About

The HISTORY of SAVVY VEGETARIAN

Vancouver
I first encountered vegetarians and organic food in the late sixties, when I moved to Vancouver, British Columbia. Back then, the Fraser Valley south of Vancouver was full of market gardens, with vegetable stands. Now, I think it’s just malls! There were Chinese green grocers, and Lifestream was the first natural food store. It was heaven! For many reasons, becoming vegetarian felt right. It was hard to do and harder to explain to people like my Mom, but I never would have admitted it, even under torture!

I pretended I knew exactly what I was doing, but soon found out that excessive enthusiasm, along with an arrogant disdain for facts, is a dangerous combination. Without knowing a single thing about vegetarian nutrition, I started my new vegetarian lifestyle by jumping into extreme macrobiotics. I grew very thin (think gulag survivor!), dehydrated and weak. Feeling faint was a familiar sensation. I just thought I was too yin and needed more brown rice.

I returned to my own life, with my disastrous vegetarian beginning a bad memory. I started over, and gradually, cautiously became vegetarian. I’ve gotten lost many times, and made countless mistakes. If I’d known thirty five years ago what I know now, I’d have saved myself a lot of time and energy, not to mention malnutrition!

I found Diet for a Small Planet, Laurel’s Kitchen, and Moosewood Cookbook in the seventies – that helped. And I became a maniac organic gardener, obsessed with compost. I read constantly, and the web has become a great research tool.

Fairfield, IA
In the early eighties, our TM meditation practice inspired a move to Fairfield IA, where there are about a thousand vegetarians, who’ve been an incredible source of information and shared experience. In Fairfield, we learned the basics of Ayurveda, which supplied some vital missing links:

• Knowledge of diets for different body types
• Seasonal variations in diet
• Food as preventative medicine
• The six tastes (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, astringent) as a basis for complete nutrition

During the last few years, we’ve added Western herbal tradition to the vegetarian mix, thanks to experts such as Susun Weed, and Rosemary Gladstar. My daughter Sarah is a budding herbalist who mixes up teas, tinctures, body care products – our cupboards are crammed with jars and bags of interesting herbal things. We’ve gone organic, and non-gmo, and we grow a few herbs and vegetables.

My approach to vegetarian cooking is a combination of modern and traditional nutrition, intuition, and practicality. I have a casual attitude toward nutrition. I know it, I use it, but I can’t be bothered with all the technical names of things. To me, great food should be not only good looking and delicious, but simple and easy. I love to experiment and have fun in the kitchen, and I almost never follow a recipe as given – not always a good thing!

Savvy Vegetarian Is Born
In the mid-nineties, we moved to Minnesota for six years. As a vegetarian in a meat-and-potato town, I stuck out in a crowd, and people started asking me for vegetarian advice.

I soon realized that many more people would become vegetarian if it weren’t so overwhelming! And that there was an awful lot of interest in vegetarianism, for a town like Mankato. I wondered how many more would-be vegetarians were out there, in need of support. Why not start a vegetarian website, and call it Savvy Vegetarian?

Since my early social blunders, I’ve tried to keep a low profile, live and let live. This is a lifetime challenge for a strong-willed, bossy woman who is always convinced she’s right even when she’s wrong. I do love giving advice – I can’t help myself!

But I’ve learned to listen – it’s amazing what you hear that way. And I try to tell people no more than what they want to know. I enjoy helping people to find their own unique vegetarian path, and I’d love to hear from you!

All the best, Judith Kingsbury, Savvy Vegetarian

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