Alicia C. Simpson has been cooking since she was tall enough to reach the stove. She is the author of Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food and Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations. Alicia is the creator of the popular blog Vegan Guinea Pig, as well as, a contributing writer for Southern Child Magazine. Alicia has also been featured in the documentary I’m Vegan. Alicia lives in Atlanta.
What inspired you to write this book in particular?
My family and friends were my ultimate inspiration for writing Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations. Sharing food is how we share our love for one another and although my family originally thought the decision to go vegan was extreme (I must have heard that word a dozen times a week in the beginning) they have now embraced veganism and can create some of the most fantastic vegan feast you could imagine. Showing up to Christmas dinner with multiple vegan options on the table is such a joy for me and I wanted others to be able to experience that.
How difficult was it to create recipes for holiday’s such as Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa in “Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations”? Christmas, Thanksgiving and Cinco de Mayo were the easiest celebrations for me to create recipes for since I always make a big feast for each of these holidays. The two most challenging holidays to create recipes for were Halloween and Hanukkah. I don’t have children and I never really celebrated Halloween with food, just candy, so I was stuck for a while on that chapter. My inner five year old helped bring that chapter to life, at the end of the day I ended up having more recipes than could go in the chapter. It was really important to me to make a great menu for Hanukkah, all my Jewish friends kept telling me that having a brisket was essential but I’ve never tasted brisket so I was stumped. Thankfully after playing around with it for a couple months I was able to come up with a portobello “brisket” that everyone loved. But it was really touch and go for awhile there.
How does writing a book like “Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations” differ from writing your blog? Writing a book is like writing hundred’s of little blog articles except there is little room for mistakes when it comes to writing a book. There’s something about the fact the your words are going to be sent off to a big printer, bound, and put on bookstore shelves that adds another layer of pressure that doesn’t exist when writing a blog. Plus my blog is very different from my books, on my blog I get to critique food, books and vegan products all day but in my books I have to create incredible dishes that will later be critiqued by others. It’s definitely a role reversal.
Why did you feel it important to include a section of “pantry-like” items and their descriptions? There’s a certain mystic that surrounds vegan food that shouldn’t be there. I constantly get asked if I shop at Whole Foods, as if that is the only place you can buy vegan food, so I think it’s important to highlight the fact that most of the food in my books can be found in your local, conventional, grocery store. I also feel it’s important to write a book that works for everyone. Not everyone has a well stocked pantry, not everyone knows what liquid smoke is or where to find it, and I don’t want to take that for granted. My goal is to make veganism approachable and effortless for seasoned cooks and novices alike and giving a full run-down of pantry basics for each book is a big part of that for me.
In your Mardi Gras section, which recipe proved to be the most challenging for you to recreate? Mardi Gras was the last chapter that I wrote for the book and one of the most fun. I sweat bullets over that gumbo. Gumbo is such a personal dish for so many people and I didn’t want to mess it up. The only gumbo’s I was exposed to as a child were full of seafood, which I never liked, pork, which I didn’t eat and okra which I strongly dislike. Creating a recipe that still held on to its Louisiana roots but had a touch of Alicia in it as difficult but I think I pulled it off. At the end of the day I had three different gumbo recipes that I was in love with but only one could make it into the book. I’ll probably post one of the other variations on my blog around Mardi Gras.
Why did you include a raw sweet potato pie recipe as to a more “traditional” one?
I love to sneak a little raw food into each of my books, like the green smoothies in beginning of Quick and Easy Vegan Comfort Food. I think a raw sweet potato pie is the perfect non-traditional dish to have at the dinner table. It doesn’t look that much different than the cooked version and it doesn’t taste that different either so you won’t get too many odd looks when you put it on the table. It’s a nice way to introduce people to the world of raw preparation.
Any plans yet for a third book, and if so, what might the reader expect to see?
I’m crossing my fingers for a third book. I’m bouncing around a couple different concepts but at the heart of each concept is a move toward more whole food ingredients. Really utilizing protein and fiber packed legumes more than seitan and tofu, and continuing to keep the food quick, easy and accessible.
Follow Alicia’s Blog at http://veganguineapig.blogspot.com/