🌱 Learn With The Plantrician Project
Free, science-based help to start eating more plants — from a nonprofit we love and recommend. Kitchen Monk™ independently recommends The Plantrician Project as a major evidence-based resource for plant-forward nutrition, practical education, and the Power of the Plate.
🎓 Plantrician education led by Jill Edwards, MS, CEP, DipACLM, Director of Education.
💃 Dedication: This page is dedicated with gratitude to Jill Edwards, MS, CEP, DipACLM, Director of Education for The Plantrician Project, whose welcome, teaching, and joyful spirit helped make Power of the Plate in San Diego feel like family. Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™ honor Jill with our own honorary title, Chief Flourishing Educator™ (proposed, pending acceptance). This is a recognition from our organizations, not an official title or endorsement from The Plantrician Project.
👣 Your path, step by step
Start Here → Free Quick Start Guides → Learn More → Find a Provider → Explore Cooking Resources → Attend Power of the Plate
🎁 Free resources
- 📗 Quick Start Guides (free PDFs): adult, Pediatric, Edible Garden, and Spanish, Arabic, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Japanese editions.
- 📚 Plantrician Library: free articles, fact sheets, guides and recipes.
- 🥣 CommUnity Potluck Guide: a free 20-page guide to start a plant-based potluck, plus a public potluck map.
- ✉️ Letter to your provider: a free template to start the conversation with your own clinician.
- 🎙️ Podcast and blog: A Regenerative Life and the Seeds of Change Blog.
🍽️ Recipes in outside guides are external resources. Kitchen Monk’s own recipes follow our SOS-free standard, and we’re glad to help you make simple swaps.
🎉 Power of the Plate 2027
The Plantrician Project’s annual conference returns to Los Angeles, May 13–16, 2027. It welcomes health enthusiasts as well as clinicians, with in-person and virtual options. Registration is coming soon; join the official interest list for updates. (Details from poweroftheplate.org as of Oct 20, 2026.)
🎟️ A scholarship brought our founder to the table. Someone who funds a scholarship may never know whose life was changed because that person was able to attend. Nathanael does — he was one of them. Scholarships cover full registration; 2027 applications are due April 13, 2027 (in-person attendance required; travel and lodging not included).
🍳 From San Diego to your kitchen
Founder Nathanael Elijah Smith attended Power of the Plate in San Diego as a scholarship recipient and describes it as one of the most meaningful professional gatherings of his life: science, meals, laughter, friendship, learning, and dancing. “I came to San Diego expecting a conference. I left feeling like family.” Kitchen Monk’s role is practical translation: What do I make tonight? How do I cook beans and lentils? How do I shop on a budget? The Plantrician Project can be an evidence and education anchor; Kitchen Monk helps bring the learning home.
🌟 People we honor
💃 Jill Edwards, MS, CEP, DipACLM — Director of Education, The Plantrician Project; honored by us as Chief Flourishing Educator™.
🛡️ Scott Stoll, MD — Co-founder & Board Chairman of The Plantrician Project; honored by us as Chief Plantrician Guardian™.
Honorary titles · proposed, pending acceptance. These Kitchen Monk™ / Flourishing Nursing™ titles are our own expressions of gratitude. They are not positions within The Plantrician Project and do not imply endorsement, sponsorship, partnership, or organizational affiliation.
Kitchen Monk™ and Flourishing Nursing™ independently recommend educational resources from organizations including The Plantrician Project. Unless explicitly stated otherwise, such recommendations do not indicate sponsorship, partnership, endorsement, or organizational affiliation. Program details change; please confirm on the official sites. Questions or corrections: rfjeep@gmail.com
Support them enthusiastically. Represent the relationship conservatively.
🌱 Cook With The Plantrician Project
Explore Plantrician-approved recipes, the free CommUnity Potluck Guide with 10 recipes, and CulinaryRx. We link to the originals so creators receive attribution and traffic.
Independent curation; external recipes are not republished or claimed as ours.
🪔 Keeping the Heart in Medicine
For Nathanael, The Plantrician Project represents something medicine cannot afford to lose: the human heart of care. Evidence matters. Food matters. Systems matter. But so do belonging, dignity, compassion, joy, and the people doing the caring.
That is why this pathway sits naturally beside the whole-person nursing tradition Nathanael has followed throughout his professional life, including the teaching of Dr. Karen Laing and the enduring example of Florence Nightingale: care for the whole person, strengthen the environment around them, and never forget the humanity of the caregiver.
We also point to Alan Goldhamer, DC and the publicly visible whole-team structure at TrueNorth as one practical reminder that health-promoting care is carried by many hands—not clinicians alone. Nurses, kitchen teams, administrative staff, support staff, educators, and other workers all contribute to the environment in which healing and health promotion happen.
Our leadership principle: the people helping patients flourish must be able to flourish, too.
Moving Nursing Forward means bringing nursing leadership, patient care, workforce wellbeing, nutrition, lifestyle medicine, and interdisciplinary respect into the same conversation.
📖 The Book of the Lamp is dedicated to The Plantrician Project
To The Plantrician Project, for more than a decade of helping the world flourish through the power of the plate. It is time for nursing to stand beside you. And to Dr. Alan Goldhamer, who showed me that flourishing is meant for everyone — those who receive care and those who give it.
🪔 A note on nursing leadership: Nursing leadership is everything. I respectfully cannot approve of the current direction of nursing workforce development at the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, because everyone should be able to flourish — not only patients, but the nurses and care teams who serve them. — Nathanael
The author’s personal views and gratitude. They do not imply endorsement by, or any affiliation with, The Plantrician Project or Dr. Goldhamer, and neither had any part in the views expressed.
