Vegetarian Zen: Nutrition, Recipes, Cooking Tips, Natural Remedies & More For Vegetarians, Vegans, & The Veg-curious.

In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we’re pleased to welcome Callee Ackland of Hippie Haven, the first zero-waste store in South Dakota.  We’re going to talk to Callee about what a “zero-waste” store is, and also about the mission at Hippie Haven whose vendors are 70% women-owned.

In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we are pleased to welcome Laura Theodore, aka. The Jazzy Vegetarian.    What’s EXTRA exciting about having Laura on the show is that she was one of our inspirations for creating The Vegetarian Zen podcast.   Many of you know that we started Vegetarian Zen as a place for people to feel comfortable asking questions and learning more about being plant-based without feeling bullied or pressured.  We wanted to focus on the positive aspects of being vegan or vegetarian.    Today we get to know Laura a little more and talk about her latest book, Vegan For Everyone.

In this episode of the VZ podcast, we’re pleased to welcome Benjamin Hagerty and Brianne Nemiroff of the blog It’s Bree and Ben: Live and Travel Kindly. We talk to them about how they started out their life of travel and how they use their blog to help guide people to kind choices in travel, dining, and shopping.

 A plant-based diet is a powerful tool in helping you manage your diabetes. It can even reverse it!   A few weeks ago, Larissa had a bit of a scare with her blood-sugar levels shooting up. Because she can’t take any medicines such as Metformin to help her control her diabetes, she needs to ensure she’s eating right and moving.  This recent scare made us go back and review some of the basics about controlling diabetes.  In this episode of the VZ podcast, we’re going to share 7 things you should know about being diabetic on a plant-based diet.  Always talk to a doctor!

Today we are excited to welcome Siovonne Smith, author of the book The 3-Day Vegan.   When we reviewed Siovanne’s book, The 3-Day Vegan, we really resonated with the message. In her book, Siovanne gives you step by step suggestions, inspiration, and motivation to help you ease into veganism 3 days at a time.  Whether you’re a vegetarian looking to incorporate some vegan days or, you’re an omnivore who isn’t really interested in becoming vegetarian or vegan but would simply like to reduce your consumption of meat and dairy, this book has something for you!

As we are currently dealing with a global pandemic, it’s essential that we are keeping ourselves healthy. One of the ways we keep ourselves healthy is by keeping our guts healthy. In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we’re going to talk about probiotics. More specifically, we’ll be talking about vegan probiotics. We’ll talk about what they are and the best sources.

There is no doubt that these times we are in are not like anything most of us have experienced before. Hopefully, it won’t be something we will experience ever again.  With things so uncertain these days many people are feeling sad, angry, confused, and isolated.  Today on the podcast, we want to share 10 healthy coping mechanisms that you can use to help you during these uncertain times.

Back in episode 176, we talked about the amazing benefits of fermented foods and one of the foods we discussed was miso.  This episode of the Vegetarian Zen is all about miso. This was something I had no clue about until I became a vegetarian. I didn’t know it existed! This is a great example of where becoming a vegetarian expanded my food choices and experiences.

Today on the podcast, we are excited to welcome recognized expert and thought leader in the culinary, social, ethical, and practical aspects of living vegan, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau. Colleen is an award-winning author and hosts two podcasts, Food for Thought and Animology. Today, we’ll be talking more in-depth about her latest book, The Joyful Vegan.

In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we’re going to be talking about the 3 terms often used when talking about waste. Those terms are: Reduce Reuse Recycle We’re going to talk about the definition of each and provide you some ways you can help out our planet by participating in reducing, recycling, and reusing. Now before you start thinking, “I know what each of these mean. I’m good.” Stick around! I know I thought I knew a lot about these already too but did pick up a few things myself.

This episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, like many others, is a listener request. We’ve had several folks in our community contact us letting us know that they want to learn more about what it means to eat gluten-free on a vegan diet.   This is one of those episodes where we are talking about “a vegan diet” because, for the most part, cheese and dairy are gluten-free.   We’re going to talk about: What gluten is. Celiac disease What you can eat if you are a vegan, vegetarian, or reducetarian looking to avoid gluten Some sneaky foods you might think are gluten-free but may not be (always double-check!)

Cara Cifelli is a Certified Health Coach, Holistic Nutritionist, chef, author, podcast host, and avocado toast lover.  Cara passionately provides the tools to help women leave behind dieting, disordered eating, and body shame so they can show up more fully in all areas of their life.  In this episode, we talk to Cara about our own issues with disordered eating. 

Balloon releases have been around for decades but did you know that they are extremely harmful to our animal friends AND our environment?

In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we’re pleased to welcome Brighde Reed to the show.   Brighde is one of the co-founders of World Vegan Travel, a company that creates luxurious travel experiences for vegans and the vegan-curious.  Brighde is going to tell us all about World Vegan travel and then share some general travel tips for traveling as a vegan or vegetarian.

In last week’s episode of our podcast, we talked about the top tools we’re using to get healthier this year. One of those tools is an app called My Fitness Pal which we use to log our daily food intake. Using this app, we’ve gained some insight into our macronutrients and where we needed to focus in order to eat a more balanced diet. One of the macronutrients we had never given much thought to is potassium. What we found is that we consistently fall short in hitting our recommended daily intake in this area.  After experiencing some muscle cramping recently, it occurred to me that this may be related to my potassium deficiency.  In this episode, we’re going to talk about what potassium is and how to ensure you’re getting enough.

In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we’ll be discussing the top 9 tools we’re using to help us get healthier in 2020. We want to stress that you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get healthy. Keep in mind that we’ve accumulated the kitchen tools we’re going to discuss over time and they aren’t essential. We simply want to share these with you today so that you can decide for yourself what makes sense to invest in to make your life a little bit easier.

In this episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast, we’re going to talk about seeds! More specifically, we’re going to talk about 7 of the healthiest seeds you can eat to give you a nutrition boost. Of course, we can’t talk about food without giving you some ideas and recipes so we’ll be talking about some of those too!

Yes, we finally did it! We bought an air fryer!  Back in episode 259 of our podcast, we talked about air frying. When we did this episode, we didn’t have a fryer of our own but asked for some input from our Peas and Carrots Society on Facebook about their experiences with air frying. Was it awesome or just a bunch of hot air? While the majority of our folks were really digging the air fryer, we weren’t exactly sold. That is, until this past Black Friday when Amazon was running a sale.  In this episode of our podcast, we’re going to talk about which air fryer we purchased and provide you with a review. 

This episode of the Vegetarian Zen podcast is all about quinoa! Specifically we’ll  be talking about: What quinoa is What are the health benefits Is it considered gluten-free? Is it Keto-Friendly? And last but not least, how to cook it!  We’ll be sharing a few favorited recipes in our show notes at www.vegetarianzen.com/342 so be sure to head out and check those out after you have a listen!

We are knocking on the door of a brand new year and many people are thinking about New Year’s resolutions.  “New Year, New Me!” is the rallying cry of many people vowing to take up good habits and ditch old bad habits. Well, most people know that the percentage of people who actually accomplish New Year’s resolutions is very small. This year, instead of “New Year, New Me’ we’re going to offer you 5 ways to think about the upcoming new year that might help increase the odds of you actually moving the needle on those things, you deem important for yourself.