Ageless Vegan

So on this, our thirtieth vegan anniversary, what better way to mark the occasion than by sharing how we’ve done it, the tips we’ve learned along the way, and 100 of our favorite healthy and delicious vegan recipes that have kept us looking and feeling ageless for all these years?

We’re grateful to be glowing examples of the long-term benefits of eating a whole food, plant-based diet. We went vegan in 1988, when I was twenty and my mother, Mary, was fifty. We’re now fifty and eighty, but most people think we look fifteen to twenty years younger.

We’re living proof that it’s normal to be healthy and disease-free not only while we’re younger, but as we get older, too. And the key is a healthy lifestyle. Eating more whole plant-based foods, along with exercising at least 30 minutes day, being smoke-free, and maintaining a healthy weight can reduce the risk of developing chronic diseases by nearly 80 percent, according to research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine in 2009. And of these lifestyle factors, eating healthy foods is the most important in preventing chronic diseases and premature disability and death, according to a landmark Global Burden of Diseases study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2013.

So in this book, we show you how to go vegan for optimal health and longevity. We share our Fab Five Food Rules that serve as the foundation for what we eat every day, as well as particular superfoods that can ward off the diseases associated with aging. We also provide a guide we call “Fourteen Steps to a Healthier You,” with practical, easy-to-follow advice on how to transition to vegan foods and jumpstart your healthy eating habits—and how to up your healthy eating game if you’re already a vegan. To get you started cooking healthier right away, we also walk you through must-have kitchen tools and pantry staples to help you set up your vegan kitchen with ease and confidence.

Most importantly, we share 100 fresh, simple, and flavorful vegan recipes that can help you look and feel ageless, too. They’re our favorite go-to dishes for everyday meals and special occasion treats, including Maple French Toast with Strawberries, Thai Coconut Curry Soup, Vegetable Pot Pie, Citrusy Dandelion Greens Salad, and Perfect Pecan Pie. All of our recipes use delicious and nutritious whole food ingredients—no highly processed foods, refined grains, or white sugar—because that’s our secret to staying healthy and vibrant for the past thirty years.

With Ageless Vegan, our goal is to give you information, inspiration, and affirmation to live a long and healthy plant-based life you love.

But before we give you the how, we want to share with you our stories.

TRACYE’S JOURNEY

I absolutely love my vegan lifestyle. It’s a liberating, joyful, and delicious way of living in the world. I get to eat good food that’s good for me—and that’s also good for other people, animals, and the planet. What could be better?

But the funny thing is I never thought I’d be a vegan. Growing up, I hated vegetables! I was always the last one left at the kitchen table pushing the green stuff around on my plate until my mother came back in the kitchen and put her foot down. Then I’d gulp them down and we’d go through the same thing again the next night.

My mother was pretty health conscious (as she talks about later in this chapter), so for my two sisters and me, that meant that although we ate meat and dairy, there was not a lot of processed food or junk food in the house. We ate relatively healthfully during the week and we got to splurge on the weekends. One of our favorite Saturday night dinners was smoked sausage, along with Kraft macaroni and cheese, Jiffy cornbread, butter pecan ice cream, and ginger ale. (Check out our healthier, vegan versions of these recipes in part 2 for Mac and Cheese, Southern-Style Cornbread, Maple Pecan Ice Cream, and Sparkling Basil Limonade.) We did have cousins and friends who had all the sodas, candy, and chips we could ever want, so we made up for it when we visited them. And at school there was an all-you-can eat cafeteria, so I could eat as many French fries and desserts as I wanted.

So it was my mother who first instilled in me the idea of healthy eating. But despite her best efforts, I liked the unhealthier food more. When I went off to Amherst College at seventeen, I gained twenty-five pounds my first year because I was away from home for the first time and could eat anything unhealthy I wanted, whenever I wanted.

HOW I BECAME A VEGAN

During my sophomore year at college, our Black Student Union brought civil rights movement icon and legendary comedian Dick Gregory to campus to talk about the state of black America. But instead, he decided to talk about the plate of black America, and how unhealthfully most folks eat. This was in 1986 and we didn’t know that Gregory had become a vegetarian activist because of his practice of nonviolence during the Civil Rights Movement, which he extended to humans and animals alike.

During his two-hour talk, Gregory graphically traced the path of a hamburger from a cow on a factory farm, through the slaughterhouse process, to a fast-food restaurant, to a clogged artery, to a heart attack. And it rocked my world.

I was already going through a paradigm shift at the time. I was taking political science and African American studies classes, and I was learning about imperialism, racism, sexism, and more for the first time or in new ways, and it was changing my awareness and sense of self. And it was with this new consciousness that I listened to Dick Gregory’s lecture. I was ready and open to questioning the way society dictated I should eat, as well.

After Gregory’s lecture, I immediately gave up meat—which only lasted about a week. But I couldn’t get what he said off my mind. I called my mother and one of my sisters, Marya, who was a senior at nearby Tufts University, and told them I thought I should become a vegetarian.

When I went home for the summer a few months later, I read every book I could find about vegetarianism in the local libraries, and my mother and sister read them with me. And by the end of the summer, we all decided to go vegetarian.

Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t that easy. When school started again, I studied abroad for the first semester in Nairobi, Kenya, with twenty-nine other college students. It was one of the most incredible experiences of my life. But I was showing up as a new vegetarian and they weren’t prepared to accommodate me so I still had to eat meat. While there, two life-altering incidents happened that made me know I would become a vegetarian again when I returned home.

The first happened when we lived and traveled for two weeks with Samburus, who are semi-nomadic pastoralists living in the northern plains of Kenya. One night, we stayed on a mountain cave and brought two live goats with us that we were going to eat. The day before, while staying with a Samburu family, I saw a goat being born, up close and personal. I was a nineteen-year-old city girl who’d never had a pet, and this was the first time I’d ever seen an animal give birth. It was amazing.

Well, the next day on the mountain cave, I watched the Samburu men slit the throat of one of the goats that we brought with us. They drank the blood that poured from its neck and invited us, as their guests, to do the same. Many of the students did, and I was about to, as well, but I changed my mind at the last minute. The idea of actually drinking blood was too much.

The Samburu men then proceeded to skin and chop the goat to make stew. I don’t remember actually watching them do that part, but I do remember looking over at the other goat that was tethered to a tree nearby and feeling sorry for it. I decided I wasn’t going to eat the stew. But as we were passing the bowls to each other, it looked and smelled delicious, and I decided to eat it. But for the first time, I felt guilty about eating another animal. I wondered if the other goat knew what had happened to its companion.

A few days later, we went on safari at nearby Masai Mara. While there, we ate at a restaurant called The Carnivore, and the waiters brought out a large gazelle-looking animal that had been roasted over a pit. As they began to carve it in front of us from head to hoof, I became repulsed by it. And I knew in that moment that I never wanted to eat another animal again.

The next semester I went to Howard University in my hometown of Washington, DC. My mother and I spent much of that semester experimenting with vegetarian recipes we collected from newspapers, magazines, and vegetarian cookbooks. While I was at Howard, I was thrilled to discover that there was a large black vegan and vegetarian community just a few blocks from campus that had opened the first all-vegan cafes and health food stores in the nation’s capital in the early 1980s.

This diverse community included longtime activists from the civil rights and black liberation movements, natural health entrepreneurs, raw foodists, Black Hebrew Israelites, the Ausar Auset Society, Muslims, college students, artists, and many more. And their influence was felt throughout the city at cultural festivals, Kwanzaa celebrations, and social justice rallies, where vegan food was the main fare.

I immersed myself in this community for nearly a year, soaking up their knowledge. I went to lectures, took cooking classes and learned where to shop, how to make it affordable, the politics of food, and much more. By the time I returned to Amherst for my senior year in the fall of 1987, I was a confident vegetarian. I wasn’t ready to let go of cheese, so I wasn’t vegan yet. Unfortunately, the dining hall at Amherst that served vegetarian options included eggs and cow’s milk as ingredients, which I no longer ate, so that was not an option for me.

I had already sent a letter to the dean of students during the summer asking to be taken off of the meal plan so I could use that money to buy my own vegetarian food. But the dean had rejected my request, saying that students were required to be on the meal plan to ensure they were eating adequately and to foster socialization with other students. I decided to visit the dean when I got to campus to press my case further.

As I sat across from his desk, we went back and forth about the meal plan, with neither of us budging on our positions. Finally, I said that if I had to stay on the meal plan, I wanted the cafeteria to make separate vegetarian meals just for me, based on a menu that I provide, using organic ingredients, and separate pots and utensils. And that I wanted to watch them do it so I’d know they were doing it right. I figured he’d reject that idea completely and just take me off the meal plan. But instead, he called my bluff and agreed. He told me to bring him a menu and we’d start the following week.

So the next week, I showed up in the sweltering basement kitchen of the main cafeteria. I sat and watched as an unhappy cook made a tofu and vegetable stir-fry over brown rice on a cooktop in front of me. I tried to make small talk, but he barely spoke to me. When the rice finished cooking, about 45 minutes later, he handed me my plate of food, and I carried it upstairs to eat with my friends. By that time, they had almost finished eating.

For dinner that day, I went back down to the hot kitchen and waited again while the cook made my food. I realized the whole thing was ridiculous and there was no way I could do that for the rest of the year. So I quietly took myself off the meal plan. I used some of the money I had saved from my summer job and money I was making from work-study to buy my own food.

Once a week, I caught the bus to the natural food store in town to buy groceries. Then I cooked my meals in the kitchen of the Charles Drew House where I lived, and carried my plate of food over to the cafeteria to eat with my friends. I did this twice a day for lunch and dinner.

But it gets cold up in Massachusetts, and many days I knew my hot plate of food would get cold by the time I walked to the cafeteria. So I stayed in Drew House and sat and ate in front of the TV. I felt alone without my community of support back home and I didn’t know any other vegetarians or vegans on campus. But I remained committed to my vegetarianism because I knew I was doing it for my health and it was now a part of my lifestyle.

During my senior year, I decided to finally let go of cheese. That decision was purely mind over matter. I had to decide that the momentary pleasure of a piece of cheese in my mouth was not worth the health risks. I knew that cheese was the biggest source of artery-clogging saturated fat in the American diet. And I knew about the cruelty involved in using cows to make cheese. And yet cheese still looked and smelled good to me. So I had to come to terms with the fact that I might always love cheese, and that I might never be repulsed by it, like I was with meat. Once I accepted that fact, I gradually stopped obsessing about it, and the desire to eat it finally left me. There was no big, flashy moment when that happened. I just realized one day that I didn’t want to eat cheese anymore. And so I became a full-fledged vegan. That was in 1988, soon after I graduated from college.

My mother and sister were also transitioning from vegetarian to vegan and we were all supporting each other. Being in this together as a family, and in a supportive larger community in DC, was the foundation that helped keep us going strong.

CHANGES I EXPERIENCED AFTER GOING VEGAN

After I became a vegan, the twenty-five pounds I gained during my first year at Amherst (the year before Dick Gregory’s lecture) came off naturally. My menses also became lighter and shorter, and I seldom had cramps.

Growing up, I always had issues with oily skin and pimples, but even after becoming a vegan, my skin didn’t clear up until I went on my first supervised cleanse, which included eating and drinking only raw vegan foods, particularly dark-green leafy vegetables. Within about two weeks, my skin cleared up and developed a healthy glow from the inside out. I’ve been able to maintain that glow, and good health in general, all these years because I still eat whole foods (including dark-green leafy vegetables three times a day) and cook from scratch.

I’ve now been a healthy vegan for all of my adult life. And now, at age fifty, I’m grateful that I haven’t experienced any major health challenges. No high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, cancer, or any other chronic disease issues. Although being a vegan is not a get-out-of-disease-free card, since genetic and environmental factors are also involved, eating healthy plant-based foods gives me the best chance of living a long, healthy, and disease-free life.

In addition to the physical health benefits I experienced after going vegan, I also extended my veganism to express more compassion for and nonviolence toward animals. I served as a public policy liaison for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in 1999. As part of my role there, I watched undercover footage of factory farming; the wool and leather industries; circuses and zoos; and the testing of cosmetics, skincare, and household products on animals. I saw that the cruelty involved in using animals for fashion, furnishings, entertainment, and product testing was just as wrong as the cruelty involved in eating them. As a result, for the past twenty years, in addition to not eating animals, I also have not worn or used animal products in clothing or furnishings, and I have not used products tested on animals, to the best of my ability.

Being vegan has also strengthened my activism. Thanks to my mother’s example, our family has long been involved in volunteer work in small and large ways to help improve the lives of people in our communities, and of people of color and poor people, in general. And in our early vegan years in the early 1990s, when we participated in antiwar marches and local social justice activities with our omnivore friends, many of them would go to fast-food restaurants to eat afterwards. Marya and I would have conversations with them about the intertwined oppressions of social injustice, poor health, and the food industry (you can read more about that in my book By Any Greens Necessary), but many of our friends did not make the connection. That was tough. I believed then and still do now that how we nourish ourselves is inextricably linked to every aspect of how we live our lives, including being activists for justice and equality.

And on the subject of activism, growing up I thought that I would be a writer, an investigative journalist, or a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or the ACLU. As it turned out, becoming a vegan led me to pursue activism as a public health nutritionist helping people take back control of their health and live longer, healthier, happier lives. Marya and I also started one of the earliest vegan websites, back in 1997, and I went on to direct the country’s first federally funded and community-based vegan nutrition program in 2004, among some other milestones.

And finally, and most importantly, being vegan has also led me to explore other healing and self-care practices. As a result, I’ve developed a daily practice I call my Sacred Seven: meditating, exercising, journaling, expressing gratitude, eating well, having fun, and helping others. I’ve also gained greater clarity of purpose in my life. In fact, the longer I’ve been vegan, the more I understand that being vegan is a path, a practice—not a destination. It has served as an affirming foundation and template for me to live my life to the fullest.

WHY I LOVE BEING A VEGAN

Ultimately, being vegan makes me feel free. I know many people think being vegan means feeling restricted and deprived. But in reality, the opposite is true. Because of what I eat, I’m living a life that’s healthiest for me and kindest to people, animals, and the planet. There’s incredible freedom and fulfillment in that.

I also love the fact that being vegan and choosing the field of veganism as a profession have allowed me to combine my passions for writing, social justice, good food, travel, style, speaking, culture, and community building. Being a vegan is one of the beautiful and powerful lenses through which I see and live in the world and I feel incredibly grateful for that.

And, along with all of this, one of the biggest highlights of being a vegan has been the fact that my mother and sister went vegan with me. With my mother, in particular, we’ve come full circle. She planted the earliest seeds by starting us off on a healthier diet as children (although I didn’t appreciate it at the time!). And for her to go vegan with me years later—and become a healthy, vibrant, vegan role model at eighty—has been amazing!

MARY’S STORY

My mother, Mary McQuirter, is a true inspiration. She went vegan with me thirty years ago, when she was fifty years old. And today, she’s still healthy, fit, and active at eighty. She has no chronic diseases and takes no medications. In fact, her doctors tell her she has the health markers of someone thirty years younger. Here, my mother tells the story of how she went vegan and how it changed her life.

MY EARLY YEARS

I grew up on a farm in Camden, South Carolina, in the 1930s and 40s. We grew all our own fruits and vegetables, like kale, collards, sweet potatoes, green beans, watermelon, strawberries, and many more. And my Aunt Mary had a farm next to ours with an orchard full of peaches, plums, and all types of apples. We also picked wild blackberries and grapes in the woods that my mother preserved to make jam. We raised chickens, cows, and pigs, but we didn’t eat meat every day, like we did with fruits and vegetables. Sometimes we ate beans instead or we just had meals without meat.

In 1955, right after high school, I moved to Washington, DC, and lived with my oldest sister, Manolia. She grew some of the same vegetables in her backyard that we had in the country. But at the time, I had no interest in helping her grow vegetables. It reminded me too much of the hard farm work back home.

I began to eat more fried and processed foods after I moved to DC, and within a few years, I started having chest pains. My doctor told me to cut back on fried foods, so I did somewhat, but not that much.

It wasn’t until I was married and pregnant with my first child, Veronica, that I started reading about eating healthier. I wanted to find out how to have a healthy pregnancy and how to raise healthy children. This was in 1960 and Dr. Benjamin Spock’s books on raising children were among the ones I read. By the time I had my second and third children, Marya and Tracye, a few years later, I was eating fewer fried and processed foods, but I still had a long way to go.

OVEREATING

When my girls were young, one weekend I decided to bake a three-layer German chocolate cake with coconut-pecan frosting. As it turned out, none of the girls liked the cake, and I ended up eating the entire thing by myself in two days. I got very sick and that’s when I realized I had a problem with overeating. I had also been eating apple turnovers just about every day because the law firm where I worked had free pastries for breakfast. The first year I worked there I gained about ten pounds.

My sister, Ann, was already going to Overeaters Anonymous (OA), so I decided to start going with her. Everyone was surprised I was there because I wasn’t overweight. But just because you’re thin doesn’t mean you’re healthy.

When I found out there was an OA meeting near my office, I started going there during my lunch hour. At OA, I realized the reason I was overeating was that I was stressed. This was around 1970 and I was separated and bringing up my three children on my own. I was also dealing with racism at work as one of the first black employees at a majority white law firm. I realized that I was self-medicating with food to deal with the stress.

With OA’s help, I was able to manage my overeating. In the process, I found out that it was harder to stop overeating foods that contain sugar, especially pastries and desserts, because sugar is addictive. So with OA’s help, I also stopped eating sugar.

Then one day, after ten years had passed, I decided to eat a pastry. I figured that I had everything under control. But then one pastry led to another and after six months, I was back to being addicted to sugar. So I gave it up again. It was difficult at first—I was so addicted to sugar that I would often stand in front of a bakery just to smell the aroma. But the second time around, I was finally able to let it go completely. And still today, I don’t knowingly eat anything that has refined sugar in it. I still eat desserts, but they’re made with healthier sweeteners (as are the dessert recipes in this book).

HOW I WENT VEGAN

Letting go of sugar renewed my interest in learning more about healthy eating. And I read about several studies that came out linking pork and processed meat with an increased risk for cancer. So I decided to stop eating those foods, too.

Around that time, one of my brothers, Esau, died of a heart attack when he was in his fifties. And some of my cousins died of heart attacks soon after that, and they were also in their fifties. That’s when I learned that red meat was linked to heart disease. I was forty-seven at the time and it was a real wake-up call. So I immediately stopped eating beef.

I also saw a documentary on how chicken was processed—about how they just cut off all the bad parts and sell the rest. So I threw out all the chicken in the freezer, and that was it for me with chicken.

By that time, Tracye was in college and was thinking about becoming a vegetarian, and she was encouraging me to go vegetarian, too. So I started reading all the books she had about it. I learned how harmful and polluted fish was, and I decided to let that go, too. So at that point, I had stopped eating all meat, but I was still eating cheese.

When I went for my annual physical, I told my doctor that I was a vegetarian and had given up everything but cheese. He said I should have given up cheese first because it had the most fat. So, that led me to eventually stop eating cheese. That was the hardest to give up! It took me about a year or so to do it. But once I made up my mind, I was able to let it go.

And that’s how I went vegan at fifty. Looking back on it now, I know that giving up sugar first gave me the courage and strength to give up meat and dairy. I already knew I could do it.

MY BIGGEST CHALLENGES