Christine Waltermyer - The Natural Vegan Kitchen: Recipes from the Natural Kitchen Cooking School

2011 Christine Waltermyer Photos 2011 Book Publishing Company Cover design: John Wincek Interior design: Jim Scattaregia Interior photos: Warren Jefferson Food styling: Barbara Jefferson All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means whatsoever, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission from the publisher. Book Publishing Company P.O. Box 99 Summertown, TN 38483 888-260-8458 www.bookpubco.com ISBN: 978-1-57067-245-3 Printed in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Waltermyer, Christine. The natural vegan kitchen : recipes from the Natural Kitchen Cooking School / Christine Waltermyer. cm. cm.

Includes index. ISBN 978-1-57067-245-3 1. Vegan cooking. 2. Cookbooks. I.

Natural Kitchen Cooking School. II. Title. TX837.W273 2010 641.5636--dc22 2010035559 Printed on recycled paper Book Publishing Company is a member of Green Press Initiative. We chose to print this title on paper with 100% postconsumer recycled content, processed without chlorine, which save the following natural resources:

80 trees 2,237 pounds of solid waste 36,845 gallons of water 7,650 pounds of greenhouse gases 25 million BTU of energy

For more information on Green Press Initiative, visit www.greenpressinitiative.org . Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator.

For more information visit www.papercalculator.org .

F OR MY BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER , A NYA .
You are the gift of my life, and I love you with everything. I USED TO EAT AT B URGER K ING SEVEN DAYS A WEEK . (Bacon double-cheeseburger, small fries, and a small Coke was my standard order.) I ate meat at every meal. I was the girl who took the cheese and pepperoni friends discarded from their pizzas and put it on my own. To say I was a bad eater would be an understatement. Not surprisingly, my mood, health, and energy level reflected my poor diet.

I became a vegetarian in 1994, after learning about factory farming and slaughterhouses. How could I call myself an animal lover while contributing to the torture and slaughter of animals? I changed my ways overnight. And I hated it. I remember crying in a restaurant during my first week as a vegetarian; there was not one single thing I wanted on the menuexcept meat. But my compassion for animals kept my eating habits honest. And now, seventeen years later, not only do I love food more than ever, I also can appreciate how beneficial a veg diet is for my health and for the planet.

Im happier, healthier, and in better shape now than I was as a teenagerand I owe it all to my vegan diet. But its a shame that my early days as a compassionate, conscientious consumer were spent in such misery. I had no idea how amazing veggie food could be. If only I had met Christine Waltermyer way back then. Food coach, health counselor, chef, cooking instructorshe is a culinary machine. For many, eating is the most pleasurable activity in the world, and no one understands this better than Christine.

She fully gets that in order for people to even slightly adjust their diets, the food has to be outstanding. Every meal has to induce a food-gasmic experience or theres just no point in eating. At the same time, we need to take care of our precious health. Thats the beauty of what Christine creates: amazing food that is out of this world yet good for you. Healthy pleasures need not be an oxymoron; with Christines recipes, we can have our cake and eat it. Christines thorough knowledge of nutrition, paired with her exceptional culinary ability, is what makes her so good at what she does.

Whether youre veg, vegan, meat-centric, somewhere in between, or just looking to change things up a little, The Natural Vegan Kitchen will knock your socks off. It will awaken your taste buds and retrain them to appreciate delicious, wholesome food. It will inspire you to eat the way you were meant to. And most important of all, it will induce multiple food-gasms. Rory Freedman, coauthor, Skinny Bitch

I OWE HUGE THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO MADE THIS BOOK POSSIBLE . Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your tremendous love and support.

Mom, youve always been my confidant, my inspiration, and my first and greatest cooking teacher. Thank you, Dad, for the walks, the motorcycle rides, your admirable work ethic, and your appreciation of the natural world. To my sister, Cathy, and her family, Mark, Ben, Hannah, and Abby, thank you for your love and all of the fun we always have together. Thanks, Chuck, for all of our adventures and great meals together. Peter, I cant thank you enough for how youve blessed my life. I would also like to thank Cynthia Holzapfel, Jo Stepaniak, Anna Pope, and everyone at Book Publishing Company for being so great to work with and for helping to bring this book to fruition.

Very special thanks to Mary Flynn and Joyce Rosenblum, without whom the Natural Kitchen Cooking School would not be where it is today. Zillions of thanks to supporters of my cooking classes over the years, including Dean Nelson, David Weigel, and all of the staff at Deans Natural Food Market; Kat and Frank Grausso; Johanna Schwarzbeck and Egon Zippel, as well as Melissa McDermott, Tricia Rago, Nirit Yadin, Christine Carroll, Wai Chu, Min Liao, and everyone at the Whole Foods Market in Princeton, New Jersey, and the Whole Foods Market Bowery in New York City. You have all been truly amazing to work with! Thank you to all of the incredible assistants, students, and clients of the Natural Kitchen Cooking School over the years. Huge thanks to the Littenberg family, who taught me so much and helped me to realize which recipes were the real gems. I cherish all of my wonderful friends and girl buddies over the years. You know who you are! I would never have known anything about healthful cooking if it were not for Michio and Aveline Kushi and the natural-food movement they created here in the United States.

Rory Freedman and Christina Pirello are two of my superheroines, and I am in awe of them both. Thank you to all of the other incredible individuals who have inspired me along the way, including Osho, Eckhardt Tolle, Byron Katie, Howard Lyman, Madonna, John Robbins, Luchi Barnda, and Joshua Rosenthal. Thank you to Neal Barnard, MD, Jill Eckhardt, and Mary and Peter Max for your generous support of this book. Special thanks to the gifted Robin Robertson, whose expertise and advice was invaluable in the process of writing my first cookbook. Peter, I cant thank you enough for the blessing of sweet Anya.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu S INCE PUBERTY MY BOOBS HAD BECOME FIBROID FACTORIES , producing ridiculous amounts of annoying, uncomfortable, hard lumps, each of which I was told could grow to the size of grapefruits. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.