The Purple Oasis Community Kitchen

The Don Scott house adjacent to Vel’s purples oasis garden is being remodeled to serve as a gathering space and teaching facility named after Vel’s late husband. The Don Scott house will host cooking demonstrations, lectures, and workshops to educate people in how to live their best lives by powering their bodies with healthy foods.

I grew up in a farming area where most of my family had gardens. Later in life my husband developed high blood pressure. He agreed to change his diet but refused to eat bland food with no flavor. 

I started researching and we decided to go to West Africa, where rates of hypertension and diabetes are extremely low. Over the course of 6 weeks we tasted traditional food, saw how people lived and incorporated some of the same spices, herbs and practices we witnessed in the motherland into the food we served at our restaurant!

So we were able to keep the flavor and eliminate the fats and chemicals that cause us to develop preventable diseases! Our customers loved our new global soul cuisines and often didn’t even know the dishes were plant based!

Our families are brought together by food! Sharing meals and memories bring us together, the foods that we eat and the recipes we pass down can makes us stronger, physically and spiritually. Help us raise awareness about how to use affordable nutrient rich foods year round to power our bodies, our families, and our neighborhoods.