Marking his 10-year anniversary working to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system, Bryant Terry offers more than just a collection of recipes. In the spirit of jazz jam sessions and hip hop ciphers, The Inspired Vegan presents a collage of food, storytelling, music, and art. Bryant shares his favorite preparation / cooking techniques and simple recipes—basics to help strengthen your foundation for home cooking and equip you with tools for culinary improvisation and kitchen creativity. He also invites you to his table to enjoy seasonal menus inspired by family memories, social movements, unsung radical heroes, and visions for the future.
Ultimately, The Inspired Vegan will help you become proficient in creating satisfying meals that use whole, fresh, seasonal ingredients and are nutritionally balanced—and full of surprising, mouthwatering flavor combinations.
The son of a sharecropper, Will Allen had no intention of ever becoming a farmer himself. But after years in professional basketball and as an executive for Kentucky Fried Chicken and Procter & Gamble, Allen cashed in his retirement fund for a two-acre plot a half mile away from Milwaukee’s largest public housing project. The area was a food desert with only convenience stores and fast-food restaurants to serve the needs of local residents.
In the face of financial challenges and daunting odds, Allen built the country’s preeminent urban farm—a food and educational center that now produces enough vegetables and fish year-round to feed thousands of people. Employing young people from the neighboring housing project and community, Growing Power has sought to prove that local food systems can help troubled youths, dismantle racism, create jobs, bring urban and rural communities closer together, and improve public health.
Today, Allen’s organization helps develop community food systems across the country.
An eco-classic in the making, The Good Food Revolution is the story of Will’s personal journey, the lives he has touched, and a grassroots movement that is changing the way our nation eats.
I'm pretty choosy about cookbooks since I don't have much room for them on my one little cookbook shelf, but this summer I've fallen in love with Bryant Terry's cookbook, The Inspired Vegan, possibly because my garden is so bursting already with greens, which figure prominently in quite a few of his recipes. Plus I was initially struck by the accolades on its back cover by such food luminaries as Alice Waters and Raj Patel. The word, 'inspired' definitely belongs in the title because throughout the book, in the sidebar for each recipe, there's a recommended 'soundtrack', and accompanying many others there's also a suggested book and/or film. For example, the summertime 'Mindful Brunch' menu lists 'A Tribute to the King' by Rev. James Cleveland and 'Black, Brown & Beige' by Duke Ellington with Mahalia Jackson. One of its book inspirations is Thich Nhat Hahn's Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life. Without overdoing it on the spiritual and political threads that weave through Terry's writing about food, neither does he give them short shrift, as they inform the interested cook with historical anecdotes that relate to how it is we most deeply nurture ourselves, steward our little part of this beautiful planet and sustain our culture. Combined with a heightened awareness concerning the path of food from soil to table, there's a simplicity and sensuality in the affordable and not overly exotic ingredients that one can mix and match to create menus that can be adapted to one's own inspirations, resulting in mouth-watering meals that are not only healthy for body and spirit, but also for the planet and local community. The Thich Nhat Hahn quote on p. 99 says it alll, really: 'I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food. When I eat in this way, not only am I physically nourished, I am also spiritually nourished.'
Even though I'm not personally a full-time vegan, I've long kept an ear to the ground for books to round out my kitchen/garden library of books dealing with foods that not only please the palate, but that consciously harmonize with social uplift/justice and show a deep respect for the soil and creatures that sustain our species. So it was perfect synchronicity as I was making my way through The Inspired Vegan that a fellow bookseller pointed out Will Allen's The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities. Yes, THAT talapia-fish-hydroponics- greenhouses Will Allen from Milwaukee who has been teaching workshops in Denver for wannabe urban farmers!
This book (co-written with Charles Wilson, and with a rousing forward by Eric Schlosser) was inspiring enough to read just as memoir, packed as it is with the unique combination of people and events in Allen's life that set him on his path as an innovator in the growing urban homesteading movement. But it is also packed with great, practical ideas for anyone to modify for small or large-scale growing good food and strengthening community. Surely even never-ever-beginner gardeners may find here just the jumpstart they need to get busy employing those adorable red wiggler worms, planting some seeds and getting more enthused about composting... and who knows, maybe even getting involved with others to transform a neighborhood food desert into an oasis of healthy veggies and fruits!"
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