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Sunday, April 8, 2018

Sum It Up Sunday-That Ain't Vegan

Oh pastries, how I do adore you. Especially you pain au chocolat. I see you there. Looking all buttery and chocolate filled. How am I to escape your allure? What is it that draws me to you?


Maybe it was the time our mother took to bake cakes, cookies, pies and other assorted baked goods for us when we were young, that sweet, perceptible manifestation of her love for us, following in the very capable flour-coated hands of her mother who could whip up a Napoleon while rarely looking at the recipe.


Perhaps it was getting the bakery next door to me to make brioche dough that I would then wrap around batons of chocolate (after reading about it being the favorite afternoon snack of Parisian school children in a Bon Appetit story when I was the executive chef in a small restaurant in my hometown).


It could have been when I was working at the cooking school in Boulder CO and when the last day of the pastry intensive day would roll around, I would miraculously show up to ask my friend Carol, the instructor, if she wanted me to take the malformed pastries off her hands.


And maybe it was finding delicious pastries all around the world, from New Zealand to Iceland.


Ultimately it is most definitely all of the above. I am well aware that none of them are vegan. And that none of them are cholesterol free, which is why I eat a mostly vegan diet, for my health.


Treating myself isn't the worst thing in the world to do. I balance it out with fruits, veg, whole grains, and plant-based meals 98% of the time.

When I think about the time and skill it takes to make one of these beauties, I relish that and indulge. One of the biggest things I've learned is that you can't kick yourself for treating yourself. I give myself love by eating right AND by taking down an "Oh Mon Dieux" in Montreal.

I hope we can all give ourselves a break, some slack. Let go of the rigid and be more fluid in our self-care. Get out there, Oh Hungry Hordes, and go do you.


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