Executive Chef Ayinde Howell is the creator of Wildflower, New York City’s first vegan pop-up restaurant. Ayinde also created ieatgrass.com, one of my favorite blogs. (Love the food photos!) I had the pleasure of interviewing him about what’s he’s been up to and what’s next.

So, just for the record, how long have you been vegan?
I’ve been vegan all my life. Yes all my life, fo’eva-eva.

What made your parents become vegans?
My parents became vegan as a new way of life, they discovered veganism as an evolvolution from the civil rights and black nationalist movements. My father was a panther, he and my mother owned a “freedom school” in southern California where they held farmers markets and were completely self sustained. That and their commitment to that choice kinda says it all.

How was it growing up vegan?  How did your omnivore family, friends, and teachers respond?
It was tough. It takes a community -a community willing to get behind your decision, not a community against it.  Also remember this was the 80s in small town America. Nobody even knew what vegetarian meant, let alone vegan. My family thought my parents were crazy and going through some elaborate phase. My friends poked fun but the real ones just accepted it, and were corky about it. I was home-schooled. I did have a tutor who ate Mcdonalds and brought it for her lunch every day and she seemed to not care. Or she was high.

Hilarity!  What 1-2 top tips would you give to children growing up vegan today?  To parents raising vegan kids today?

Well I don’t give advice to people under the age of 18. I can say listen to your body and your instincts and educate yourself on the plant-based lifestyle and it’s pitfalls, i.e., vitamin, mineral, and oil deficiencies, which come from not eating a balanced diet. Doing something new requires a lot of knowledge, so google, google, google. And to parents, it can be done. I’m living proof.

You’re now an executive chef.  When did you get the cooking bug and how long have you been a chef?
That’s a hard question to answer. I kinda feel like I’m just now catching it, and in other ways, since I first saw my sister get burned in the kitchen. The kitchen has always been a dangerous and mysterious place, where all the good stuff happened. All I can say is it’s just a place in the house I like to be in the most. I have been a chef for 12 years.

How did you come up with the idea for Wildflower? What was that experience like?
The idea of Wildflower was hovering around my head from my experience as a chef and as a lifelong vegan. I have eaten, cooked/prepared, and experienced all these different kinds of vegan food but never under one menu. As I delved into it, it took on a life of it’s own and the menu really became my life story. Every night featured a different part of me in 7 courses. My team and I executed 5 menus in 3 days to about 500 satisfied customers–3 dinners and 2 brunches. My sister always says being the first has a lot of significance and Wildflower was the first vegan pop-up restaurant in NYC, and I felt like I needed to set the bar. I had a blast and we are currently planning the next one.

I love ieatgrass.com. How did the idea come about?

I used to try to keep my life separate. I was an actor over here and a vegan over there and so on. I realized that my whole life was seen through the lens of veganism. The more I started to research the connections between food, culture, the arts and basically all things social, I realized, duh! Put it all together under one roof, and the best and most accessible way to do that now is via the inter-webs.

What are you passionate about in your life now?  What brings you the greatest joy?
I spent the last 2 years studying acting and I’m passionate about working again. I have three acting gigs in the fall, one is a play, one a webisode series, and one feature film. All with actors and directors I like. #FTW!

Sounds awesome.  Thanks so much! 

(To learn more about Ayinde, visit ieatgrass.com.  Ayinde’s food photos above: Mac & Yease, Taco Toast, and Asian PearTart with Cocoa Nibs.)

©2012 byanygreensnecessary.com. All Rights Reserved.

Just uploaded today is a podcast on Social Media Voices about how I used social media tools to help make By Any Greens Necessary a national best-seller.

I include some great tips for new and aspiring authors, especially!  (Live Twitter chats and online book discussions are two great ways to promote your book!)

I hope you’ll take a listen…and enjoy.

©2012 byanygreensnecessary.com. All Rights Reserved.

Listen in on Monday, February 8th, 2-3PM EST, for my online interview on Blogtalk radio’s Native Style show with host Ayida Honor for Soul Visions Radio.  I’ll be talking about By Any Greens Necessary and how to eat healthier with plant-based foods.  They’ve also asked me to answer those weedy questions that never die about protein, B12, and iron.

The link for the show is here or here (both should work).  They also have a call-in number for questions during the last half-hour at 917-889-9682. 

Also, you should know that there’s always a who-knows-how-long delay between when I write this and when WordPress actually sends it to you.  So, if you get this post after the show has aired, my apologies.  (Really love that, WordPress.  Never change.) 

But if that happens, you can always listen to the interview any time, because, hey, it’s online.  So, either live or later, I hope you’ll check it out!

©2012 byanygreensnecessary.com. All Rights Reserved.

BAGN:  Hi, Bryant.  What can we look forward to in this new cookbook?

BT:  What you can look for in Vegan Soul Kitchen is some bright, bold, and sexy soul food, as I say on the back of the book.  One thing I wanted to do is bring a fresh, modern twist to this traditional cuisine. It’s bigger than just African American cuisine, although the bulk of the recipes are inspired by foods that I grew up eating in the South, growing up in Memphis, living in New Orleans, and traveling throughout the South. There are also some recipes inspired by African dishes, and some inspired by Caribbean dishes.  So I kind of broadly define what I’m doing in this book as Afro-diasporic cuisine.

BAGN:  What led you write to Vegan Soul Kitchen?

BT:  For this book, the most important thing was for me to reclaim African American heritage food or soul food, as it’s often referred to, because it’s gotten such a bad rap. When people imagine this cuisine, it’s always the artery-clogging, fatty, fried, sweet foods that are bad for us.  As I say in the essay that opens the book, yes these foods are a part of the cuisine, but in my family, those are the foods we ate at celebrations, on holidays, when we were being festive.  But the foods that we ate on an everyday basis were as local as the backyard garden, as seasonal as whatever we were growing in that season, and as fresh as what we harvested right before the meal.  And I want people to remember that this is a part of our legacy, and that our food is interesting and diverse and complex.

BAGN:  One of the innovative things you do in the book is include a soundtrack for each recipe.  How did that come about?

BT:  It’s actually a kind of trademark that I’ve developed.  I started doing it when I wrote Grub, my first book, and I wanted to continue it with this book.  With me in my family, and with a lot of people, especially African Americans, food and music are so intimately tied together.  I come from a very musical family.  My grandfather started a traveling quartet back in the 50s.  All of his children are musicians in one way or another.  So, I grew up being at family gatherings where there was always singing and people playing the piano and connecting in that way.  So music is intimately tied to my relationship with the culinary arts.  So I thought that providing soundtracks, songs that might have inspired the recipes, songs that I think might go well with the meal, would be something that people might be able to appreciate and enjoy along with the recipes.

BAGN:  You consider yourself a food justice activist and connect the types of food that people eat with issues of poverty and racism and justice.  How do you want people to see the food that they eat, the food that they choose for themselves and their families, differently?

BT:  Well, I’ll say this.  I’m not identifying myself as much as a food justice activist or even an eco chef these days.  I think oftentimes these types of labels bring a lot of responsibility that people put on the person who might be identified as these things.  I really feel like primarily I’m a creative person and I’m letting infinite intelligence, spirit, God, however you want to describe it, move through me.  I hope that the work that I do inspires people to think and act differently.  Right now my focus is on food.  I say that more than giving a lecture or writing two books or writing essays, the way that I’ve seen more people shift their connection with food, their understanding of food, their relationship with the food system, is by making them a delicious meal made from local, seasonal, and sustainable good food.  And that’s why whenever I’m presenting these days, I always like to have some component of the food in there through cooking demonstrations or leaving them with a recipe.  I want to [use food] to lure people into this “delicious revolution,” as Alice Waters calls it.  The way that I encapsulate what I try to do is to start with the visceral, move to the cerebral, and end at the political. 

BAGN:  What is your favorite recipe in Vegan Soul Kitchen?

BT:  There are a couple.  But the one that I like to share with people, and that people immediately fall in love with, is my Black-eyed Pea Fritters with Hot Pepper Sauce.  Bean fritters are thought to have their origin in Nigeria, but you can find them throughout West Africa.  The other recipe that I find myself making a lot lately is my Gumbo Z.  Gumbo Z is my interpretation of a traditional Louisianan dish that was eaten during Lent called Gumbo Z’Herbes.  This recipe is said to use up to nine different greens, and it’s such a great way to use a barrage of nutrient-dense greens in one dish.  Mine doesn’t use that many. I think I use collards, mustards, kale, and spinach, and it’s so rich and so tasty. 

BAGN:  Now I have to ask you, is there a favorite dessert recipe in the book?

BT:  Why yes there is (laughs).  Yeah, I have a sweet tooth, too.  I always have to go back to my Chocolate Pecan Pudding Pie.  It’s just so rich and decadent… It’s a big hit.

BAGN:  Sounds delicious.  When you come to DC on your book tour, I’d love for us to make that recipe as part of a book signing that we’ll have for you.

BT:  I’d love that.

BAGN:  The last thing that I want to ask you about is the drawing we’re having at By Any Greens Necessary for folks who sign up on our email list for a chance to win a free copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen.  Would you do us the honor of signing the book to our lucky winners when we do the drawing?

BT:  I would be more than happy to do that.  And I just want to say that I love the name of your site, By Any Greens Necessary.  That goes back to Malcolm X, but I was also thinking of Public Enemy.  I always say that we need more flavor in the green movement and you’re certainly bringing it with By Any Greens Necessary.

BAGN:  Thank you.  I really appreciate that.  And I return the compliment for all the great work that you’re doing, especially with the new cookbook.  Thanks again for talking with us.

BT:  You’re welcome.  Take care.

©2012 byanygreensnecessary.com. All Rights Reserved.