Kitchen & Cooking
A vegan teen (and other interest-led learning wins)
March 22, 2019
A video interview of Brienne and my mom, Karen Toews, about her vegan diet. Brienne explains why she's vegan and how she maintains a vegan diet in and un-vegan world.
House rules for hospitality and shared meals
September 6, 2018
After everything I've written in this series, all the angst and struggle and questions that remain unanswered, eating together with the people I love is one of the highlights of my day, however it happens. Probably because I know these years are fleeting and precious.
It's complicated but it comes down to something simple: Love
September 4, 2018
Unless you are the kind of cook who feels enlivened by the challenge of dietary restrictions and food preferences (I know some people are like this!), cooking for others, whether that's within our families or for guests at our table, can feel burdensome. And if you didn't enjoy cooking much to begin with, this can take the wind right out of your sails.
A mixed family diet
August 27, 2018
For our shared family supper we eat gluten-free vegan, much like we always have, with addition of non-vegan food on the side if the cook wants it. During the rest of the day everyone is responsible for their own food and we each prepare and eat according to personal conviction, necessary dietary restrictions, budgetary constraints, and desire.
The ethics of eating animals (and why I do it anyway)
August 23, 2018
How is one supposed to eat and live in this culture? In this age? In spite of writing this series, I'm not actively seeking an answer to that question right now. It hangs in my life as an unknown.
How to define health and what food guru can I trust?
August 21, 2018
With all the options of our North American diet, conflicting scientific data, advertising, and evolutionary biology not caught up with huge societal changes of the agricultural, industrial, and technological revolutions, the message I internalized was this: I can't be trusted to just follow my taste buds or cravings to the best diet. My body will betray me.
Throwing the baby out with the bathwater
August 19, 2018
At forty, in the crucible of a mid-life crisis, I had to disassociate myself from the whole mess, from plant-based eating associated with my husband being an authority in my life and from good cook = good mom.
