thank you to Shirley Wolff, a.k.a. Wolffie, for donating some of the best vegan recipes I’ve ever had the pleasure of testing. Also, thank you for keeping me company via the Internet on those lonely days when I never thought I’d get through this book alone. You are a sweetheart. Thank you, Shirley!
Thank you to my Wednesday Night Girls: Claire for being so bootyliscious, Hayley for always making me laugh, and Sarah M for all the chopped walnut suggestions. Thank you for all your insight, laughter, brainstorming ideas, and junk food binges. You ladies make “Girls Night” my favorite night of the week. Jennifer Stacy – I don’t know what I would do without your no-bullshit way of looking at life. You are my voice of reason and I treasure you. Shoshana Sperling – I’m madly in love with you and I don’t care who knows! You inspire me to be creative and not to be afraid to express myself.
Thank you to all the ladies in the Wild Cherry Scooter Club! You girls rock. Thanks to the boys in the Royal Crowns. You ain’t so tough, but you sure are cute! Thanks to Frontline Films (FrontlineFilms.net) for helping me get over my fear of zombies. Thanks to Romalotti (LaymanBooks.com). Thanks to Cheryl for helping keep Fergus so fancy. Thanks to everyone at Tattoo Zoo (TattooZoo.net). Oh, by the way . . . Danica . . . you’re fired.
Thanks to Wendy, Tracy, and Emma for totally getting my Go-Go’s obsession. Thanks to Jane Wiedlin, Kathy Valentine, Belinda Carlisle, Gina Schock, and Charlotte Caffey for writing the soundtrack of my life. Thanks to Ad Rock – you know you love me. Don’t fight it.
Thanks to: Teresa, Graham, and Maury, for loving me from afar; Paula, for helping me clear out the cobwebs in my brain; Gail, for always knowing where I’m hurting, and rubbing it away; and Charlotte, for taking such pretty pictures of me. And let’s not forget my lawyer Ron: thanks for all your help.
Writing books can be a lonely, solitary job, so thank you to CBC Radio for keeping me company during my time in the kitchen, especially the shows “GO” with Brent Bambury and “Definitely Not the Opera” with Sook-Yin Lee. You made Saturday my favorite day to work.
Thank you to anyone else I forgot to list by name. You know I love you. Don’t be like that. And for those of you who live out of town – why do you live so far away? I wish you lived closer . . . I miss you so much – so write me already! Thank you all for your support. You know who you are and you know I love you.
Lastly, thanks to Tanya Barnard, who in 1996 came to me with an idea to write a cookbook as a homemade gift project that we could give our friends and family for X-mas. That little snowflake of an idea rolled into a giant snowball called How It All Vegan and the rest is history.
It’s a new veginning, my friends. Let’s see where it takes us! Enjoy the book!
xoxo
SARAH
“Nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight. You gotta kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.” – Bruce Cockburn
Well, here we are. Again. Book number three. Are you ready for it?
I GET REALLY EXCITED BY ORDINARY THINGS
The scent of fresh basil. The crunch of an empty sun-bleached clamshell as my foot runs across it on the beach. The deep, soft sigh of my dog as he’s about to fall asleep. The smell of my kitchen when I’m baking bread. For me, all these tiny moments add up to a life worth living: a life I never thought I could have and a life that I never knew existed.
It has taken me years to understand that my life is happening now – right in front of me. So pay attention, damn it! I no longer look anxiously at the horizon for what’s coming next or look behind me with regret at the things I could have done differently. Now, I stand with my feet planted firmly where I’m at today. Today is happening right now, and it’s an opportunity to shine.
Each book I write reflects my needs and my life at the time. With How It All Vegan!, it was all about how to make my life as a new vegan easy. I was really missing conventional recipes, so the book was chock full of comfort food. The Garden of Vegan was an extension of the first book, but with a more grown-up, contemporary flair. It was when I was finally comfortable in my veganism and wanted to eat some good food.
La Dolce Vegan comes at a time when I find myself multi-tasking to the nth degree. I’m busy running a tattoo shop, maintaining the GoVegan.net website, testing and creating recipes, taking photos, making sure my dog and my husband get enough exercise. I always seem to be working on eight million projects all at once. So lately I’ve been looking for ways to live a simpler life.
Sometimes I want to spend a little extra time in the kitchen, making something fancy for guests or for a romantic evening at home with the husband. I love to peruse the shelves in Chinatown or the health food stores looking for interesting and unusual ingredients. I enjoy working in the kitchen perfecting new dishes.
But most of the time, I don’t want to spend hours planning my next meal. I don’t have a lot of free time to muck about in the kitchen and I suspect you don’t either. I want to walk in the door, bang some pots together, and eat so I can get to work on the rest of my life.
CHANGE IS GOOD, RIGHT? RIGHT?
I’m not good with change. In fact, it freaks me out, and that makes me laugh at myself because change happens every second of the day. You’d think I would have the hang of it by now.
So if something changes, it rocks my world. I get all panicky and think I can’t handle it; I stress, bitch, moan, and feel like everything is too complicated. But now, if the last few years have taught me anything, I try to take a deep breath and repeat my new mantra: “Change is good. Change is good.”
When Tanya Barnard, my co-author on How it all Vegan! and the Garden of Vegan, decided to leave our partnership to pursue a career in nursing, I had to have a really long talk with myself about whether I wanted to continue or not. Who was I without my sidekick? Did I still have things to say? Did I still have more recipes inside of me? Was turning a sequel into a trilogy something I was prepared to do on my own? I had a bit of an identity crisis.
So I took a deep breath, and I reminded myself that change is good. I’ve learned that with every change, a new opportunity presents itself. As soon as I let go of my fear and panic . . . in walked the readers.
I AM THE GIRL OF 100 LISTS
I am about to get my period and it’s like I’m on a giant roller coaster of emotions. You know the PMS drill: happy one second, murderous the next.
I’m having a great day. I’m happy as a clam as I drive my dog back from the doggie hairdresser. But somewhere on the drive home, I start thinking about the new book and start unnecessarily stressing myself out and feeling down, shitty, and frazzled – ready to scream and cry and laugh and freak out. Like I said . . . PMS.
I get home and figure out what to make for dinner, then go pick my husband Gerry up from work. As we swing by the grocery store on the way home, he’s being his usual fun loving self, but today it was really getting on my nerves.
I say to him, “I’m sensitive today. Please just give me some extra love!”
At the grocery store, we get the usual stuff, and as I’m snuggling Gerry while we wait at the check-out counter, I feel like I’m on the verge of tears and laughing at the same time because my pre-period has me feeling insane.
Then suddenly someone taps me on the shoulders and asks, “Excuse me, are you the girl who wrote The Garden of Vegan?”
“Why, yes. Yes