I have come to my last installment in my four-part series on learning how to cook vegan dishes. For my final lesson, Vicki Chelf, local vegan chef and author of the book Vicki’s Vegan Kitchen:  Learning to Cook with Sanity, Compassion, and Taste visited my kitchen. She basically approved of the set-up but suggested eliminating some of the clutter. This led me to ponder: Why do kitchens become repositories for mail? (But then I realized I had improved dramatically from my first apartment in Manhattan, where I used one of my kitchen [...]

As many readers of This Week in Sarasota know, I am the mother of a toddler, and I started on this virgin vegan journey in an effort to instill healthy eating habits in my daughter Daphne right from the start. Those of us who have been pregnant know that prenatal eating is a highly regulated affair. Obviously, you give up alcohol and sushi; but strangely enough, even seemingly harmless lunchmeat is taboo. At one of the most joyous times in a woman’s life, she must also be extremely vigilant about [...]

Now that I have declared myself a virgin vegan, I have heard from others in the community who are exploring healthier diets as well. There is something so exhilarating about making better choices about the way we live our lives. It prompts us to examine other areas as well. For example, I have also been ramping up my yoga practice (as much as possible with a toddler to care for) and examining my skincare products as a complement to my healthier food choices.  My plan is to increase my fruit [...]

As a mother of a toddler and a practicing yogi, I have been thinking a lot lately about my family’s diet. First of all, you should know that not only am I a virgin vegan, but I am also a stranger to the kitchen. I know how to work our Keurig coffee maker, toast bread, make tuna salad and peanut butter and jelly, and that’s about the extent of it. I think my kitchen phobia stems from a combination of an intense desire to be a feminist who wouldn’t be [...]