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Vegan Finishing School

Is there such a thing? I discovered that, yes, there is. Imagine attending a school led by a well-known pioneer of the vegan world, a person you admired and respected for years and hoped to meet one day. In the Fall of 2024, I realized this dream when I enrolled in what I consider a vegan finishing school, the Main Street Vegan Academy, founded and facilitated by Victoria Moran. In the fall of 2000, I adopted a vegan diet. My husband, already vegan when I married him in 1999, inspired me to switch from my mostly-vegetarian diet to a vegan lifestyle in 2000. We raised our kiddo on a vegan diet despite the protests and complaints of well-meaning family members who thought we were crazy. (When we decided to homeschool a few years later, they were sure of it.) The first time I saw the advertisement for Main Street Vegan Academy in American Vegan Magazine, I felt awed and excited. I had discovered Victoria after reading one of her earlier books, Get the Fat Out , published in 1994, on my m...
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Fasting on Days 2 and 3

When I went to bed on the first night of my fast, I felt hopeful, that this time would be different, that I could fast for four or five days without issue. And I didn’t have any anxiety, which I often experience late at night. I slept well. At least I did until 6 a.m., when a wave of nausea woke me from a sound sleep. I knew immediately it was from the water fast. The same thing happened to me the three times I tried fasting at TrueNorth Health Center. I’d make it through the first 30-36 hours with no problem and then, WHAM, everything would fall apart. I felt weak, too, so much so that I couldn’t walk downstairs to the living room.  I decided to wait it out and try to go back to sleep. By noon, the queasiness had subsided to the point where I could watch a video on my tablet. But I was still very weak and stayed on the couch (finally, I could walk downstairs) most of the afternoon, sipping as much water as possible.  By 6 p.m. -- 45 hours into my fast -- the nausea returned s...
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Water Fasting Fun on Day One

This morning, I woke up, went downstairs, and poured myself a glass of water, not unlike most mornings. But unlike most days, I won't be drinking -- or eating -- anything else. And tomorrow, I'll do the same thing, and the day after that, possibly five days in a row if I can stand it. Do I like torture? I must, right? But no, I'm not doing this to torture myself or to trigger some kind of spiritual experience, or to enact penance, or for any religious reason. No, I'm doing this to improve my health.  In 2016, my husband and I traveled to Santa Rosa, California, to stay at the world-famous TrueNorth Health Center and participate in a water fast. I first read about TrueNorth in Dr. Joel Fuhrman's book Fasting and Eating for Health . I have a history of migraine headaches and IBS and thought a short water fast might help me get rid of those troubling problems. The benefits of water fasting are many. They include lowering blood pressure, reversing many other diseases, a...
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Greetings vegans everywhere. In light of the new developments with AI-generated content replacing human-written prose, I want to assure my readers (all three of you), that this blog will always be written by a fallible and flaw-ridden human: me. I also will do my best to keep this blog updated and full of content that will make great bedtime reading.  I keep reading (see this article in The Byte about Sports Illustrated laying off their staff) about respected and well-known publications turning to AI to write articles even though these publications do little to check content for inaccuracies and lies. These venerable publications are laying off experienced journalists to increase profits and lower expenses. Why don't they lay off the highly-paid executives running these publications? Instead, they chose to fire journalists and editors, the very people who make sure the content is both accurate and entertaining. And online news outlets are following their lead. Is this the final de...
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Giving Up Plastic or Going Vegan?

The topic of plastic consumption, specifically single-use plastic, reared its head in a health-oriented Facebook group to which I belong. The crux of the argument I want to highlight is that single-use plastic is terrible for the environment and is a huge cause of global warming, even when you're recycling it.  I have no doubt we should avoid single-use plastic whenever possible in our personal lives. However, what no one ever mentions when they argue about it is that going vegan is still one of the most impactful actions a person can take to save the environment.  Different sources vary in their assessment of how much animal agriculture contributes to global warming. I've seen estimates ranging from a little more than 16 percent ( Sentient Media ) to a much higher number, 57 percent, according to a study reported in Scientific American . (Disclaimer: I'm terrible at reading and interpreting stats.) And while they may disagree over whether or not and how much animal agricul...
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5 Amazing Vegan Chocolate Delights for Valentine's Day

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(Update #1: I'm publishing this in honor of one of my short stories, "Wolfcall's Children," appearing in the 2022 Los Angeles NaNoWriMo Anthology, Alien Gaze,  which you can now buy at Amazon.com .) (Update #2: I wrote this before the article about lead and cadmium in chocolate appeared in the December 2022 issue of Consumer Reports , which has certainly put a damper on my enthusaism for dark chocolate and inspired me to search for uncontaminated brands. I'm also hoping that the companies listed in their article will do more to mitigate or better yet, eliminate, the heavy metals currently and allegedly present in their dark chocolate.) I'm a chocoholic, a trait I inherited from my dear Grammy Belle. She loved chocolate, specifically See's. But as most of you know or will soon learn, See's doesn't make vegan chocolates. As an ethical vegan, I haven't set foot in a See's Candy shop in more than 20 years. (They do, according to their website,...
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5 + Vegan Online Resources to Explore

I can't believe I started this blog so long ago, in 2018, and haven't posted much of anything since then. I've been busy and then there was this thing called a pandemic (Covid-19, for those of you reading this years from how) that interrupted my life like it did the lives of the rest of the population. But all through it, I've remained vegan, so that's a small win.  So I'm back and trying to figure out a new perspective for this blog. I'd love to be able to share what I already know about a plant-based diet, but I know my experiences alone aren't enough to convince people to switch to a plant-based or vegan diet.  Six years ago, I completed the FOK Cooking Class. I hoped it would help me share veganism with the world. And in some ways, it did. I shared how to cook without oil with friends and family members. My cooking improved, and everything I made tasted much better by applying what I learned in that class.   In 2016, I joined UWL or the "Ultimat...
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