About Jia

Jia Patton is a vegan and raw food chef who authored the recipes for John Robbins’ book, May All Be Fed, Diet for a New World. She headed her own cooking school for over fourteen years, teaching the importance of using organic, locally grown fruits and vegetables and how to incorporate high nutrition foods into your diet. She has been a guest chef at health resorts such as Rancho La Puerta in Tecate, Mexico and the Hippocrates Institute in West Palm Beach, Florida. Jia has also cooked for large conferences such as The Women of Vision Conference held in Washington DC. She is a certified Kali Ray TriYoga instructor and loves helping to raise her granddaughters, Amber and Anastasia. She also sews and tends her vegetable garden. Jia feels her real contribution to society is cultivating happiness in herself and others.

Being a Great Spirit, the butterfly knows her destiny.
She has oneness in purpose.
Her life is not her own,
But instead for all who witness her beauty.

Like the butterfly, live a life of beauty.
Beautiful thoughts,
Beautiful deeds,
Creating beauty wherever you be!

When a butterfly flutters by,
And you smile happily,
The butterfly knows down deep inside,
She has fulfilled her highest destiny.

You are like that butterfly who flutters by.
You too are a great spirit.
You too possess great beauty.
You too can give joy.

This is our greatest gift, our highest destiny.
Being joyful,
Spreading beauty,
Knowing who we really are.

 

My butterfly flutters by, leaving beautiful food creations wherever I go. I love to prepare food, and create food that is not only delicious and nutritious but beautiful to look at as well. I believe that being the cook in your family is a great service and a high calling. When we prepare food for those we love, we are sharing a great gift; a gift of love and celebration.

Hi, I am Jia and I have created the recipes and content for this website. I owned a vegan cooking school for fourteen years and am the recipe author of May All Be Fed, Diet for a New World written by John Robbins. John is a wonderful spokesperson for factory farm animals and a vegan lifestyle and has changed many people’s lives through his writings, lectures, and by his example. John and others have done a great job of educating so many people about the devastating truth of modern animal factory farming and the nutritional benefits of a vegan diet. In a similar way, I share my gift of how to prepare delicious, nutritious, vegan fair.

My journey as a vegan started in 1986 when I met my yoga teacher and spiritual guide, Kali Ray, the founder of TriYoga International. Through her example, I adopted a diet of only plant foods. This diet is known as vegan or pure vegetarian and is based on the Ahimsa Principal, meaning, do no harm.

The Ahimsa Principal is a positive guide for meeting the challenges of daily life. It is not always obvious which actions are doing harm. For example, when one buys cheese that is beautifully wrapped from their local market, what are they really buying? We know an animal has not been killed for this product, so why would it not be in alignment with Ahimsa? A closer look tells us a story of cruelty, abuse and disease. This is the life our factory farm animals must endure for their entire life. The story goes beyond the animals to our precious planet herself. Modern animal factory farming is causing major devastation of our Earth. What is good for you and me also applies to the Earth and all living beings. We have to look beyond the cheese to see how it was brought into creation. That is how deep we must look in order to follow the Ahimsa Principal. The vegan diet, when approached consciously, does no harm to our bodies, our Earth, or other living beings.

 As I looked deeper into the vegan diet and lifestyle, I found approaching it consciously was the important key. Just choosing vegan was not enough as I wanted a diet that would support my health into my later years, support the health of our precious planet, and at the same time be in alignment with my yoga principal of  ‘do no harm’. For my vegan diet to do all this, I turned to organically grown, whole plant foods from local sources, except for some imported foods from sustainable, fair trade farms around the world.

What I began to see as my joy, that is my job or gift, was to share my knowledge about food, where to buy it and how to prepare it in delicious, nutritious, beautiful ways. Being a junk food vegan is not healthy and I knew people needed help making the transition to a healthy vegan diet. A healthy vegan diet is made up of whole plant foods like fresh fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, sea vegetables and super foods and herbs. Super foods and herbs are foods that have not been altered, grow in highly mineralized soil and so are nutrient dense.

 My joy of cooking has taken me on a magic carpet ride that I could never have imagined. My first classes started out in my home with six students. Before I could think, a local vegan live foods restaurant invited me to teach at their facility. Then I remodeled my kitchen and turned my home into a cooking school. Quickly word got out about my vegan creations and I was asked to prepare the menus and coordinate the food preparation for many large conferences. These included the Unity in Yoga conference at Murrieta Hot Springs for about four hundred participants and the Woman of Vision Conference at Georgetown University in Washington, DC with over 500 participants for five days. My teaching expanded and I taught classes with more than sixty students. Through my work at the Esalen Institute on the Big Sur coast of California, eight years in all, I met the owner of Rancho la Puerta in Mexico and was invited to be a guest chef at his renowned health spa. I have also been a guest chef at the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida where I won their Green Cuisine Award for my Nori Lotus Flowers which were made with my famous Sunny Almond Pâté.

Through my writing and teaching I show others how to build nutrition and flavor into their dishes as well as how to develop color and an artful presentation. Flavors are built by specific cooking techniques, using fresh organic ingredients, fresh herbs and spices. An important aspect of making food is serving it. An artful presentation takes just a moment of thoughtfulness and a little knowledge of what makes food alluring to the eye. When your dishes look beautiful, your family and guests will immediately be uplifted.

 Before beginning to prepare food, whether it be for family, friends, or simply yourself, pause for a moment. As you slowly breath in, feel your heart open to the knowing that this meal will be born out of love and as such, it will have the highest vibration and the best nutrition you are able to give it. Remember, it is the spirit surrounding food that is important. Measure your time in the kitchen and at the table by how much laughter and joy is shared.

Many Blessings, Jia