Helping you Thrive on healthy whole plant foods!
We’re Venny and Andy. We cook whole-food, plant-based meals, mostly without oil or refined sugar, and every recipe on this site was cooked and photographed in our own kitchen. We’ve eaten this way for about ten years. Since our son was born in 2024, we cook for three.
Who We Are
Dr. Venelina (Venny) Dove, MD, Specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics
Venny is a medical doctor and a specialist in Nutrition and Dietetics: a three-year postgraduate medical specialty, open only to physicians, completed after medical school. It is the same route a doctor takes to become a cardiologist or a pediatrician. She develops and tests the recipes here and writes about the medical side of eating whole plant foods.
Andy Dove, MA in Psychology
Andy holds a master’s degree in psychology. He writes about the part of eating that recipes don’t solve: cravings, habits, and why a good plan falls apart at 9 p.m.
About the Recipes
Our Culinary Philosophy
At WellnessDove, our culinary philosophy revolves around one key concept: “healthy, whole food, and plant-based.” We firmly believe that what we put into our bodies plays a significant role in our overall well-being. That’s why we’re dedicated to crafting recipes that prioritize:
1. Healthy + Tasty + Simple:
Our recipes are thoughtfully designed to be both nutritious and delicious.
We believe that food can be a powerful tool in promoting a healthy life.
Equally as important, though, is that it has to be delicious and easy to make so that you want to stick to eating plant based.
That’s why we focus on creating meals that are packed with essential nutrients, vitamins, and minerals that look great, taste delicious and are as as simple as possible!
2. Whole Foods:
We’re all about whole foods.
That means our recipes are centered around unprocessed, unrefined, and wholesome ingredients.
We believe that nature provides us with an abundance of nourishing options, and we aim to celebrate those ingredients in every dish we create.
3. Plant-Based:
We believe that including more plant foods in our diets is healthier for us and those around us as well.
We don’t like labels and it doesnt matter if you are vegan, vegetarian or neither: we hope to inspire you to eat more wholesome, healthy, delicious food that brings you joy.
4. No Oils or Refined Sugars:
We take it a step further by excluding oils and refined sugars from our recipes.
Instead, we rely on natural flavors and sweeteners, allowing the true essence of our ingredients to shine through.
A Balanced Approach
We understand that adopting a completely vegan or vegetarian lifestyle may not be feasible for everyone. That’s why we embrace a balanced approach to eating. Our goal is to inspire you to make healthier food choices, even if it means incorporating more plant-based meals into your diet without committing to a strict dietary label.
Healthy and tasty.
The recipes here are whole food, plant-based. The great majority of them are oil-free and without refined sugars.
Simply put, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, fruits with some nuts and seeds. No dairy, eggs, meat, and highly processed ingredients. Here’s why you should eat whole plant foods and here’s how they keep you healthy.
No outlandish ingredients, though. I try to cook with everyday, simple ingredients that you can find in your local supermarket.
When I tell people we are plant-based, they assume that we must be getting all of our food from the health food store. We go there once a month at most!
Every recipe is homemade, tested, simple and truly healthy!
Our Story
Discovering the power of plant-based nutrition
I’ve always been passionate about prevention and helping people achieve better health.
In medical school, I learned that many of the chronic health problems people are suffering from are preventable through a better diet and lifestyle.
Slowly, I started to dig deeper and deeper into the realm of nutrition and the effect of diet on our health.
The more I learned, the more astonished I was!
High blood pressure and type 2 diabetes, for example, can often be improved through something as simple as the food we eat.
A whole plant food diet with no processed and animal foods seems to be the way to achieve better health!
Andy’s Weight Loss and Going Plant-Based
Our plant based journey really started when Andy got serious about losing the extra weight he’d been carrying on him since he was a child.
By that time we had been eating a mostly vegetarian diet but that hadn’t really helped him lose any weight whatsoever.
He changed how he ate, and by the end of the year he’d lost about 40 lbs and he has been at a healthy weight ever since (read his story).
Enjoying the benefits of eating plant-based
We got serious about our diet at the beginning of February. Then spring came along and we were expecting him to start suffering from his pollen allergies, as usual.
That spring, though, he showed almost no symptoms at all!
I had read that plant-based eating could alleviate allergy symptoms but I didn’t have any high hopes. After all, I had learned in medical school that allergies were practically incurable.
So, needless to say, I was astounded and unbelievably happy! I had witnessed such a beautiful transformation! I felt so empowered!
Meanwhile, I went on a routine blood test for my autoimmune hypothyroidism.
Honestly, I didn’t expect to see any difference here either. That day, though, the blood test showed that my anti-TPO antibodies were 4 times lower than before and my anti-thyroglobulin antibodies were within the healthy range!
Basically, my condition had improved!
Not only that but all my and Andy’s blood markers were within range!
There was no iron deficiency, no calcium deficiency, everything was normal.
Inspiring others
Naturally, I was eager to share the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle, starting with my parents. Though initially hesitant, my mother eventually embraced the idea and started eating plant-based.
In just a matter of months, my parents’ blood pressure levels returned to a healthy range. Additionally, my mother noticed a remarkable improvement in her arthritis symptoms.
Several years have passed since she adopted a plant-based diet, and the transformation in her overall well-being is truly remarkable. She now enjoys improved health and a renewed sense of vitality.
Learning to eat whole food, plant-based
The health benefits we saw motivated us to continue eating whole plant foods.
Initially, we had the problem every beginner has, we didn’t know what to eat!
We searched for recipes on the internet, bought cookbooks, and spent our days in the kitchen.
In the beginning, we thought that we were going to starve. Many recipes were difficult, time-consuming, and weren’t satiating at all!
Slowly and steadily, though, we learned about calorie density and how to create complete, satiating, and healthy meals.
Leading by example
I love to experiment in the kitchen and soon I was cooking delicious salads, hearty meals, and irresistible desserts everybody around us loved.
Our friends and family, who initially thought we were crazy and we couldn’t live this way, started to praise our food.
I discovered that healthy, delicious meals were all that was necessary to help people change their diets and improve their health.
This is why we created WellnessDove, to share our easy, simple, and satiating recipes with you.
We hope that they inspire you to eat more whole plant foods and be the healthiest you can be!
One Tray, Not Three
For months, our sprouter sat on top of the fridge collecting dust. Andy took it down and was reaching for his keys to carry it to the basement, then stopped. Throwing out a machine that grows one of the healthiest foods there is felt absurd, so he worked out why we’d stopped using it. We had been running all three trays, every cycle. That meant a lot of work, and more sprouts than anyone wanted to eat.
Now we run one tray, and our son gets to watch the seeds turn into food.
The dose that makes something a chore is the dose that ends it. Most of what we write here comes back to that.
THE ARTICLES
Unhealthy foods seem to have the uncanny ability to charm us under their spell and have us eat them!
It isn’t magic, though, it’s simply the unnatural world we live in.
A century ago people didn’t have access to cheap and super accessible sugar, oil or animal foods.
They were expensive and prized, to be eaten on special occasions like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Today, because of technology, these are ubiquitous.
We hope that our articles will help you understand why we are attracted to these foods and why they are so unhealthy for us.
By combining my medical/dietetics expertise and Andy’s knowledge of psychology, we want to explain why unhealthy foods can call you by name sometimes and how to resist them!
ARE WE VEGAN?
Not quite. We eat a little honey, so we don’t call ourselves vegan.
Personally, we have experienced substantial health benefits by eating exclusively plant foods and we try to avoid animal products as much as we can.
Actually, we don’t want to eat animals now. When you feel that much better and you are so much healthier, animal foods just lose their appeal.
And we honestly believe that we should since it’s better for our health, our planet’s health, and the wellbeing of the animals.
It’s a win-win-win situation really.
That said, we don’t blame anybody for whatever they are eating.
Trying to be 100% vegan in such a non-vegan world can be tough. It’s way better to eat mostly plants with some animal products instead of deciding that veganism is too hard and not trying at all!
That’s why we just want to help you be healthier by eating more plants. One vegetable at a time!
How We Work
- Every recipe is cooked, tested and photographed by us, in our kitchen.
- Our nutrition articles name the studies behind their claims and link to them.
- Some links on this site are affiliate links. If you buy through one, we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
- Nothing here is medical advice for your situation. If you take medication for blood pressure or blood sugar, talk to your doctor before you change how you eat, because the dose may need to change too.