Vegan with a Vengeance

jogging strollers. It was more like “drive your IROC-Z, blast your underground disco, and throw McDonald’s wrappers out your car window at anyone who dresses a little different or whom you suspect knows how to read.” I was often confused and searching for real meaning—I knew that there was more to life then getting into fistfights with other big-haired girls in our crappy mall. So I started going to Manhattan with my best friend. And it wasn’t the Manhattan that we know today—that of tenement-turned-luxury apartment and Sex and the City wannabes. It was exciting and artistic and “skateboarding is not a crime” and “Whose friggin park? Our friggin park!”
    I had been hanging out more and more on the Lower East Side and getting involved with the anarchist scene there. I was not yet sure where my political affinities lay, but I knew that I respected what the activists and punks were doing: taking old decrepit buildings and turning them into homes, creating community gardens, making their own newspapers and zines, and just generally giving a damn. I had already been listening to punk and dying my hair purple and making my own clothes. Vegetarianism was not a new concept to me—at the age of eight I made the horrifying connection that Puff Kit, our cat, was an animal just like the cows we ate. Once I started meeting people who were vegetarian it felt like the most logical and ethical way to be. I already knew that I didn’t want to be part of a system of oppression; changing my diet was an easy and practical form of activism.

    When I went vegetarian, food seemed to become the focal point of my life—volunteering for Food Not Bombs, cooking breakfast for everyone before a demonstration, making snacks as we silk-screened or made banners. I realized I had a knack for cooking and it was something that I enjoyed and everyone appreciated. I remember the first time I smelled basil fresh from the garden—I almost cried. I was hooked.

The Cinderella Story
    FLASH FORWARD TO my thirties. After many culinary adventures—some of which you’ll read about in this book—I wrote a cookbook, this cookbook in fact. It’s quite the Cinderella story, except without all the sexism.
    Not too long after September 11, which I had witnessed from my bedroom window, I was somewhat depressed and bored, feeling a bit like I was wasting my life. I was largely disconnected from the punk scene I grew up in; most of my old friends had drifted away. Dividing my time between a cubicle job and cooking at a vegan café, I was also watching a lot of cooking shows on TV. This proved to be a volatile combination—I found myself doing my own cooking show in my head. I couldn’t just prepare the BBQ tempeh and greens; I had to walk an imaginary audience through the whole thing.
    It was while watching Emeril butcher yet another innocent chicken that I thought, “Someone should really do a vegan cooking show.” And then I realized, “I’m someone! I can do it!” If punk rock taught me anything, it’s that we can create our own forms of entertainment. We don’t have to sit back idly and wait for something to happen—we can make it happen. CRASS lyrics drifted through my head: “If the program’s not the one you want, get up turn off the set. It’s only you that can decide the life you’re gonna get.”
    And so I took a monthlong class at BCAT (Brooklyn Community Access TV) that taught me the basics of editing, camera work, and lighting. Then I spent weeks agonizing over what to call the show. I thought it had to be something that sounded vaguely punk because punk was the culture I grew up in and the culture that made me the woman I am. But I wasn’t feeling that punk anymore—after all, I had a food processor and a job in a cubicle. Fine—Post Punk. You know , not so punk anymore. The Post Punk Kitchen was born. At the time, I actually didn’t realize that “post punk” was a thing unto itself—the music that came after punk—but, oh well, that’s not what I meant. I meant it as sort of a self-conscious joke about the people with a punk rock ethos, like me, who are getting older and facing the conundrum of growing up and making compromises that their eighteen-year-old selves might hate them for.
    I created a Web site that instantly gained popularity by becoming a Yahoo! pick of the day. They