#NowGetFit Immersion at NOW Foods, Part 2

Catch up on Part 1 of this shindig here.

Picking up where I left off, our shuttle took us from the NOW Foods manufacturing facility to the corporate office. We met with more NOW staff, including their head chef, Suzy Singh, Masterchef top four and the cutest pregnant person I've ever seen.

She and her team led us through a taste test of the company's line of gourmet cooking oils and coconut oil infusions. It was eye opening to taste how different each tasted, since I know I've neglected the nuances of oil selection and subbed vegetable for olive and such in the past. The avocado oil almost tasted creamy, if that's a thing, whereas the canola tasted just slightly nutty.

We sampled an array of oils (avocado and macadamia nut were my favorite), then moved on to the coconut infusions, which are some pretty interesting concoctions. They current offer a butter-flavored coconut oil and a garlic-flavored coconut oil, both of which were very rich and had robust flavors. More, please.

NOW Food gourmet oils and coconut infusions

We had an awesome lunch consisting of power green smoothies and catering from Whole Foods.

It was a great meal that rounded out nicely with baking in the NOW Foods test kitchen. Suzy and her team laid out two stations for cookie baking. I ended up at the gluten-free snickerdoodle station, which I promptly screwed up by adding 4 1/3 cups flour instead of 4 1/2. Blast. All of Suzy's recipes are available on NOW's site, just trying following them closer than I did.

We also sampled gluten free brownies and gluten free chocolate chip banana bread. It's pretty amazing how much all of these cookies tasted like homemade staples and yet were lacking many of the main allergens.

 

In addition to enjoying treats on-site, they sent us home with travel treats to enjoy en route. When your drive back home is only 10 minutes, I'm not sure why I took so many, but cie la vie.

A huge thanks once again to the fine folks at NOW Foods for taking time out of their schedules to cook, pamper and inform the whole lot of us. I had a blast geeking out over the science, then enjoying some honest to goodness healthy food. I can't wait to get in the kitchen and start baking with all the stuff I hauled home!