Woman in Real Life

If you are new to a vegan or plant-based lifestyle, giving up cheesecake can seem like a daunting task. Thankfully, there's no need! Why not make your own delicious, nutrient-filled cheesecake that's not only vegan, but also raw and gluten-free? These mini kiwi cheesecakes are simple to make, use healthy ingredients (unlike traditional cheesecake) and can be kept in the freezer so they're handy when a craving strikes or a friend drops by for tea.

Sometimes I just feel too tired (lazy?) to go grocery shopping. And then it becomes slim pickings for meals and snacks around here. Especially through six solid months of winter. Fortunately with the arrival of spring comes renewed energy, and I have been hitting up the grocery store regularly to replenish our stock of fruits and veggies. Having lots of fresh produce in the kitchen means a much healthier week for me and my family. It always reminds me of the advice that raw chef Pedja once gave me for adding more raw foods to our diets - add healthier choices to your diet and they will naturally begin to replace the unhealthy foods by sheer volume. And, surround yourself with fresh fruits and veggies. Simple and powerful.

I am looking forward to experimenting with more raw food recipes once warm weather arrives and I'm no longer craving the comfort of cooked foods. Recently I received a copy of Rawsome Vegan Baking by Emily von Euw of ThisRawsomeVeganLife.com. With all of its beautiful photos and delicious-sounding recipes, Rawsome Vegan Baking is sure to inspire me in my quest to prepare more raw desserts.

Recently, I had the privilege of interviewing a talented raw food chef for GoodLife Magazine. Pedja Milosavljević, RHN, is a vegan raw food chef at Nature's Emporium wholistic market. He shared with me some of his great tips for painlessly introducing more raw foods to your diet. His tips are simple yet powerful enough to make a meaningful change in your diet. Here they are:

For the first time ever, the book club gals and I decided to hold our meeting at a restaurant. We chose to go for Sunday brunch at Live Organic Food Bar, Toronto’s top organic raw food restaurant. With rain coming down outside, we all opted to warm up with food from the “Not So Raw” area of the menu, as well as a few hot beverages, like soy cappuccinos and loose leaf teas. The meal was creative, lovely and delicious and the company was outstanding. The only down side is, with all of the menu choices, including some ingenious desserts, we didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing the book…oops.


We all left with a desire to try making some raw food recipes of our own, and we added Live’s three recipe e-books to our Christmas wish lists.

We did manage to spend a bit of time discussing the (very worthy) inspiration for our gathering, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes. We shared some favourite quotes, including one that comes early in the book, as the main character, Aminata, looks back on her life as a slave and laments the loss of her family. It's a poignant reminder of the special everyday moments we share with our children, and the fact that some people (even today) are deprived of the continuity of family.

“But nothing—not a man’s body, or a sip of whiskey, or a peppered goat stew from the old country—would give anything like the pleasure I would take from the sound of a baby breathing in my bed, a grandchild snoring against me. Sometimes, I wake in the morning with the splash of sunlight in my small room, and my one longing, other than to use the chamber pot and have a drink of tea with honey, is to lie back into the soft, bumpy bed with a child to hold. To listen to an infant’s voice rise and fall. To feel the magic of a little hand, not even fully aware of what it is doing, falling on my shoulder, my face.”

tofu omelet with potatoes and gluten sausage

French toast with bananas

raw Black Forest cake

raw tiramisu