Stephanie's Studio

A few weeks ago my family and I watched the documentary  Fed Up  and have had an ongoing conversation about it ever since. This is an important documentary, especially to those struggling with being overweight or obese. It was released in the spring of 2014 and was directed by Stephanie Soechtig, with Katie Couric and Laurie David as executive producers. Katie asks some very deliberately cutting questions in this film and it makes me respect her ever more than I did. Fed Up came tumbling into my mind yesterday as I was partaking in my guilty pleasures that I really need to end: watching the  Barefoot Contessa  (Ina Garten) followed by Ree Drummond, also known as the  Pioneer Woman  on the Food Network. You may recall last year I wrote the post  Inclined Towards Dessert , sparked by yet another documentary, from PBS Frontline, called All of Me. That documentary was about how a group of women went through the process of losing very large amounts of ...

My husband said a brilliant thing the other day. In his light bulb moment, he said, with vegetarianism and its food, there is always the feeling that the recipes are trying to replace something. Then he went on to say that in veganism too, when people talk about it that aren't vegan, often they talk about what you can't eat, rather than all the wonderful things you can. I've been involved with the vegetarian lifestyle since my teens. I've also eaten pescatarian for many years. Recently though, I've become excited about raw foods and veganism. I'm seeing past the rhetoric of what you can't eat and enjoying all the magickal goodies from the plant kingdom that you can. Seeing how he, a dedicated carnivore, saw all the potentiality in veganism, I decided to add some vegan dishes to our Father's Day feast. I made spinach/portabella burgers and Asian sweet potato salad. Hubby made a vegan roasted eggplant salad. Then we had a number of other dishes, for th...