Eat your veggies
Several years ago, for my birthday, I was given a copy of Angela Liddon’s vegan cookbook Oh She Glows ( by someone who’d clearly forgotten how much cheese I eat). The book had earned rave reviews and was skyrocketing up the bestsellers list, but it took having actual vegan friends over for dinner for me to give it a try. I made Liddon’s Crowd-Pleasing Tex Mex Casserole, and the fact that it was — as advertised! — genuinely crowd-pleasing kind of blew my mind. It was the first time I’d considered that vegan cooking isn’t all sprouts and lentils. (That revelation was tempered somewhat by the platter of assorted beige balls we’d assembled for dessert from our local health food store.)
We’re only a few months into 2018, and already “plant-based” eating, a diet that places fruits and vegetables at its core, is the clear mainstream food trend of the year. (Note: Plant-based eating is more flexible than a vegan or vegetarian diet.) Driving this interest are not only conversations about health, ethics and the environment, but taste and creativity too. And even though most Canadians are still loath to give up meats and dairy entirely, some of the most anticipated new restaurants in the country are plant-based, with chefs pouring their energies into finding brilliant new ways to showcase vegetables, from root to stalk.
As an idea among chefs and food activists, plant-based cuisine has been around for years, but from a consumer perspective, it’s millennials who now lead the charge. Over the past decade, those under 40 have increased their fresh vegetable intake by 52 percent in the U.S., according to the NPD Group. In Canada, millennials are by far the most likely to adhere to a vegan diet. That’s where our cover star, Lauren Toyota, comes in. Toyota, a former MuchMusic VJ, has developed an enormous following on her YouTube channel Hot for Food, where viewers come for her super-engaging, refreshingly casual and totally indulgent approach to vegan cooking. Her philosophy is that all of your favourite comfort foods—from grilled cheese to chocolate cake—can be made vegan without giving up taste. We spoke with Toyota and many more amazing women at the forefront of Canadian food about everything from new trends and classic flavours to building community and eliminating waste. See what they had to say in our feature “23 Women Changing the Way We Eat Now” (page 66).
And when you’re finished thinking about food, consider digging into this amazing seasonal brunch menu from our kitchen (page 86), which makes creative use of all manner of fruits and, of course, those rock stars of the culinary world, greens.