By Tanna M. Friday
Editor
TRUSSVILLE – Busy lifestyles can often produce conflict with healthy aspirations. With Americans spending half of their food budgets on restaurant food, home-cooked meals are becoming more often nostalgic than realistic. The good news is that amid the sea of highly processed foods that saturate the menus of restaurants and grocery stores, a healthy and busy lifestyle can still be attainable – and a local restaurant owner has the FIT answer.
Natural Foods Chef Jennifer Cole Conn’s Trussville restaurant, FIT Biscuit, which offers a variety of quality food choices for any dietary theory and options to meet a gluten and dairy-free lifestyle, has opened in Trussville’s former Chocolate Biscuit.
The small local eatery’s menu is loaded with seasonable fresh ingredients from nearby farms and farmer’s markets creating a place where clean eating and great taste can be a reality.
The menu ranges from grass-fed beef tacos made with quinoa, kale, and other fresh toppings – to Chia chicken bake with lemon, made with spinach, Chia seeds, and almonds. Conn modifies recipes and uses food preparation techniques to create menu items that are not only healthier but also visually appealing and tasty. Other favorite Chocolate Biscuit menu items are still available including the famous chocolate biscuits and poppy seed dressing.
The FIT Biscuit, Conn shares, isn’t about the skinny. Instead, the name is purposeful and stands for Food Integrated Training. She explains that by learning confidence in the kitchen, eating with the seasons, and making sustainable food choices enables individuals to reach current and future health goals. This shared knowledge, along with Conn’s background in integrative nutrition and functional medicine, is what makes the FIT Biscuit so unique and deliciously attractive.
Conn first made a name for herself at the original Chocolate Biscuit in 2008 while in culinary school when the concept of serving fresh, natural and quality foods was introduced in the cuisine.
“We tried to implement the style of cooking which I now serve, but Trussville was not ready for this concept,” said Conn. “But Trussville is ready now.”
Two years later, Conn started a catering company, Season’s Meal House (now Food Integrated Training), while studying integrative nutrition. Her goal – taking healthy food to another level.
“In 2012 I opened The Farmhouse in Trussville which provided a food education forum and grocery store,” she said. “I was able to teach food and lifestyle classes at The Farmhouse while selling the quality foods that I taught about on site.”
While people loved learning about new foods and how they affect the body, Conn shared that customers asked for more help in achieving healthy meal preparation.
“They would always ask if I could just prepare meals for them,” she said. “So I went back to the Chocolate Biscuit and prepared food for my customers after hours and for two years The Farmhouse and the Chocolate Biscuit co-existed under one roof.”
Several years later Conn’s inventive and flavorful cuisine bent toward fresh, whole, natural foods using quality ingredients, locally sourced when possible, has now come to fruition at the FIT Biscuit. In addition to her fresh take on food, Conn continues to provide practical lifestyle coaching methods to create interactive and educational programs that anyone can benefit.
On the second Tuesday of each month, the Fit Biscuit will offer a series called ‘Edible Education’ beginning at 12 p.m. to 1 p.m. The class includes a lunch and learn style class setting with topics such as ‘What Makes Certain Foods ‘Super’? The next class will be on Tuesday, November 13.
Although the FIT Biscuit is still available for special events, the new eatery no longer facilitates tea parties.
For more information including daily menus, educational classes, and ready-to-order prepared foods, visit The Chocolate Biscuit or Food Integrated Training on Facebook.