the latest on whole plant-based food and community happenings and here for an updated schedule of community cooking classes and events
I work with all dietary needs, condition(s), food sensitivities, intolerances, allergies, ages, lifestyles, groups, communities, health care providers, companies, gyms, programs and budgets. My intention and work is to help change the health and well-being of you, our community and ʻāina.
Let's make small changes towards big differences for our island home! |
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