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Today is World Vegetarian Day, the beginning to World Vegetarian Awareness Month, and as BlogHer's resident vegan, I am thrilled to kick it off with an interview with author Terry Walters. I own Terry's two books, Clean Food and Clean Start, and while Clean Food and Clean Start aren't categorized as veg*n cookbooks, they effectively are. It was a thrill to meet Terry in person at the recent BlogHer Handmade/The Creative Connection event. Of course I asked her for an interview, when I was probably supposed to just shake her hand! Luckily for me (and us), she happily agreed, and we had a great chat earlier this week.
Like Kathy Freston, Terry is an ambassador for healthier, more conscious eating. In addition, I learned about her path from self-published author to an author working with a traditional publisher (and currently working on her third book). This was a bonus topic, given our upcoming Writers Conference. Terry told me she wants to track the post and answer any questions you may have, so please do leave your comments and questions!
Thank you so much for talking to me and to the BlogHer Community. I am always most curious to know: What is your background? What was your journey to start talking about "clean food," and how did you become an expert on food and health?
It's a good question, and the answer has many components to it. Mother was always very natural in her approach to living, and that was the home I grew up in and the values that were taught to me. When I was in college, my father had a heart attack. My mom called me and told me to get my cholesterol checked. Well, I was young, female, an athlete. They informed me at the clinic that that put me in this "no risk" category, and they sent me home. My mom said "Go back!" so I went back, got tested, and my cholesterol was really high. I didn't want to be on medication at my age, and I knew there had to be a connection between what I ate and my cholesterol.
We'd been mostly vegetarian for years when that happened; my mom didn't have a lot of sugar around the house. She cooked from scratch. When she brought my father home from the hospital, the doctors gave my mom a cookbook to use to cook for my father. Well, it had more meat, dairy, eggs, sugar than we had already been eating. So Mother was in crisis too. We went on this path together to try to figure this out. We talked to a lot of people and explored a lot of approaches to nutrition. That was where it started for me.
Within a couple of months, I had moved off campus to get a kitchen and cook for myself. The first thing I had ever done in the kitchen was use an Easy-Bake Oven! When I was a kid, that's what I would do while my mom cooked.
But when I moved off campus and started cooking for myself, I didn't know what I was doing. A doctor told me to eat brown rice and kale, and I made it and thought "Holy cow, there has gotta be a way to make this taste better." That's what I did, and I went through a lot of stages. It grew; I grew; I learned a ton about myself.
As I started having children, I started being able to use the knowledge I had gained to heal them...they had food sensitivities when they were younger, with all sorts of complications and symptoms. It became a journey that empowered me. It was nourishing because I was sharing it with my mom, and it was having positive effects on family.
Meanwhile, my friends and family looked at me like "What is that weird stuff she's eating?" But as they got older, they had their own health issues and wondered if it would make a difference if they ate how I ate. At the time I had young children; I was working in a different career.
And someone said "Maybe you could teach me how to make that kale." And what to do with tofu. So, I started teaching cooking classes in my home. It was more of a gift to me and more nourishing to me than the people who took the classes!
I had young children, and I was
