It’s All About Food - 08/27/13

Part I – Virginia Messina
Vegan For Her

Ginny is a registered dietitian with a master’s degree in public health from the University of Michigan. She writes about vegetarian and vegan diets for both the public and health professionals and speaks on vegan diets at scientific events for health professionals as well as events for the public.

Ginny is co-author of two books on vegan nutrition, Vegan for Life and the recently released Vegan for Her. She also co-authored a vegetarian textbook for health professionals The Dietitians’ Guide to Vegetarian Diets.

She lives in Port Townsend, Washington with her husband and an ever-changing population of rescued cats. When she’s not researching and writing about vegan nutrition, she volunteers for her local animal shelter and feral cat group, practices piano, gardens, and is learning to knit with vegan fibers.

She blogs at TheVeganRD.com and is also TheVeganRD on twitter and facebook.

Part II – Lagusta
Lagusta’s Luscious

“Lagusta Yearwood” is not a nom de chef referring to the joys of eating with gusto, French spiny lobsters (les langoustes), or the Spanish verb for “to like” – it’s the kind of name you get when your parents are hippies who met in the mud at the Woodstock Music Festival in 1969. It’s pronounced with a GUS in the middle, most emphatically not a GOO.

Lagusta Yearwood is a restless rabble-rousing chef-turned-chocolatier who’s in love with deep flavor, ethical sourcing, farmers, the food poor people around the world have always eaten, lactic acid fermentation, and noodles.

She lives in a little 1960s sunny ranch house in the tiny farm-focused town of New Paltz, NY with her sweetheart Jacob, and three cats: Sula, Noodle (told ya), and Cleo.

Ms. Yearwood trained at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City and worked for many years with mentors at Bloodroot, a gourmet 35-year-old feminist-vegetarian restaurant and bookstore in Connecticut, and has done endless private cooking jobs around New York City and New Jersey. From 2002-2010 she ran a vegetarian meal delivery service bringing handcrafted meals featuring local produce to New Yorkers from Battery Park to Woodstock. Since 2003 she has sold a line of gourmet vegan chocolates online at lagustasluscious.com.
After years of cooking in dinky rented kitchens, she and Jacob renovated a former laundromat in downtown New Paltz to become a tiny little chocolate shop, which