Vegan Soul Food: Sexy Green Food

 Eating with ecology in mind is often about finding pleasure without feeling as though you're constantly deprived of satisfaction.  To go vegan is sometimes seen as an act of sacrifice, especially when it comes to eating within cultural expectations, the cuisines of our families, communities, and ethnic-racial heritage.   But Bryant Terry, vegan chef and good food activist, has been promoting fabulous vegan food  as a sustainable alternative for the planet and for folks who love soul food but also struggle with hypertension, diabetes, and high blood pressure.   What's great about Terry is that he integrates art, policy, advocacy, music, politics, holistic living, cooking skills, and more into the everyday act of feeding ourselves as individuals but also as members of a community.   As a current fellow in the Food and Society Policy Program, Terry embraces the label "eco chef and food justice advocate" and has been appearing across the US to promote cooking as a tool to change to world. His projects range from creating the southern organic kitchen (dedicated to promoting healthy eating in urban areas with high rates of illness and poverty), hosting a television show on PBS, and a poster series with Faviana Rodriguez.

Check out Bryant's blog for fabulous new recipes (he provides great music to accompany each one!!) -- and for updates about his many projects related to bringing good food into struggling communities.     His first book Grub: Ideas from an Urban Organic Kitchen, was co-written with activist Anna Lappe, and was filled with great recipes.

  And now his latest culinary output, Vegan Soul Kitchen,   has been making waves everywhere from Ebony to the Miami Herald.  While you're making the delicious roasted yam soup or carrot cranberry-walnut salad with walnut vinaigrette, you can also consider yourself part of a movement to think about food as a way of  opening people's minds to new combinations and to thinking about cooking together and eating well as an act of communal self determination.  Invite ten friends over (and no, they don't all have to be vegans to enjoy brussel sprouts with garlic and cacao cafe no lait pudding ) and see what he means.