Featured Interview: A Vegan Feast for the 21st Century Table
What would a global vegan feast look like? Bryanna Clark Grogan, renowned vegan chef and author of countless cookbooks brings the world together with her latest compilation of recipes, World Vegan Feast: 200 Fabulous Recipes from Over 50 Countries. Vegan Mainstream recently interviewed Bryanna, the woman whom Dr. Neal Barnard, M.D., president of Physicians Committee for Responsible [...]
Photo courtesy Bryanna Clark Grogan
What would a global vegan feast look like? Bryanna Clark Grogan, renowned vegan chef and author of countless cookbooks brings the world together with her latest compilation of recipes, World Vegan Feast: 200 Fabulous Recipes from Over 50 Countries. Vegan Mainstream recently interviewed Bryanna, the woman whom Dr. Neal Barnard, M.D., president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine called, “a master of the art and craft of cooking.” Take a look!
Vegan Mainstream: How did you first transition into vegan cooking?
Bryanna Clark Grogan: Well, I got into the cooking part first. I’ve always loved to cook. My mother says I was cooking before I can remember. She said I used to hum when I ate too, so obviously I like eating as well. I got really interested in nutrition after my first child, but my parents ate really healthfully as well. I started making whole wheat bread and stuff like that when I first had kids. In the late 60s and early 70s we did the homesteading thing, and raised our own animals for a long time.
But we also read the book called Diet for a Small Planet , which was one of the first philosophical vegetarian books as far as the environment was concerned. We decided we weren’t going to eat any meat we didn’t produce ourselves, so consequently, we didn’t eat very much meat. We weren’t strictly vegetarian, but I was always interested in tofu and seitan. I wasn’t totally ignorant of all that.
About 23 years ago, we were living on Vancouver Island, [in British Columbia, Canada] on a smaller property, so we couldn’t bring our animals and chickens. I realized I was eating meat from the store. I didn’t want to do the animal [homesteading] thing for myself but I didn’t want to ask anybody else to do it for me, so I thought it was logical to become a vegetarian. Within a few months I decided in order to be really consistent about it, I should become a vegan. There weren’t a lot of vegan books around. There was the old farm cookbook [The New Farm Vegetarian Cookbook] from The Farm in Tennessee and they produced a lot of soy foods. That was about it. [Ed. note: The Farm is a former 1970's commune, now a cooperative "intentional community" with several businesses, always vegetarian and largely vegan. The Book Publishing Co. on The Farm published most of Bryanna's books.]
I like interesting food and I was locally writing a cooking column, so I just changed my column and started writing about vegan and vegetarian cooking. I never said anything to anybody! I decided I would write a cookbook because I was interested in food that was tastier than what I was finding. My first three books are quite low in fat. I got into it by accident and started writing some articles for Vegetarian Times magazine in the 80s and eventually my publisher noticed me. It’s a little harder nowadays because there’s so many wonderful vegan authors coming up now; there’s a lot more competition than there used to be. Which is a good thing.
VM: What do you think has changed in the world of vegan cookbooks since you first started out?
BCG: It’s more mainstream. You see it mentioned in books and hear it on TV. Sometimes they’re making fun of it, but at least they’re mentioning it. You can get vegan food in most restaurants and vegan ingredients and products even in supermarkets as well as health food stores. There’s much more ease of availability. Some people still roll their eyes, but people are more used to it and don’t really think you’re a weirdo.
VM: Can you talk a little about your most recent cookbook World Vegan Feast?
BCG: That was the result of a cooking newsletter I published for five years called Vegan Feast. It was quite a long newsletter. My husband used to think I was crazy because it would sometimes be 75 pages long. First, I did it every two months and then four times a year, and I had hundreds of subscribers. It was really fun because even though it was a lot of work, I would get immediate feedback from people about the recipes. I’m still friends with some of the subscribers. I had to stop [for various reasons]. I had this huge body of recipes that mostly no one but these 200 people had seen, and a lot of them were international. I had the idea of seeking out the favorites in the international category and putting them together in a book. Fortunately, John Robertson at Vegan Heritage Press liked the idea and the book was born. He’s got a good eye for cookbooks.
VM: How did the newsletter come about?
BCG: I’ve always written. It’s always cooking and writing with me. I just wanted to do something a little more challenging for myself and really delve into certain subjects in the realm of cooking; different cuisines. So, I just put it out there on my blog and eventually I got hundreds of people who were very interested. I had a cooking workshop here and many people were subscribers. It was a lot of work. I have a big family and a job, but this book was the result of that.
VM: So, this isn’t your full-time job?
BCG: No, I run a small branch of the Vancouver Island Regional Library. So, books and writing and cooking have all been a part of my life for a long time.
VM: Do you have anything in the works right now?
BCG: Yeah, I’ve been threatening to write a seitan cookbook for a long time. I have a big collection of recipes. A lot of them I did for the newsletter. The recipes are there, I just have to re-find them and put them in the right format. It’s a big transition in the publishing business now. There’s so many new formats coming out. I might just wait for a few months and see how things are going, and see which way would be the best way. But that’s definitely one I want to do before I “retire.” I’ve also been working with David Lee from Field Roast for several years on a book of making Field Roast-type products at home. It’s been delayed, but we’re talking again about finishing it.
VM: Have you done any e-books in the past?
BCG: No, I haven’t. I have bought a few. I think it can be a very good thing. The only problem with it, possibly, including with myself, is if you don’t have an editor. They really do care about how the book looks and the flow; sometimes when you’re doing it yourself, you don’t see those things. People would have to be very careful about that and I would as well. But it’s a new year and I feel very energized about doing something new.
VM: What is your process for putting out a cookbook?
BCG: Well, it depends. The last one I just did was a collection of recipes that were already done. So, I had to choose those and then go through the process about how many to put in, having a good selection from different areas. Each publisher has their own writing guide you have to follow. This was new to me, because I had used the Book Publishing Company’s style before. so I had to rewrite the recipes in [this new] style. It took a good year. Then, some re-testing and I also did the photographs for the book, which was the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life I think!
When I’m writing just from an idea, I like to do an outline and then collect in chapters all the recipes I’ve already done, or am working on, or that I think I want to produce. I start from the beginning and go through. I usually keep a cooking journal. I write down everything because if you don’t, you can miss out on some good recipes if you can’t remember what you did. For me, actually writing on paper while I’m working is the easiest way, instead of trying to wash your hands and then go to the computer. You basically live with the book. I did a Chinese cookbook, and we ate a lot of Chinese food. The same with my Italian cookbook. Everybody’s different in the way they work.
VM: What are some tools you use to promote your cookbooks?
BCG: Well, I’ve had to become moderately computer savvy. I’ve had a blog for six years now and I have a website, although it’s needing an overhaul pretty badly. I have sort of neglected it. That’s another thing I’d like to do this year. I balked at doing Facebook for the longest time, but I opened a Facebook account a little over a year ago. I do Twitter, not a whole lot, but I do postings. I also go to the odd conference and do some workshops. It is quite necessary in this day and age to do the Internet thing, especially if you live in the boonies like I do. I resent it sometimes because it takes up so much of my time, but I’m also very grateful for it at the same time. There’s a lot to learn.
VM: Do you blog a lot?
BCG: I have only been blogging once a week. It was really hard while I was writing the book because there wasn’t a lot of time, but I would prefer to do it more than that. I’m sort of fired up about some ideas I have right now, so I’m hoping I can blog two or three times a week. I just don’t have the time to do it every day right now. I’m working and have other projects and have grandchildren close-by. With a big family you always have some big crisis to tend to. I also want to exercise and stay healthy. I belly-danced for years in a troop and I haven’t been doing much of it lately, so I’d like to pick it up again for fun.
Visit Bryanna’s blog, Notes From the Vegan Feast Kitchen.
VM: What is belly-dancing like?
BCG: Oh, it’s fun! It’s not as easy as it looks! You get to dress up. You’re with a lot of women of all ages, all sizes. There are many different kinds.
VM: You also have something on your website called an Open Cooking Forum. Is that something you still use?
BCG: Yeah, sometimes. That’s another thing with my whole website I’d like to move and try a different format, perhaps connect it to my blog. There are so many forums now, I may move on from that, but it was a beginner’s forum. There are so many places now for people to go. I take it seriously when people ask me questions. I definitely get back to them and do research for them. A lot of people email me now and I try to be very responsive or point them in the right direction if I don’t know.
Check out Vegan Feast’s Open Cooking Forum here and browse the entire Vegan Feast website.
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