Written By: Dan Mandell

I am very excited that Keri asked me to share my love for food with all the readers of Yoga Swole.  Those  of you that know me, know that food is a very important part of my life.  When Keri and I moved to New Jersey from Massachusetts, I did some soul searching  and knew that I needed to make my obsession with food more healthy; that is how I got into cooking.

I have really grown to appreciate the entire process surrounding food; from the origins and farming of the ingredients to the cooking process to the tradition of gathering together with loved ones for a meal.  I spend countless hours experimenting and learning different cooking techniques; a lot of the time the hard work yields great results, sometimes not so much.  The biggest lesson I have learned about cooking is that you can’t get better without practice. Keri really likes when I practice, because she gets to reap the benefits in the form of delicious meals… but she also gets a little annoyed when she’s trying to eat healthy and I get on a baking kick.

As Keri talked about last week, she has been on journey to a plant based diet over the last several years.  While I am not a vegan, I fully understand and support the vegan lifestyle and have really embraced cooking vegan meals and desserts!  People always ask me if its difficult or frustrating to cook vegan meals, and the answer is no.  It is actually very easy and allows me to utilize fresh ingredients that during certain times of the year, I can trace back to the time and location where it was harvested.

Vegan cooking can be intimidating to people just starting out, but it doesn’t have to be.     There are so many resources online and in books that make vegan cooking and baking very straight forward, including finding easy plant based substitutes for most ingredients.   My biggest piece of advice is explore blogs (Keri posted some in her article last week), browse books and most of all, don’t be afraid to experiment.

Fall is in full swing and one of my favorite things to make in the fall is stuffed acorn squash.  We are lucky to live close to so many local farms where you can get some really great fall produce to stuff them with.  Here is a really quick and easy stuffed acorn squash recipe that I hope you love as much as Keri and I do!

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