Read How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet Online
Authors: Tanya Barnard,Sarah Kramer
Tags: #Social Science, #Cooking, #ebook, #Vegan Cooking, #Vegan Cookery, #Vegetarian & Vegan, #Veganism, #book, #Agriculture & Food
How It All Vegan!: Irresistible Recipes for an Animal-Free Diet
How it all Vegan!
IRRESISTIBLE RECIPES FOR AN ANIMAL-FREE DIET
How it all Vegan!
IRRESISTIBLE RECIPES FOR AN ANIMAL-FREE DIET
TANYA BARNARD & SARAH KRAMER
HOW IT ALL VEGAN!
Copyright © 1999 by Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer
New material and introduction copyright © 2009 by Sarah Kramer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means— graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a license from Access Copyright.
ARSENAL PULP PRESS
Suite 101-211 East Georgia Street,
Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6
arsenalpulp.com
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Government of British Columbia through Book Publishing Tax Credit Program for its publishing activities.
The author and publisher assert that the information contained in this book is true and complete to the best of their knowledge. All recommendations are made without guarantee on the part of the author and publisher. The author and publisher disclaim any liability in connection with the use of this information. For more information, contact the publisher.
Book design and illustrations by Electra Design Group
Cover photograph by Daniel Collins
Color photographs of Sarah Kramer by Gerry Kramer
Color food photographs by Sarah Kramer (
sarahkramerphotography.com
)
Selected B&W photographs courtesy of the author and PhotoDisc, Inc.
Pottery provided by
VeganDish.net
Printed in China on wood-free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:
Kramer, Sarah, 1968-
How it all vegan! : irresistible recipes for an animal-free diet / Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard. – 10th anniversary ed.
First ed. written by Tanya Barnard & Sarah Kramer.
ISBN 978-1-55152-253-1
1. Vegan cookery. I. Barnard, Tanya, 1972- II. Title.
TX837.B28 2009 641.5'636
C2009-901876-4
DEDICATED TO
Sue Kramer, Art Kramer, and Dale Barnard
CONTENTS
Tenth Anniversary Introduction
TENTH ANNIVERSARY INTRODUCTION
SARAH KRAMER
Welcome to the tenth anniversary edition of
How It All Vegan!
Wowzers, does time ever fly by when you’re having fun. Woo hoo! When I think back to how this book started as a little DIY homemade zine—to a decade later and almost a quarter of a million books sold . . . it is beyond mind boggling.
When I sat down to write this new introduction, I found myself at a loss for words. So much has happened to me in the years since
HIAV!
hit the bookshelves, and I couldn’t figure out what to write about. With my deadline looming, Fergus (dog), Gerry (husband), and I went for a long walk so I could clear my head. As we walked around town, we found ourselves strolling through our old neighborhood and by the house we had lived in where it all began (or should I say vegan).
How It All Vegan!
was lovingly kneaded, given time to rise, and baked to perfection in an old rickety pink-painted house on McClure Street in Victoria, BC. As we walked up the street toward the house, I saw that nothing much had changed. The house was still pink and just as rickety, but as we got closer I was stunned to find out that it was scheduled for demolition the next day. How fortuitous is it that we walked by? As we poked around the property and took some photos for posterity, I was flooded with so many remarkable memories that I couldn’t wait to get home and write them down.
The house on McClure Street was one of those amazing vintage homes that gets passed around from friend to friend. The rent was insanely cheap—$325 for a one-bedroom/den with a claw-foot tub and all the charm you can muster in a turn-of-the-century house—but there was a reason for all the charm, and it came in the form of slumlord who didn’t care about the property.
Living in a slumlord’s house has pros and cons. The benefits are the cheap rent and being able to decorate and paint the walls any color you want. With rent that cheap, my husband and I learned to tolerate the family of raccoons in the attic, the broken windows, dripping taps, and the scary knob-and- tube wiring in the attic. Ahhh. Good times. Good times.
It was there that Tanya Barnard (my co-author) came to me with the idea of making a zine-style cookbook to give to our friends and families for Xmas presents. This was during the height of the ’90s zine scene; my friends and I had been making zines for years, so neither Tanya nor I expected that our little homemade zine would turn into an international best-selling book.
I put the book together using a crude desktop publishing program that came with my computer, and then we photocopied all the pages at the local copy store and collated and bound the book in my living room. I think our first run of the zine was maybe 100 copies.
When we handed out the book as Xmas presents, the response from our friends and families was overwhelmingly positive. They loved the book so much that we decided to make another 900 copies to try and sell at punk rock shows and on the Internet. The second run of the
HIAV
zine sold out almost right away and became so popular with our peers that a light bulb went off, and I realized we were on to something. Tanya and I decided to try and go legit and find a publisher.
We started doing research on different Canadian publishers, and Arsenal Pulp Press was our first choice because they were local and seemed to have a similar sensibility to us. I wrote a cheeky book proposal (and included some
Tofu Jerky
, recipe, for them to try), but to hedge our bets we sent our proposal to five other publishers, just in case. I remember placing our other book proposal envelopes in the mailbox and watching them fall out of sight, but we hung onto our Arsenal Pulp proposal for last because we wanted to give it a big kiss for luck before throwing it into the mailbox. Three days later, we got the call from Brian Lam of Arsenal Pulp asking if we’d like to have a book deal to publish
How It All Vegan!
What?!!
I’ll never forget talking with Brian and trying my best to sound normal and professional— all the while my knees were knocking uncontrollably as I tried not to pass out from excitement. I put down the phone and stared at Gerry in utter shock. Tanya and I had a book deal! I was going to be a published author! For real!
The original
HIAV!
zine was only fifty pages long, so Tanya and I furiously went to work inventing, testing, and adding more recipes as well as adding an introduction that included our story about how we vegan. We also included information for vegan newbies making the transition, and what we ended up with is the book you are holding in your hands.
My kitchen at the house on McClure was incredibly small, and there was almost no counter space, but I made the best of it and used my thrift-store kitchen table as a place to write, bake, chop, test, and re-test every single recipe for
HIAV!
. Gerry and I didn’t have a lot of money back then, and I was working with the bare minimum of supplies: a few knives, a food processor (that was a wedding gift), and barely enough money to buy all the food to recipe test. Gerry worked two jobs (in a restaurant and as a tattoo artist) so I could focus on the book. It was a heavy burden to bear, but out of our financial limitations the mantra for the book was born: healthy, delicious recipes that were easy to make, with easy-to-find ingredients.
Our vision was for it to be not just a cookbook but more about how to live a fun and happy life as a vegan. We wanted readers to discover that being vegan was easy once you knew a few tips and tricks. We spent many months recipe testing, editing, and re-editing the book. We poured our hearts and souls into every page, and it was a lot more work than I expected, but once we sent the final draft off to the publishers . . . I knew in my heart we had made something special.
I was at Tanya’s house the day we got to see the book back from the printers. We eagerly ripped open the envelope, and I stared at the cover in disbelief. Holy shit. We were authors. I thought, “Wow. This is going to end up in a library somewhere.” I was incredibly proud of the work we did.
Then I flipped to the back of the book and my heart sank. There was no index. “Where’s the index?” I yelled at Tanya. We had both assumed that the publishers would put the index in. I called Brian in a panic, and he said “Does a cookbook need an index?”
Oh my lord.
So the first 2,000 copies of
HIAV!
hit the shelves without an index. For all of you who have that first edition, you can take it up with Brian. *laugh*
Word of mouth really helped boost the sales of
How It All Vegan!
The book did pretty well out of the gate. Arsenal Pulp Press did a great job of promoting it, and because I come from an ’80s punk DIY work ethic, I got busy myself, promoting the book via the Internet. The ’net was a fairly new concept back then (can you even remember what life was like before the Internet?), and for the first time I was able to easily communicate with other vegans, not just in my local community but around the world.
The book was flying off the shelves, and I started getting phone calls from friends across the country who’d spotted
HIAV!
in the bookstore or at a friend’s house. It was also exciting when we started getting fan mail from places all over Canada, the US, Australia, Germany . . . I wrote back to each and every person who wrote to
GoVegan.net
(and I still do). Ten years later, it still blows my mind to think that someone as far away as Greece has my book in their kitchen. I’ve actually become very good friends with some of the people who wrote fan mail: Josh at
Herbivoreclothing.com
; Rudee at
SecretSocietyofVegans.co.uk
;
Sara and Erica at
MooShoes.com
; and the Wimmers at
PlanetWimmer.com
.