La Dolce Vegan!. Sarah Kramer
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up and pretend it’s not there).
“Oh my God,” he says. “My girlfriend and I love your book. Your books. We think they’re brilliant. You’re brilliant. I can’t believe I’m meeting you.”
I’m like, “Aww, thanks. That’s so cool. It’s nice to meet you.” Yadda yadda yadda.
Then I pay for my groceries, say goodbye to the nice man, and walk out to the car with a big grin on my face.
Gerry takes my hand. “There’s your extra love,” he says.
Then I bawl.
Like a baby.
The universe is so good to me sometimes. I need to learn how to pay better attention.
INSPIRATION IS EVERYWHERE
Writing cookbooks takes a lot of time. I don’t think people realize how time-consuming it is: recipe testing, tweaking, testing again. Walking the dog. Shopping for ingredients, writing blurbs, and making sure there are no typos. More recipe testing, eating, and doing the dishes. My God – the dishes!
By the time I was finished with The Garden of Vegan, I was convinced I would never go into the kitchen again. I was sooo tired of food and recipes consuming the better part of my day. I stopped caring about fancy meals and wanted recipes that I didn’t have to think about. I wanted to look in my cupboard and say, “I have potatoes. What can I make with potatoes?” then find a recipe that would take 30 minutes or less to prepare and then eat.
For the new book, I started working on recipes that were simple: minimal ingredients with maximum taste. One of the biggest complaints received about the first two books was that the portions were too large; many of you are only cooking for one, sometimes two people. Almost all of the recipes in La Dolce Vegan make 2 large servings or 4 small servings. You can chow down until you have to undo your pants to make room, or save some for lunch the next day. And all the recipes double easily . . . so voilà! Instant dinner party.
There are a few fancy entrées here that take more than 30 minutes to prepare; these are marked with a little clock beside them so you know they’ll take a little more time. But don’t let that clock freak you out – the recipes are still easy to make. The rest of the recipes can be made lickety-split. There are also a few recipes that make larger portions, so be sure to invite some friends over when you make those.
Besides the fun of recipe creating, testing, and tweaking, my biggest joy with this third book has been testing reader-submitted recipes. They’ve come from all over the world and it has been so much fun testing them all.
Writing books is a lonely, solitary job, especially without a co-author to work with. Most of my time is spent alone in the kitchen or on the computer. Thank goodness for the Internet or I’d go mad. GoVegan.net has a wonderful community of people who kept me company as I wrote this book. Some of my favorite submissions came from Shirley a.k.a. Wolffie, who lives down in Davie, Florida. She provided me with some of the best recipes I’ve ever had the pleasure of testing. So if you’re looking for a new recipe to start with, start with one of Wolffie’s.
As the recipes rolled in and I started to test them, I became quite friendly with a few of the readers. There were the people who have been around since day one, like Dilip, Random Hag, Auntie Bonnie, Shoshana, Josh, and Jennifer. And then there were some new friends: Wolffie, Debbie, and Danielle, to name a few. Every day I would check my inbox to find words of encouragement, recipes, and even more encouragement.
It’s been such a joy to write this third book because of all your input. Thank you.
K.I.S.S.
Knights In Satan’s Service? No. Keep It Simple, Stupid!
I try to keep things simple. The less stress I have in my life, the better I feel.
It’s all about choice. You can’t stop a wave from crashing down on you, but what you can do is choose to let it wash over you. Instead of exhausting yourself by fighting back the wave, try going with the flow. Enjoy the ride, because with more experiences comes new wisdom, new confidence, and a really wonderful life.
I don’t think I’m the only one who gets overwhelmed. I get heaps of emails via GoVegan.net from people who are panicked by the thought of how difficult it might be to go vegan. Most are daunted by the thought of to read every single ingredient on every single package of food, or stressed about the hunt for obscure ingredients and the high cost of vegan specialty items. They all seem to want vegan recipes that are EASY to make with easy-to-find ingredients.
My goal with How it all Vegan!, The Garden of Vegan, and now La Dolce Vegan is to make veganism fun, accessible, and easy. But most importantly – to make it taste good.
So. Here it is. My new baby. Love it. Hug it. Get it dirty.
I love you guys.
xoxo
SARAH
MY LIFE
YOU CAN ALWAYS MAKE ANOTHER CHOICE
Sometimes it seems like our choices don’t affect the world around us, but each of us can make a difference. Every single decision we make either propels us forward or holds us back. But whatever happens, we can always make another choice.
As I started to prepare my thoughts for writing a third cookbook, I spent some time looking through my GoVegan.net scrapbook. I merrily looked at the original version of How It All Vegan!, which you may not know, started as a small, 50-page homemade zine. It was printed out on my laser printer and bound by hand in my living room. I laughed as I looked through all the rejection letters we received for How It All Vegan! and then got a little shiver as I looked at the first contract we signed with Arsenal Pulp Press. As I re-read some of the fan mail, I got a little misty-eyed, and I realized that I’ve been doing this for close to 10 years.
How did this happen? How did this suddenly become my life’s passion? That is what the books and GoVegan.net have become – a passion. I’m not rolling in mountains of green dough from writing these books; more like rolling around in vegan dough. Literally. Baking my ass off so you guys can have some fun and easy vegan recipes to make.
There comes a time when you reach certain milestones in your life when it is beneficial to stop and reflect. Like when you turn 13 and you leave childhood behind and start your life as a teen. Or the day you turn 30 and realize with glee that you’re no longer considered a girl but can now walk around as a woman! Hear me roar! Or when you get your first kiss, your first tattoo, or the day you feel the warm sun on your skin and you realize that after a long dreary winter it finally feels like spring. It’s those small moments in your life when you stop and actually pay attention to what’s happening around you. I think it’s healthy to stop and take stock in where you’re headed in life; reassess the choices that you’ve made thus far and determine if things you were doing 10 years ago, or even 10 minutes ago, are still the things you want to be doing now.
I didn’t watch scary movies. In 1979, I went to see The Amityville Horror in the theater and I peed my pants, I was so scared. I was 11; to pee your pants at that age was almost as horrifying as the movie. On the walk home, with my hoodie wrapped around my waist to cover my pants, I vowed never to watch another scary movie.
Well, it hit me the other day – I’m a grown-up, damn it! I know the difference between real and fake. I know that movies are fake. So I decided that the vow I made as a young person was not what I wanted to do now, so my husband and I have been watching scary movies like crazy. And it’s actually been kind of fun.
So what about veganism, then?
I was raised a vegetarian since birth, so I didn’t choose it as my own path to walk down. It was all I knew. As a curious teenager, I “experimented”