We’ve all been there, it’s late night, you’ve had an action packed day of work, pilates, and errands, but somehow you can’t bear the thought of going to bed. You can’t have it be a Groundhog Day. Queue the Apple TV for some late night surfing. Are those new channels? Yes. The new HBO, but hmm, you want to explore something new.
Tastemade? What’s this about? A channel dedicated to food. Ok, and they’re featuring an episode for Raw Vegan Pad Thai by Raw.Vegan.Not Gross. You chuckle a little. The show name lures you in, and you think, is it even possible to make raw vegan pad thai?
Laura Miller of Sidesaddle Kitchen makes it a reality. She makes living a plant based diet fun, exciting, and mouth watering. Whether you’re watching her online or reading her blog, Miller changes what you think of the vegan life. She inspires you to try new things with common dishes. Changing the picture in your head, when you think of plate tacos.
Raw.Vegan.Not Gross. came from Miller’s time at San Francisco’s Underground Market.
“Essentially I sold the only vegan food at the farmer’s market. I was in between fried chicken and meat sandwiches, and tried to have a sense of humor and self-awareness about what I was selling. Everyone in San Francisco has tried raw food, and maybe didn’t like it. So I was trying to poke fun at myself, and get people to not just walk around my booth because they thought I was really intense,” she says.
By that point, I had some demoralizing experiences with culty, judgey, sickly-looking, and humorless raw food culture, and I wanted to differentiate myself.”
Laura definitely takes a different approach to her cooking show. It’s informative, fast-paced, and makes you feel like you’ve known her forever. She grabs you from the other side of the screen and brings you into her kitchen. She teaches you how to make vegan creations such as Beet Lasagna or Cauliflower Pizza to name a few.
With a smile on her lips, her hands in a bowl mixing ingredients, she makes it ok to experiment with dishes and ideas. We see it in her Cauliflower Pizza video, as the finished pizza slides off the platter. Raw. Vegan. Not Gross doesn’t cut out the mistakes, it actually embraces them.
It’s happened to all of us. You’re excited to share your finished edible creation. “Tada” only to have the crust fall apart. What do you do? Erupt into peals of laughter with your friends, and say, “Hey, it’s fine. It’s still all in one piece!” It’s how the Cauliflower Pizza episode ends. Miller shows you it’s not about being perfect, but about enjoying what you’re making.
RVNG isn’t only for adults, she’s also modified some of her recipes for the younger ones in our families. She shares her kid-friendly kale chips, avocado-chocolate pudding, and a berry-licious green shake on sites such as Mother Mag. Her goal is to “get as much nutrition as possible into their little bodies, minus the processed foods, chemicals, and preservatives,”
If you’re more of book person versus video in the kitchen person. Don’t worry she’ll be sharing her passion of the goodness of raw food, and will be coming out with her own cookbook in the future. Will it be 100 percent vegan? No, but Laura’s honesty is refreshing on the topic.
“I just love raw vegan food. I eat cooked food (GASP!) and that will be incorporated into the book because I think it is just more practical and cost-efficient than eating all raw. And truth bomb here: I also will occasionally eat eggs from my parents' chicken coop and even a cheese stick if one of my adorable nieces hands it to me. I think the introduction to raw vegan food can be hard because it seems very intense and exclusive to outsiders. My hope is that more people will come to see that plant-based diets are not boring, dogmatic, or cult-like, because I see much more benefit for our collective health and environment if most of us eat a plant based diet than if 100 of us are extreme hard-core raw vegans.”
Sharing a new chef or the idea of veganism isn’t revolutionary, but when someone gets you excited and motivated to try something in a new way, you can’t help but take notice.
When she’s not busy experimenting with recipes, or in the studio filming, she shares her amazing portraits with produce (naturally) to only make you love her more.
We’re off to the kitchen. We discovered this recipe for Beyonce-Probs-Drinks-This green shake, and we have to try it.
No comments:
Post a Comment