Buying a home in Haiku has been one of the best things to ever happen to me.  Not for the home itself, nor the beautiful weather of Maui … but for the genuine, authentic, loving people that I now consider...

While the US leads the world in many things, we seem to be sadly behind in the area of food.  Huge corporate interests lobby hard to keep the public from seeing just how gruesome the slaughterhouses are (if you knew,...

We are often told that “all things are okay in moderation.”  A little bit of chocolate, a couple of glasses of wine, a small piece of cake… As long as we eat and drink in moderation, all is well.  But...

I’m really, really mad. Most people can tell you how many days Kim Kardashian was married, yet hardly anyone I ask has heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Google it.  It will freak you out. In the middle of...

The holidays are stressful for most people, but there are added stresses for vegans:  How do you ask your family to cook a vegan meal for you?  If they are coming to your house, do you make two meals, or...

I recently had a huge shift in awareness.  The kind that makes you wonder how you could possibly have missed it for so many years.  It has to do with food addictions.  My own, in fact, that I didn’t even...

We love to hear that our bad habits are healthy – it gives us permission to continue making poor choices.  For example, the rumor that chocolate was a health food had women everywhere jumping for joy!  Not surprisingly, just about...

We have been taught that oil – especially olive and canola oils – are heart healthy.  They are good for us, and we should swap out butter and margarine and cook with these heart healthy oils instead.   However, I believe...

When I first got married and started having a little fun in the kitchen I came across a recipe for an appetizer similar to this one.  I now don’t follow any recipe and instead just wing it on my own,...

Ever wondered how pork gets to Hawaii?  Me either.  But if you knew, you’d probably start writing letters to the local papers, as I recently found myself doing. Laurelee Blanchard, who runs the Leilani Farm Sanctuary in Maui is a...

Vegan Spanikopita From the Vegan World Fusion Cuisine Cookbook As I bit into the vegan spanikopita at the Blossoming Lotus, I fell head over heels in love.  “If this is vegan, I could easily convert everyone I know!” I thought...

It was a great moment for vegans when we turned on the television and saw Kathy Freston on the Oprah Show touting the vegan diet.  With her beauty and poise, she made a great spokesperson for the vegan diet. However,...

Well, it’s taken 9 years since I went vegan, but I’m officially no longer a freak:  The vegan diet has decidedly gone mainstream, and I couldn’t be more excited! It probably started when Skinny Bitch became a best-seller, convincing all...

I read in a recent blog where the author said she was “feeling like a fraud for struggling to take advice she’d offered in an article.” I can totally relate.  People assume that as a vegan author and speaker I...

I read in a recent blog where the author said she was “feeling like a fraud for struggling to take advice she’d offered in an article.” I can totally relate.  People assume that as a vegan author and speaker I...

I love hearing people’s success stories about switching to a vegan diet … how they lost the weight that had chained them down for years, or overcame their battle with diabetes or cancer by turning to a whole-foods, plant-based diet....

I love hearing people’s success stories about switching to a vegan diet … how they lost the weight that had chained them down for years, or overcame their battle with diabetes or cancer by turning to a whole-foods, plant-based diet....

Although Al Gore surprisingly “forgot” to mention the incredibly detrimental environmental effects of raising animals for meat and dairy products in his epic film, Inconvenient Truth, the word is starting to get out anyway.  It seems to me that more...

There are a few topics in our culture that get people mightily defensive about – religion, politics, and food.  Tell someone that we should/shouldn’t scrap the welfare system, and tempers will fly!  Suggest that there is/isn’t a god, and veins...

The most common type of e-mail I receive is from people who seek advice about what clearly seems to be a food addiction (although they often don’t know it.)  The American Society of Addiction Medicine defines “Addiction” this way: “Addiction...