The topic of veganism has gained popularity and even celebrity status in recent years, but what does it really mean? To some people it’s a more healthy way to eat, while for others it can be a political statement. To our team, creating delicious vegan foods is something we’ve always been committed to for a variety of compelling reasons. My main concerns when creating love Cookies was that free-range, organic chicken eggs and butter from well-cared-for, grass-fed cows are both expensive and hard to source.

On Halloween I was at the new Wegmans store in Northborough, MA near Boston, giving away samples of all of the Mary's Gone Crackers products that they carry. Luckily, the power was back on in the store after relying on back up generators for a few days after the huge dumping of snow in the area. There were lots of people hanging out in the store because many schools and offices were closed. It was a lot of fun and a huge and beautiful store!

I met Jeffrey Smith several years ago after I heard him speak about GMO food (genetically modified organisms, also referred to as Genetically Engineered.) He wrote Seeds of Deception and Genetic Roulette all about the horrors of the genetic engineering that is going on, using the US population as guinea pigs.

I recently attended a 3 day conference sponsored by the USA Dry Pea and Lentil Council which took place at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in St. Helena, CA—in the beautiful Napa Valley wine country. The CIA is housed in what used to be Christian Brothers winery—a huge old stone complex that has been turned into a culinary school, a store and a restaurant. The conference was to educate us on the culinary and nutritional benefits of using dry peas, lentils and chickpeas (or their flours) in our products.

We’re building a new website and I get to be in charge of some of the copy that will be going on it. The section called “Why Organic” is taking me a while to write. One realization I had while I was doing the research for that section is that, as we know, in the history of our species and our relationship to agriculture, we’ve always farmed “organically” because there was never a choice. Indigenous people learned to grow food with nature—following what they saw happening around them; allowing nature to be their teacher.