To address the growing interest in vegetarian cooking, the health ministries department of the Adventist church’s Southern Asia-Pacific region (SSD) recently launched a website as an online tool and resource material for aspiring cookbook authors. www.vegecapable.com has a user-friendly interface that allows people with little computer experience to maximize its features.
Its features include the Vegetarian Food Analysis which provides a plant food’s nutritional value. The user can encode the amount of food in grams, indicate its size and can even localize the name of the food. A Recipe Maker allows the user to combine food items into a recipe. The nutritional value of the ingredients in the recipe will appear with the instructions.
The user can then organize his recipes and make a cookbook with the Book Creator feature. The author can include a dedication, acknowledgements, and personal information. The website automatically arrange recipes, making it print ready. Thus, an author can easily share his cookbook with family and friends or use it for fundraising projects.
To complement and promote the new website, enhanced training was recently offered in Indonesia and the southern Philippines. During the Vegecapable training, organizers offered health-related morning devotionals to emphasize the value of the health message. Seminar topics included vegetarianism issues, nutrient conservation, food and nutrition principles, diet and disease, recipe modification, menu multiplication, food and table beautification and cookbook writing as well as a VegeCapable hands-on tutorial. Abraham Carpena, SSD Health Ministries director notes that, “Participants were taught food photography techniques for display or for publication even when using cell phone cameras. Lectures were offered on basic and advanced nutrition to enhance the understanding of how food is assimilated by the body. Table setting and food presentations were also taught to make food more appetizing to the young eyes.” Parts of the presentations in the southern Philippines were filmed by the local Hope channel crew to introduce the concept to church and community members in the area.
With the motto Making You Capable, Vegecapable is an innovative way to promote healthy lifestyles among foodies and community groups. For more information, go to www.vegecapable.com
[Gay Deles, AND]