10 Questions: Vegan Rock Star with Toronto Pig Save's Anita Krajnc...

 

Anita Krajnc is a longtime vegan as well as a social justice educator and scholar who puts her principles into action by tirelessly drawing the public’s attention to the thousands of animals who are transported to three slaughterhouses in Toronto each day. She co-founded Toronto Pig Save in 2010 after taking a walk with her dog, Mr. Bean, and seeing pigs on a transport truck who, other than being terrified, didn’t look so different from the dog she loved. Since its inception, compassionate activists meet three times a week and give these animals, most suffering after being transported very long distances in all temperatures, water through slats in the trucks in the warm months and a few words of kindness as they bear witness before they are taken into the slaughterhouse to be killed. By bearing witness, Toronto Pig Save and the other animal vigil efforts that have sprung up across the globe in recent years aspire to create a “glass wall” that exposes the public to the suffering that so many are shielded from seeing and encourages people to take empowered actions toward living in alignment with compassionate values.

That doesn’t sound too controversial, right? Believe it or not, Anita has been in the news, including a big story in The Guardian, in recent weeks for the “crime” of giving water to pigs on a transport truck on a hot day last June as she and her fellow activists have been doing for years; this time, the driver jumped out of the truck and started yelling at her to stop. Two months later, a police officer showed up at her door and informed her that the farm owner had filed a criminal complaint against her. As Anita wrote in the Toronto Star, “On a sweltering June day, I offered water to hot and thirsty pigs. Now I’m in court, facing a criminal mischief charge that carries a $5,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.” Untold numbers of sensitive animals die in horrific oven-like conditions in these metal trucks in the summer as well as freezing temperatures as they are transported year-round to slaughterhouses – not to mention all the suffering before they are crowded into transport trucks – and what Anita did is the crime?

I am honored that Anita is this week’s vegan rock star and I would urge everyone to please sign one of the petitions, share this interview, check out and share their videos and consider joining an established vigil near you or creating one in your community. Anita’s next pre-trial date is December 15; please throw some support behind this amazing woman and the witness movement she has spearheaded.

1. First of all, we’d love to hear your “vegan evolution” story. How did you start out? Did you have any early influences or experiences as a young person that in retrospect helped to pave your path?

I was quite disconnected growing up in Toronto. I loved dogs but salivated at the sight of a pig roast as a teenager. I remember my sister didn’t want to eat meat when we were growing up but I didn’t think about why not. When I went to university in the 1990s, I saw a poster advertising the screening of the UK documentary "The Animals Film" — the first graphic film of its kind, narrated by Julie Christie. There was a scene of farmers “joking” about a “rape rack” for sows. As a feminist, I found it mind-boggling and till then didn’t know about the horrific animal abuse in animal agriculture. I had nightmares for three days, went vegetarian and became an animal activist. I never heard of the word vegan and went through a long phase of “free-range” eggs. I finally went vegan in 2006 after students, who I thought were very radical, persuaded me and after I saw the film "The Witness" with Eddie Lama.

I moved back to Toronto in 2006 and lived within a kilometer of a pig slaughterhouse and thought, “Somebody should do something!” I even asked an active animal group outside of Toronto to organize a demo, but nothing came of it. Then in 2010, I reached a new level of animal activism and organizing, one that absorbed my entire life, after I bore witness daily of pigs in transport trucks en route to a slaughterhouse near my home. It all started when I adopted Mr. Bean, a dog, for my Mom. We’d take our morning walks along Lake Shore and I saw 7 or 8 transport trucks carrying sad and terrified pigs in rush hour traffic. At the time, I was reading biographies by Romain Rolland, a French Nobel Laureate and vegetarian, who wrote on exemplary people with an eye on influencing his readers to follow suit. It worked! I read his works on Tolstoy, Gandhi and Ramakrishna and Vivekananda and how they all engaged in community organizing for years when there was an injustice in their community. Tolstoy and his family, for example, set aside more than a year in 1892 when there was a famine in Russia and helped set up more than 200 soup kitchens, raised funds, and asked for donations of food from around the world, including from the Quakers in Pennsylvania. If they acted in the face of injustice in their communities, then why shouldn’t all of us do the same? Witnessing the pig victims with their sad and terrified eyes in huge transport trucks heading to a slaughterhouse in my own backyard was an issue that involved me. I was responsible. I needed to act. Everything changed for me then. Animal rights became the number one priority in my life.

2. Imagine that you are pre-vegan again: how could someone have talked to you and what could they have said or shown you that could have been the most effective way to have a positive influence on you moving toward veganism?

Our group uses a love-based approach influenced by Tolstoy and Gandhi. I veer away from Francionists. But the truth is, the local animal rights student group at Queen’s University, where I was teaching, was “abolitionist” and insisted one cannot be animal rights without going vegan now. They won me over quickly. It was so easy going vegan—I had no idea! My only regrets are that someone hadn’t spoken to me earlier and made the absolutely clear case for veganism sooner.

3. What have you found to be the most effective way to communicate your message as a vegan? For example, humor, passion, images, etc.?

I believe in people being present and bearing witnessing first hand. Vladimir Chertkov, Tolstoy’s best friend and confidante, said it was important for everyone to “face it.” He wrote in his book on animal rights called One Life (1912):

The suffering of the animals killed for us is barely recognized and inflicts repulsion, rather than compassion. Instead of protecting suffering creatures, we protect ourselves by hiding away from this wicked bloody scene that is being performed by other people’s hands. Being more concerned with ourselves than with tortured animals, which are killed for us, we deprive them of the miracle of life, and we deprive ourselves of the highest joy of compassion towards living beings. We lose a chance to save them from futile torture and premature death.

A simple reminder around a dinner table that a meal being served consists of dead animal parts tends to kill the appetite and makes the diners indignant. Nothing more significantly reveals the disgusting and illegal nature of this action than the need to hide its true meaning from oneself.

To get a true notion of this matter one, first of all, has to face it. And the best way to literally “face” it is by visiting a slaughterhouse or a kitchen yard and first-hand witnessing the killing of livestock or poultry for our table. I have no doubt that the great majority of people who would do it several times with diligence very soon would recognize the unlawfulness of what is happening before their eyes.

In A Calendar of Wisdom, Tolstoy defined “bearing witness” as a duty: “When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to him [or her] who suffers, and try to help him[or her].”

Toronto Pig Save and The Save Movement uses photos and video in social media to help people vicariously see and experience the animal suffering, to show how each and every of the 60 billion farmed animals killed each year matters, and to break the disconnect by showing that each farmed animal is an individual just like a dog or cat.

4. What do you think are the biggest strengths of the vegan movement?

I strongly believe in participatory actions and the need to build a mass-based, grassroots movement for animal justice. Holding regular and frequent events on the streets is good for reaching new people but is also important in creating new animal activists, advocates and organizers. Gandhi said to Rev. Doke, his first biographer, change is a measure of the effort we put forth: Right prevailing over injustice will arrive not in some "dim and distant future" but "within a measurable time, the measure being the effort we put forth. Can you not make them see that real success lies in the effort itself, which in our case is passive resistance” or satyagraha. By bearing witness at slaughterhouses or doing regular DxE actions, it empowers people. People not only participate in the actions themselves, but then go home and are more vocal and organize events in their communities, at school and at work. Free vegan food giveaways are also powerful and necessary forms of activism.

5. What do you think are our biggest hindrances to getting the word out effectively?

All of us, vegan or not, need to see it as our duty to not turn away from animal suffering and environmental and social injustice, but to be present. For animals, it means speaking out at factory farms, slaughterhouses and “meat, dairy and egg” counters at supermarkets, restaurants and dinner tables in our communities—bearing witness from beginning to end. It’s really important to do more than talk, but to walk the talk. Tolstoy said, “Do not believe in words, yours or others; believe in the deeds”(A Calendar of Wisdom). It’s important to do more than sit behind a computer, but to be present at sites of injustice and organize as a community.

6. All of us need a “why vegan” elevator pitch. We’d love to hear yours.

We all love animals. Farmed animals suffer in the greatest numbers and we each can play a huge role to end this suffering! There are 60 billion farmed animals killed each year around the world. An average person, who loves animals, doesn’t realize they are killing about 100 animals a year for “meat”, eggs and dairy. Why love one but eat the other? Pigs are no different than dogs. There is also a global warming catastrophe occurring and there is no way we can stop it without a radical, planet-wide dietary shift towards a plant-based diet. Going vegan is not enough. In a community organizing approach every one is a leader. Each of us need to be an animal rights, environmental and social justice activist, advocate and organizer. If you care about animals and your children and grandchildren’s future, going vegan now and making animal justice organizing a priority in your life are the best things you can do. Ministering to the suffering and living a life of service is the true meaning in life.

7. Who are the people and what are the books, films, websites and organizations that have had the greatest influence on your veganism and your continuing evolution?

I read Tolstoy most days both his later fiction and all of his nonfiction. He was prolific and wrote about 600 books and articles and has a 90-volume archive, so there is no shortage of reading material! He had a spiritual awakening in the late 1870s and wrote a stream of books which explore the true meaning of life and offer ideas on steps to take: My Confession My Religion, What I Believe On Life, and What is Art? and “The First Step”—the latter essay recounts his heartbreaking visit to a slaughterhouse in Tula and suggests the first step in living the good life is to go vegetarian. His book on love and nonviolence, “The Kingdom of God Is Within You”  profoundly influenced Gandhi’s decision to choose nonviolent passive resistance in South Africa in the 1890s. His ideas of love, kindness, forgiveness, non-judgment, sharing, and nonviolent anarchism appear in fictional form in his short stories, for example, in the collection, Walk in the Light and 23 Tales. He, along with Gandhi, King, Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, Lois Gibbs and other community organizers, shape Toronto Pig Save and The Save Movement’s love-based, nonviolent, grassroots, community-organizing approach.

Animal Liberation Victoria and Patty Mark endlessly inspire with their innovative open rescues and Slaughterhouse Shutdown this week in which activists went into a pig slaughterhouse at night and sat inside the carbon dioxide gas chamber elevator, locked down, and shut the kill floor for hours. This direct action by Animal Liberation Victoria and Animal Liberation NSW is so profound—a stronger form of solidarity and bearing witness involving activists going as close as they can and trying to help—that I am still absorbing it. I think of Ramakrishna, a 19th century Indian prophet, who said upon witnessing a famine, that he would not move but sit there and share their fate until there was justice: “Ramakrishna thereupon sat down among the poor creatures and wept, declaring that he would not move from thence, but would share their fate. Croesus was obliged to submit and do the will of h/is poor priest.” (cited in Romain Rolland, The Life of Ramakrishna). I admire Chinese animal rights activists, as documented by Humane Society International, for more fully bearing witness, by stopping slaughterhouse trucks carrying dogs and cats and rescuing all the animals.

I see a place for all kinds of vegan activism, especially kind and love-based activism in different fields and areas. From my point of view, activism should take place wherever you are—wherever you live, work and play. Here are just some amazing groups and individuals who we’ve worked closely with. Gary TV’s Best Video You Will Ever See has incredible social media reach via videos; they have helped us get out raw footage told in a thoughtful and heartfelt way. Jo-Anne McArthur’s photography and writing for We Animals has changed the face of animal rights worldwide, inspiring awareness and change with her indelible images of suffering and rescued animals and the work of animal activists. PETA, the world’s largest animal rights group, has so many campaigns in so many countries, yet is so generous and giving to grassroots groups such as ours. I think Mercy for Animals’ factory farm and slaughterhouse investigations have done wonders in reaching the mainstream media. The worldwide grassroots activism of Direct Action Everywhere has made speaking out, interventions and disruptions not just a noble endeavor, but a positive requirement to stop animal abuse, slavery, torture and murder wherever it occurs before us. Like Spartacus and the slave revolts, they are not taking abuse lying down, but speaking out and acting in the strongest and clearest ways possible. For our new Climate Vegan campaign we’ve worked with Anna Pippus at Animal Justice and A Well-Fed World, an incredible intersectional group promoting vegan programs worldwide.

8. Burn-out is so common among vegans: what do you do to unwind, recharge and inspire yourself?

Each morning I think of 10 good things to do that day. Some involve immediate self-care, some are kind acts I hope to do, and others are animal rights activist tasks I need to complete. I find spending time with my animals, juicing, reading Tolstoy, and exercising on the self-care side of the list. The other acts of kindness towards others and living a life of service by completing animal activist tasks is, to me, the true meaning of life, as Tolstoy defines it, so I see these as also being part of my Self-care—the capital “s” in Self denotes the Unity of Life and that we are all one. Tolstoy wrote, in his short story, “Esarhaddon, King of Assyria”: “The life of a moment, and the life of a thousand years: your life and the life of all the visible and invisible beings in the world, are equal…Afterwards he went about as a wanderer through the towns and villages, preaching to the people that all life is one, and that when men wish to harm others, they really do evil to themselves.”

9. What is the issue nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like others to know more about?

I want nonviolent, vegan world, one that values and acts on love and truth, the way Tolstoy proposes. I think the true meaning in life is simply living a life of service, being kind, and building community through love-based, community organizing.

10. Please finish this sentence: “To me, being vegan is...”

Love, nonviolence, climate action… and one of two paths we humans can take on this planet: one involves selfish exploitation of animals, including people, and the Earth; the other is saving the planet, animals and ourselves by creating a nonviolent, vegan world, engaging in massive reforestation to absorb carbon out of the atmosphere and bring the carbon content down to safer levels (350 part per million, hence the name of the group 350.org, setting up a vast network of animal sanctuaries, and creating a socially just and simply a paradise on Earth!

How to Win the Lottery (Hint: It has Nothing to Do with You)

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I don’t really believe in sermons and Thoughtful Lessons make me think of Jack Handey in the worst kind of way but I do believe in acknowledging occasions and here we are near the end of another year and, given that, I am here and you are here and we here are so we should probably make the most of this time together.

This time of year makes most of us more introspective and I am no exception to that. I’ve always been a mix of equal parts enthusiasm for this fascinating world and crushing disappointment at how incapable we seem to be at learning from our collective mistakes; I am neither really an optimist nor a pessimist, though I’ve logged considerable time in either camp, and anyone who knows me well could most certainly vouch that “pragmatic” is one of the last adjectives that they’d use to describe me.

Truth be told, I am just trying to stay afloat in this life, as is everyone else, knowing how fortunate I am but also how much needless suffering there is while trying to keep my head above the waves of sadness that arise from living in the tension of knowing this. Sometimes I go under water from it all. You know how after you’re hit by a big wave and you’re surrounded by what feels like a wall of water, for a moment or two, you don’t know where you are in all of it, you don’t know if you’re sinking or rising or being pulled into deeper waters? All you can do is aim toward the light and hope that are heading in the right direction and that you will surface really soon. You break through, sputtering out water and gasping for air, but your heart is racing and you’re disoriented. You see the sky and maybe some seagulls and you’re scared but grateful. You’ll surface or you’ll drown. This would describe how I experience not sinking in a world with so much suffering.

Not too long ago, I did this little online exercise to see what could have happened to me if I were a Syrian refugee and had to choose between two increasingly demanding, frightening decisions until I reached my fate. If you haven’t done this yourself, I encourage you to try it. Through no fault of my own, the choices I made the first time based on the limited options available found me sold to militia after militia as a female. I tried again. The next time, I ended up in a Turkish refugee camp, separated from my family. My heart sank. I tried again. I was put in a refugee camp again, this time, thankfully, with my family. I had to try again and I drowned in the Mediterranean. On my sixth or seventh try, I finally made it to Manchester, UK, where I, presumably with my family, was penniless but had found asylum. This was just an exercise and the point was to show the unforeseeable but grave consequences of the limited choices desperate refugees are forced to make every day through no fault of their own. Perhaps your choices could lead you to sanctuary but more likely, they would lead to as bad or worse circumstances. The arbitrary and unpredictable nature of the fallout from your desperate choices is jarring: this is not about cunning, resilience or survival of the fittest. Let’s be clear here, there was no way to game the system. This is about stumbling on the invisible route that would thread the needle to lead you to safety with a million possible landmines ready to detonate along the way.

I could not stop trying until I made it to Manchester and even then, while relieved, what I mostly felt was anguish. Maybe I should not have done this a week after the horrific bloodbath in Paris but I couldn’t stop until I found safety. Then I shut my laptop and had a panic attack.

I could have been born in Syria. I could have been lucky enough to have been living in Paris but unlucky enough to have gone to a performance at Le Bataclan on a beautiful Friday night. I could have been born a black male who came across the wrong cop, or self-styled vigilante, at the wrong time. I could have had the stupendously bad fortune of being a turkey or a cow or a chicken or a piglet born into subjugation. Instead, through no achievement of my own, I wasn’t. Who knows what the future will bring but I can safely say that for now, I won a lottery of odds, all things given. I don’t live in Hawai’i or within access to the Redwoods but I have a warm house, relative safety, wonderful friends, a healthy family, a son and husband I adore, and, at this moment specifically, the world’s cutest kitten giving herself a bath on my desk within reach. I have opportunities and I have a future. My mother died after ten years of developing Alzheimer’s at a young age, I live the freelance writer’s life of job-to-job scrambling, the plumbing in our 120-year-old house behaves roughly like how you’d expect it to behave in a 120-year-old house but I still won the lottery. I’m not going to beat myself up over it – again, it wasn’t a choice – but I am going to recognize it for what it is: dumb luck. Threading the damn needle.

There was an expression coined many years ago and applied by Ann Richards to George H. W. Bush: “He was born on third base and he thought he hit a triple.” This is what sums up the attitude that is so offensive and appalling to me -- the profound arrogance of the relative few who don’t recognize the role that simple luck has played in the opportunities and status they enjoy. We need to see our advantages for what they are.

Instead of the immobilizing survivor’s guilt that flooded me when I finally “made it” to Manchester, my goal is to focus on making the most of the advantages I was being born to as an able-bodied, heterosexual human of white skin in the United States by raising awareness about those who are not so advantaged. I am thankful for what I’ve been born to but I am not delusional about it. Make no mistake, I’m mostly just lucky. If you’re reading this, you’re probably lucky, too.

Let’s make the most of it.

10 Questions: Vegan Foodie with Alan Roettinger...

 

I feel pretty blessed to be someone who gets sent vegan cookbooks on the regular. I have to say, as someone who remembers when bookstore shelves in the vegetarian cooking section were pretty sparse aside from the Moosewood machine, we are living at a time when an abundance of excellent titles seem to be released every week, each one more enticing than the previous. From comforting casserole recipes to Indian ones, tacos galore to artisan chocolate, there is a cookbook for every taste bud, craving and skill level. Chef and cookbook author Alan Roettinger is someone who has helped to raise the bar for what vegan food means with his accessible but exquisite recipes that elevate plant-based cuisine to its rightful status: luscious and flavorful, complex but not complicated, Alan shows us that vegan food is anything but bland, especially when we focus on the stars of the show, which are the plants themselves. With his new cookbook, The Almond Milk Cookbook: Over 100 Delicious Recipes, Alan explores the seemingly simple concept of preparing foods with almond milk and comes up with some fascinating results. I appreciate Alan’s engagement with the world (I'm lucky enough to be a Facebook friend so I know we share some political views) as well as his unabashed ability to enjoy the simple but rich pleasures of life

1. How did you start down this path of creating delicious food? Was a love for food nurtured into you? Did you have any special relatives or mentors who helped to instill this passion?

I grew up in Mexico, and the contrast between what my unadventurous American parents ate and what the Mexicans ate in itself was enough to start me down this path. I should qualify that; my father was very adventurous and fun-loving, but when it came to that exotic food, he wouldn’t even try it. He was, to his dying day, a pretty bland eater. When I was around ten or twelve, my older sister took me to a Danish delicatessen in Mexico City, called Konditori, and introduced me to something called cappuccino. It was not generally known in America yet, but a few continental cafés in Mexico served it. Just the sound of a cappuccino being made excited me. Then, the pastries! I had never had such fine confections. I was instantly hooked, on all of it—the elegance of the food, the miraculous coffee drink, that first hint of European eating style, and (for life) on caffeine. My sister was really cool.

Later, the day after I graduated from high school, a wonderful thing happened. On their way to divorce court, my parents drove me to the airport, where I boarded a plane and flew to Europe. The very first meal I had there, in a little restaurant in Luxembourg, pretty much sealed it for me. I was destined to not only eat marvelous food, but to participate in the creation of it.

I’d say that a love for food was definitely nurtured in me, not so much by a mentor as by events and random people. Mexico City was a major melting pot of cultures back then, and because my father was in the foreign service (C.I.A.), my parents knew people from all over the world. I remember going to the home of some Russians where I tasted a real chocolate charlotte for the first time. The deep, dark, rich flavor and amazing cloudlike texture stayed with me for twenty years, until I figured out how to make it myself. The passion was in me from birth, and all I really needed was exposure to truly fine food to catapult me on my way.


2. What was your diet like when you were growing up? Did you have any favorite meals or meal traditions? Do you carry them over today?

My parents ate pretty standard American food—fried chicken, breaded with that corn flake stuff, mashed potatoes, spaghetti with meat sauce (I can’t bring myself to call it “Bolognese”), pork chops, meatloaf, boiled-to-death vegetables with butter and salt. My mother had taught the maids how to make it, and they did a great job of reproducing the gringo food, day in, day out.

We had our big meal at lunchtime, when I got home from school. Then we’d all get up from the table, and I would go into the kitchen and watch the maids make their food, which was a universe away from what the gringos ate. Serious flavor. Spicy, delicious, exciting food. And the process was thrilling to watch—pounding fresh ingredients to a pulp in a volcanic stone mortar, flames leaping around pans as they slid it in, incredible smells! It was pure alchemy.

I think Thanksgiving stands out among my favorite family meals as a kid, probably because it was only once a year. Looking back, now that I know how to cook, it was pathetic food, starting with the pale, greasy pan gravy. Over the years, I’ve taken the essence of what we ate, found the roots—both the elegant and the rustic—and created a style of presenting those foods that is much truer to the foods themselves than anything I had as a child. Brussels sprouts are a quick example. As a child, I hated them, and could only choke down the minimum requirement insisted on by my mother. They were mushy to the point of being slimy and the flavor strongly evoked the smell of dirty socks. As I later realized, what made them so odious was simply that they had been systematically overcooked. Done properly with a little love and imagination, they’re quite good. So yes, I have carried most of that food over to the present, but not in their original, sadly unimaginative forms. What kind of chef would I be if I didn’t leave a dish better than I found it?

3. What is the best vegan meal you've ever had? Give us all the details!

I haven’t had it yet! Sorry—bad dodge (even if I do believe it’s absolutely true). The problem with this is, it’s like making Sophie’s choice, but with dozens to choose from. Maybe I’ll just pick one I had at a restaurant and one I made, and see what happens.

A few years ago, my publisher took me and a couple of other authors to dinner at an Ethiopian Restaurant in Toronto called Rendezvous. We had been to several Ethiopian restaurants in various cities before, as they reliably offer very good vegan food. This one was unforgettable. The waiter brought out the largest platter I’d ever seen, with what must have been fifteen or more different dishes, neatly piled around the bed of injera. It was spectacularly exquisite food, and as we were leaving, I went to pay my respects to the cooks. To my utter amazement, there was just one woman at the stove, and no one else but a young girl in the back washing dishes. I started to tell the cook how much I loved her food, but it was clear she didn’t understand English. So I put both hands to my mouth and blew her a big kiss. She answered with a radiant smile. Cooks have a way of communicating.

Now one of my own favorites. When I entertain guests, I like to create a degustation, a series of small tastes with different flavors, textures and temperatures. This gives me a chance to be inventive (which I like), surprise and delight my guests (which we all like), and serially bring the conversation to a sudden standstill, as overwhelmed palates find themselves far too busy absorbing layers of flavor to participate in making words (a phenomenon every cook knows and loves).

I started with a simple canapé: crostini toasted with garlic olive oil, covered with an oval strip of roasted red pepper, topped with a small quenelle of pistachio cream and garnished with pomegranate seeds and chopped parsley.

As a formal starter, I served an asparagus-fava bean soup, sweetened slightly by sweating about two cups of finely diced shallots for half an hour before adding the cut asparagus and vegetable broth, and cooking just five minutes, to preserve flavor and color. Then I puréed the mixture with a cup of chopped Italian parsley and two cups of peeled fava beans. I served it in small bowls, garnished with a large asparagus tip, cut in half lengthwise, one piece cut side up and the other across it, cut side down, forming an X, with a fresh fava bean on each side, surrounded by a flourish of Spanish Hojiblanca EVOO.

For the second course, I experimented with some cute little orange pumpkin shaped pasta I found called “zucchette” (pumpkinettes). I hadn’t used them before, but the shopkeeper assured me they would keep their shape when cooked, so I took the plunge. I made a “pumpkin” sauce with a hubbard squash harvested from my wife’s garden, a rich-tasting delight with a deep rusty orange color. Very simple, it was just sautéed onion and garlic, the squash, vegetable broth, a few sprigs of fresh sage and bay leaves. When I puréed it, I added some soaked cashews to give it a little creaminess. I presented the dish garnished with quarter-inch lengths of chive (thankfully, my wife keeps us well-supplied with all the fresh herbs we need, even in the winter). I kept this one especially small—just a few spoonfuls—because I didn’t want the pasta to satiate anyone (I was the only one at the table with Italian blood).

Next, I went back to asparagus, which no one seemed to mind. I made a simple version of “grilled asparagus with romesco sauce,” by blanching four-inch spears in vegetable broth with just enough EVOO to leave them silky, and barely tender. I arranged them side by side on small square salad plates, piped the romesco across them generously in a tight zig zag pattern, and garnished them with shichimi togarashi (a Japanese “seven flavor chile” mixture of sesame seeds, orange peel, poppy seeds, hot paprika, red chile, Szechuan pepper, ground ginger and nori flakes). The gently assertive heat from the sauce and spice mixture helped perk appetites after the pasta course.

There were nonvegans present, so to assuage the protein deficiency paranoia (which I knew would be there, even if no one mentioned it), I served beluga lentils with sautéed escarole. This is a very simple dish, but thoroughly gratifying. The combination of lentils and greens is a popular one throughout the Middle East and many Mediterranean cuisines, and for good reason (it’s freaking delicious). I live at around 7400 feet, so I always start lentils and beans separately, in a pressure cooker. While they were cooking, I stewed finely diced onion, celery and carrot in a small amount of EVOO for about 40 minutes. Then I added the lentils, a little smoked paprika, Aleppo pepper, salt and a bay leaf, and cooked it all until the lentils were tender and the juices had formed a rich sauce. Separately, I simmered 12 cloves of garlic, sliced about a quarter-inch thick, in a few tablespoons of EVOO until they turned a light tan color, then poured them, oil and all, into a small bowl to cool (they continue cooking for a few minutes as they cool). I reheated a couple of tablespoons of the garlic-infused oil in a large pot and added a large head of escarole, washed and very coarsely chopped. Escarole cooks fairly quickly, so I pulled it off the heat when it was still slightly chewy and added it to the lentils. After that, I let it rest until serving time, so all I needed to do was reheat it. I served the lentils and escarole in low bowls, garnished with the lightly caramelized sliced garlic and oil, and made sure everyone knew that the origin of both the black lentils and Aleppo pepper was northern Syria, and this was my tribute to our suffering brethren over there.

Second to last, as a palate cleanser, I served a simple salad of frisée lettuce and watercress, dressed in a vinaigrette made with fresh lime juice, brown rice vinegar, freshly ground black, white, pink and green peppercorns, and vanilla bean-infused walnut oil. I garnished this with cacao nibs and a few roasted cashews, as a subtle liaison between dinner and dessert.

For the final course, I served three small (but decent size) quenelles of Abate Fetel pear sorbet, radiating out from the center of the plate, with a cardamom-spiked dark chocolate sauce, pooled between them, and tall oven-dried pear chips planted in each quenelle. The sorbet is very simple. I just poached five Abate Fetel pears, cut into chunks with the skin on, in a light organic cane sugar syrup with a split vanilla bean, until very tender. Then I removed the vanilla bean and puréed the pears with some of the syrup and stirred in a spoonful of fresh Meyer lemon juice. I chilled it for a few hours and then froze it in an ice cream maker. I reheated some of the remaining poaching syrup and whisked in an ounce and a half of chopped dark chocolate and a quarter-cup of fine Dutch process cocoa. When it was smooth, I poured it into a bowl, stirred in a little freshly crushed cardamom seed, and set it in the refrigerator until serving time. To make the pear chips, I cut three pears in half lengthwise and then used a mandoline to cut thin cross-sections, about 2 mm thick. I brushed them with the remaining vanilla-pear syrup and set them on baking pans, lined with parchment, lightly greased with coconut oil. I baked them at 300 degrees for about 20 minutes, until they were lightly browned. As they cooled, they became firm and crisp, with slightly frilly edges. There were plenty left over after assembling the dessert, so the next day I brushed these on both sides with melted and tempered chocolate for a crunchy (heavenly) treat. [Ed. note: That was all, Alan? Slacker!]


4. If you could prepare one meal or dessert for anyone living or dead, who would it be for and what would you create?

What a great question! The answer may be disappointing. There is one person I always look forward to cooking for, with both excitement and trepidation. As I mentioned in the acknowledgements page in Extraordinary Vegan, “He is a man who truly understands what perfection is and why it’s so important to reach for it. Trying to hit that spot, to gratify his discerning palate, is what launched my entire career. For this, and for the kindness and respect he has always shown me, I owe a debt I can never repay.” There is a love and great respect, which is ample reason to want to prepare a meal for him, but then there also is that very high standard, which challenges me to the core, pulling out the very best I have in me. There has been nothing in my life to match that feeling.

I’m sorry to tell you, however, that I have no idea what I would make, because one thing that never works with him is to come with preconceived ideas. It has to come from a pure inspiration (the purer and more inspired the better). I can say, though, that I will do my best to go beyond myself. Who is this person? Again, sorry, but the operative word in “private chef” is not “chef,” but “private.” C’est la vie.

5. What do you think are common mistakes in vegan cooking and how do you avoid them?

I think there are two possible mistakes in some vegan cooking. The first is when people try to cook without understanding the fundamentals. In this, vegans are no different from nonvegans. It’s important to learn how to do something if you want it to come out right. You can always bend or even break the rules, but if you want to be successful, first you have to know what they are. It may seem arbitrary or rigid, but people have been cooking for as long as human beings have existed (indeed, it’s what originally made us different from all other animals), and they’ve passed down some serious learning.

The other is that many vegans try to bring the very food they’ve come to reject into their new paradigm. When I decided to stop eating animal products, I turned my back on them, said goodbye, and never tried to imitate them. I know this is unorthodox in the vegan world, but that’s the way I am. I knew there was never going to be a plant-based foie gras, gorgonzola, tallegio, venison Wellington, osso buco, salmon with sorrel cream sauce, or any of the hundreds of my other favorite delights from the animal exploitation world. And I knew that none of the imitations would ever fool my palate, so why insult my standards with them? Better to simply close the chapter, and the door, and move on.

My cuisine has always been vegetable-driven, because I understood from an early age that all the nuance and brilliance of flavor comes from the plant kingdom. People get all moony over “grass-fed” meat for a reason (and it’s not compassion for the animal). So my advice to vegan cooks is to make a clean break. Forget and forsake the meat and dairy paradigm once and for all. Think like an herbivore—someone who has never even had a thought about eating anything but plants. Humans are omnivorous, but that only means we can eat all kinds of food; it doesn’t mean we must or that we should. The plant kingdom has infinitely more variety, subtlety and deliciousness to offer than the animal kingdom—not to mention fiber, antioxidants and phytonutrients. Why remain addicted to the animal kingdom, which represents more a culture of death and decay than anything genuinely delightful? Get me started.

6. What ingredients are you especially excited about at the moment?

Well, it’s fall heading into winter, so top of the list would be pomegranates, fuyu persimmons, satsuma tangerines, Buddha hand citron, pears, apples, chestnuts, and (if I’m lucky) the sexiest fruit on the planet, figs! Also, the last of the artichokes, fennel (always better in winter), Jerusalem artichokes and kohlrabi. Then there are the year-round spices, of which my current favorites are Spanish smoked hot paprika, Aleppo pepper, cardamom and saffron. Oh—and chocolate (duh!), always. That said, I’m always open to finding totally new ingredients—the kind I’ve never even heard of before, which even after over 30 years of cooking almost every day, is a relatively frequent experience. Diversity is one of nature’s most divine attributes.

7. What are your top three cuisines from around the world?

Ooh, that’s hard to narrow down (and I do dislike narrow). I keep discovering new ones. But number one is easy; Mexican will always be like coming home for me. What a lot of people outside Mexico don’t know is that even though it has a lot of animal products associated with it, the real Mesoamerican diet is primarily plant-based. One of my favorite comfort foods is calabacita con jitomate (zucchini stewed with tomato and cinnamon) Okay, so the cinnamon is an import from Asia, post-conquest, but then so is cilantro. Again, all the variety and subtlety of flavor comes from the plant foods. Second, in dearness to my heart, would be Indian. It is one of the most varied, complex and sophisticated cuisines I know, with very ancient roots and techniques, joining health and sublime pleasure together seamlessly. Sadly, it’s literally impossible to get the taste exactly right without using ghee, but I’ve gotten close enough for vegan with coconut oil. As far as number three, I’m truly stumped. I love French, Italian, Moroccan, Japanese and all Middle Eastern cuisines almost equally. But then, I love food, period.

8. Who or what has been most influential to you on your vegan path? Individuals, groups, books, films, etc. included.

In order of appearance: (1) The people at Book Publishing Company, who impressed me very much when we worked together on my first book, Omega 3 Cuisine (vegetarian, not vegan). (2) My second book, Speed Vegan, which was a project I was given, from which I never quite escaped (it’s what inspired me to go vegan). (3) Jonathan Safran Foer’s beautifully written book, Eating Animals, which I read while I was working on Speed Vegan. (4) Summerfest. My first exposure to a no-holds-barred vegan extravaganza. (5) The heartfelt enthusiasm and sweetness I encountered in most vegans I met, many of whom were eager to help me promote my books and succeed. They reminded me of the late sixties and seventies, when revolution was in the air and there was a palpable sense that we were on the cusp of a new age of enlightenment (we were, and we are). (6) Being in an all-vegan audience at the premiere of “Vegucated," at a theater in Toronto. Like a giant happy family. Great fun, massive energy boost. (7) People, too many to list, but some who made an indelible impression (for different reasons): Gene Baur, Victoria Moran, Brenda Davis, Jo Stepaniak, Caryn Hartglass, Donna Benjamin, Robert Cheeke, Lisa Shapiro (blessings and peace be upon her sweet, ever-giving soul), and, well, you, Marla! There are others, and if any of them are reading this, no slight intended or implied. You know who you are!

9. What issue is nearest and dearest to your heart that you would like people to know more about?

Peace. The possibility (and the necessity) of experiencing peace. Of all the things I’m sure about, I’m absolutely certain that the future of our species—indeed the planet and every species on it—depends on our ability to transform from self-centered, ignorant beings to self-actualized conscious beings. Peace is possible.

We all have the inherent capability to turn our focus within and find the source of peace at the core of our being. Our longing for it is expressed in everything we do, however contrary or unrelated to peace our activities may be. Another, perhaps more appealing word for it is bliss—the state of completion where peace, love, happiness, consciousness, contentment, joy, fulfillment are all happening at the same time. Every creature seeks this, consciously or unconsciously, and the only way for all of us to live together in harmony is for each of us to attain it. It is entirely doable. I’ve spent the last 43 years practicing the art of peace, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. I will openly admit that I’m still not very good at it, but even on my worst days, it remains possible for me. If I can do it, anyone can (seriously).

I hope everyone who reads this will agree, or at the very least become curious about the possibility of finding the peace within themselves. Life is short. I used to say this back when I was in my early twenties (what did I know about it, right?), but when I hit 60, it became all too real for me. I’m turning 63 in a week, and that means that, best case scenario (I live to be 100), I’ve only got 13,505 days left. And the older I get, the faster days fly by. I didn’t come here to write books. I came here to get something, and I got it. Now I have to make sure I still have it when I leave, so the whole thing will not have been a waste of time. Self-knowledge is the prize, guys. Seek it, find it, feel it, keep it close. If you get frustrated in your search, don’t give up; ask for help, and know that help will come. Nothing is dearer to my heart.

10. Last, please finish this sentence. "To me, veganism is…"

To me, veganism is one very natural step in human evolution, as crucial in our development as picking our knuckles up and straightening our spine. But I have to say, I’m uncomfortable with anything that ends with “ism.” To me, it’s more about becoming conscious and taking responsibility for it. No ism to follow, no rules to keep me on the straight and narrow. It’s just a matter of staying with the constantly opening and elevating of my awareness and following the desire of my own heart. Being vegan is not a goal or even an activity for me. It’s the natural outcome of being aware. I can feel it in my body, because my health and vitality are improved (and as I age, this becomes increasingly important, believe me). I can see it in the eyes of all creatures; that “golden rule” is not just for humans. I can see it in the environment; filth and degradation are not nature’s way, and if we don’t get with the program, nature will turn on us like the plague our species is fast becoming.

The more I practice the inner experience I mentioned in my answer to question #9, the more I’m compelled to seek kindness and compassion, to try to convert my baser instincts of competition and accumulation to my higher ones of cooperation and giving. It’s not an “ism” to me. It’s a necessity. I’m not there yet, but I’m well on my way.

Alan was generous enough to share some of the recipes he mentioned for his epic answer to #3. Here you go! (Thanks, Alan!)

Romesco Sauce (from Extraordinary Vegan)

Makes 5 cups

A staple of the cuisine of Catalonia, in Northeastern Spain, romesco sauce is a profoundly gratifying condiment. It is traditionally served with grilled foods, where indeed it excels, and it goes very well with boiled or baked potatoes. It also makes a compelling dip, an assertive sandwich spread, and an irresistible thing to lick off one’s fingers. The quantity may seem excessive, and you should feel free to cut it in half. However, I’ve learned that with exquisite dishes that require a little work, you might as well make a lot while you’re at it. You won’t be sorry, believe me.

6 red peppers

2 cups hazelnuts, roasted and skins removed

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/2 cup flax oil

24 cloves roasted garlic

3 tablespoons Spanish smoked hot paprika

3 tablespoons tomato paste

1 teaspoon hot red chile powder

1 teaspoon salt (plus more as needed)

Preheat the broiler on high. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil.

Quarter the peppers lengthwise and remove the stems and membranes. Don’t worry about any seeds that may adhere—they will actually add flavor. Trim the pointed tips so they will lie flat, cut side down. Put the peppers on the prepared baking sheet and broil until the skins are evenly blackened, about 10 to 15 minutes. Immediately put the peppers in a small bowl and cover tightly with a pot lid, a plate, or aluminum foil. Repeat with the remaining peppers. Let steam in the bowl until barely warm, about 15 minutes. Uncover and pour cold water into the bowl to loosen the skins. Remove and discard the skins.

Put the peppers in a blender. Add the hazelnuts, vinegar, olive oil, flax oil, garlic, paprika, tomato paste, chile powder, and salt. Process until smooth, stopping from time to time, to scrape down the sides.

Stored in jars in the refrigerator, the romesco sauce will keep for two weeks. It will be long gone by then, of course.

Pistachio Cream (from The Almond Milk Cookbook)

Makes about 1½ cups

Mildly sweet, this is like the spirit of pistachios, in cloud form. It can swing from sweet to savory, too, so keep that in mind. I made a Middle Eastern sort of hors d’oeuvre with roasted red pepper, pistachio cream and pomegranate seeds once that was scary-good.

1 cup raw shelled pistachios

½ cup almond milk

2 tablespoons powdered sugar

1/8 teaspoon pistachio extract (optional)

Put the pistachios in a ceramic bowl and cover with boiling water. Let sit 2 hours, and then drain. Slip off the skins and discard.

Put the pistachios, almond milk, powdered sugar and optional pistachio extract in a blender and process until smooth. Use at once, or scrape into a small clean jar, cover tightly and refrigerate for up to 1 week.

Abate Fetel Pear Sorbet with Chocolate Sauce and Pear Chips

Makes 6 servings

8 Abate Fetel pears (yes, you can make it with Bartlett or d’Anjou)
3 cups water
1 cup organic evaporated cane juice sugar
1 vanilla bean, preferably Tahitian
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice
pinch of unrefined sea salt
1/2 teaspoon coconut oil
1 1/2 ounces dark chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup Dutch process cocoa
2 or 3 green cardamom pods

Set aside 3 of the best-looking pears with the thickest necks. Quarter the remaining 5 lengthwise and cut out the cores, including the tough strip leading up to the stem end. Cut them into 1 to 1 1/2-inch chunks and put them in a medium saucepan. Add the water and cane sugar. Split the vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape the seeds into the saucepan. Add the two halves of the bean and bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Adjust the heat to maintain a rambunctious simmer, and cook until the pears are very tender, about 20 minutes.

Remove the vanilla bean. Drain the pears in a sieve set over a bowl to collect the syrup. Put the pears in a blender and add 1 1/4 cups of the syrup. Process until smooth. Pour the puree into a medium bowl and stir in the lemon juice and salt. Cover and refrigerate until cold, about 3 hours.

While the puree is cooling, prepare the pear chips. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.  Very lightly grease a sheet of parchment paper with the coconut oil and set it on a baking sheet.

Cut the remaining 3 pears in half lengthwise. Using a mandoline, slice the cut sides of the pears into thin cross-sections, no more than 2 mm (3/32 inch) thick. You will need at least 18 good-looking slices for 6 servings, but it's wise to make a few extras, if you can. Feel free to eat the parts that don't make handsome slices. Lay the slices out on the prepared parchment and brush them very lightly with a little of the remaining syrup. Bake until they have turned a rich golden color and are curling slightly at the edges, about 10 to 12 minutes. Decrease the heat to the lowest setting and bake until very dry, another 20 to 30 minutes. Transfer the chips to a dry baking sheet and allow them to cool completely. If they are not crisp at this point, you may return them to the oven at the lowest setting and dry them further. Let them cool again to see if they have dried sufficiently (they will be slightly soft when warm).

To make the chocolate sauce, put 3/4 cup of the remaining syrup in a small saucepan and add the chocolate and cocoa. Set the saucepan over medium-low heat and stir gently with a whisk until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth. Remove from the heat. Crack open the cardamom pods and remove the seeds. Crush the seeds in a mortar, leaving some coarse pieces, and stir into the sauce. If you don't have a mortar, you can crush the seeds on a cutting board with the back of a wooden spoon. Let the sauce cool completely. Do not refrigerate, or it will become too thick.

When the pear puree is cold, pour into an ice cream machine and freeze according to the manufacturer's directions. Transfer to a container and set in the freezer to firm up for about 30 minutes. You may prepare the sorbet in advance up to this point, but bear in mind that you will need to remove it from the freezer about 15 minutes before serving, in order to shape it into quenelles (oval shapes).

At least 15 minutes before serving, put the dessert plates in the freezer. Using two large spoons, scoop out about 1/3 cup of the sorbet and form oval shapes by pushing it back and forth between them. If you haven't done this before, there will be a bit of a learning curve, but you'll manage. Working as quickly as you can, set 3 quenelles on each plate, with tips touching in the center and radiating out. Pour a little of the sauce between the quenelles and let it spread. Stick a pear chip into each quenelle, with the stem end pointing straight up. Serve at once! Invite your guests to use their hands to pick up the pear chips and use them along with their spoons to eat the dessert.

My Spectacular Vegan Failure

 

I tried to fail at being vegan successfully, I really did. Somewhere along the line, though, I did not triumph with my failure and as a result, I’ve got no book deals to speak for, I do not have a thriving yoga clothing line sporting pithy quotes and my student loans are still not freaking paid off. The lack of perks from quitting veganism successfully has been really disappointing. I expected more from veganism. Somebody should really answer as to why I failed so spectacularly to quit at quitting my veganism more profitably.

I started out with the best of intentions. I created the most green smoothie-saturated Instagram page that I could. I posted Ball jar after Ball jar of all the juice cleanses I was supposedly on. I had memes with inspirational quotes. I posted pictures of myself doing the Warrior and Tree poses in beach-y settings, like, a million times. It’s November and the soles of my feet are still burned from the sand. I made sure that the world knew that I was juicing until my stomach sloshed. It was working.  

Every time I got 20 new followers, I’d spritz myself with an organic hydrating facial mist sent to me by one of the companies that was mailing me packages and I’d post a Mayfair-filtered picture of my smiling, radiant profile. I’d hashtag it “blessed,” “love,” or something similarly vegan-aspirational. “You’re glowing,” my followers gushed. “You look ah-may-zing!” they wrote. That’s all fine and good but we know that the real attention – and money – is with quitting and everything seemed to be shaping up just right for my eventual triumphant public break-up with veganism.  

The narrative of the particular success trajectory I was on dictates that I could only expect a financial windfall of a failure if, after capturing enough followers, I then went through a period of deep internal struggle. Within a few months, I had amassed 25,000 followers and my numbers were steadily climbing. It was time to nurture some serious tension between my public persona and my private life in my story arc. I was game.

The big schism was supposed to be around the development of mysterious ailments brought on by my vegan diet. I had ‘em all figured out. Vague things. Disagreeable things. Psychological things. The plan was to say that they were stomach-related. Headaches. Inflammation. Anxiety. I could have had carpal tunnel, too. The idea was to drop hints like an invisible trail of breadcrumbs that would eventually lead to my bank account. My smile had a twinge of sadness to it now, one that you would only really notice in retrospect. I found the perfect filter for subtle melancholia. My posts became a little disjointed and lacked that spark of a few weeks prior; my photos became more haphazard and less inspiring.  I kept this going for a few weeks. My followers still loved me. I was still “radiant.” I was still “OMG beautiful.” But what was going on behind closed doors, hmm??? My plan was humming along perfectly. Like my success coach advised, I’d fall asleep each night with visions of lucrative book deals and Today show interviews dancing through my head.

Finally, it was time to come clean about the challenges I’d concocted and this was when I could get really creative and dramatic.

The morning that I took down my Instagram account still gives me chills to remember. I did my best at being eerily silent for a day or two. Then I reemerged. I had a new account that was a play off my old name but it was scrubbed of veganism. I posted that I was so scared but I needed to be honest. I had broken up with veganism. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done but I needed to be honest with my friends, my followers, the people who trusted me. I posted a picture of my feet in the sand with a vintage-y filter that I’d taken over the summer. I struck an exquisite balance between being mysterious and giving just enough information so as to maintain intrigue and not lose too many future brand affiliation opportunities. I wanted to be vegan, I told my followers, but I created permanent damage after six months of my very strict animal-free lifestyle that included all kinds of random restrictions that had nothing to do with veganism. Please understand, I implored. This is very hard.

I waited. And waited. A few people expressed disappointment. A few people cheered me on. I hadn’t broken the Internet yet, though. That was okay, I reassured myself. I hadn’t brought out the big guns yet. Success at pretending to fail to thrive as a vegan doesn’t happen overnight.

I posted more. I said that my skin had turned orange-y, pink-y, green like a nuclear sunset and it was really gross and sad and I couldn’t take selfies for a whole week. My eyebrows became sparse. My stomach was weird. I hardly recognized my hair anymore. My fingers tingled. I became allergic to air and afraid of birds. My toes suddenly became double-jointed. I’d loved being vegan and then this happened. I was living a dangerous double-life in a way that people are supposed to love to read about. I hit all the right notes, especially when I wrote about The Cravings. I was building momentum to the juicy/lucrative part like a steam engine going up a money mountain but…

It didn’t go anywhere.

I wrote about a cleanse that made me accidentally flush my liver down the toilet. Was it too gross? I wrote about the time, in a juice-fueled moment of mania, I almost put my own thumb down the juicer chute, mistaking it for a piece of ginger and it went nowhere. No bites. I would have killed for just one death threat. That was going to be the big news hook, too. I posted pensive portraits on the rooftop of my building, the clouds looking appropriately moody. Other than my mother telling me I should smile more often, there were virtual tumbleweeds rolling around after each of my stunning revelations. Where the hell was everybody?! Didn’t they care about my financial well-being and my plans for the future? I was led to believe that 98% of the population was going to eat this sh*t up with a spoon. I was deceived.  

I expected a windfall. I expected an adoring fan-base. I did everything by the rule book. I presented a clear case of not thriving as a non-vegan: Why wasn’t my failure succeeding??? Where were my seventy million Instagram followers? Where were the marriage proposals from swarthy Saudi princes? Where were the messages from the Dr. Oz producer? Where was my book-turned-into-movie deal and where was my fame, damn it?!

I still have no answers for why I failed to thrive as a failed vegan. It was not for a lack of effort, though, I can assure you. Ultimately, this endeavor wasn't about book deals or paying off my student loans: it was about fame, attention and building a better future for myself. Veganism was a huge mistake and waste of my time in that regard and I’m still paying for my naiveté. Speaking of, I’ll be having a big sale on my super-cute OmniMORE, Namasteak and #MeatyGirl yoga tops next week. Check back. 

P.S. - I am still available for brand affiliations, interviews, guest blog posts, etc.