Happy Herbivore Blog

Welcome back to the HH online book club! This month we've been reading Keep it Simple, Keep it Whole: Your Guide to Optimum Health by Alona Pulde and Matthew Lederman.

This Week's Thought Questions (based on chapters 7-10 ):

1. Where do you think you are on the continuum (where you ever somewhere else?)? Where do you want to reach? 75%? 90%? 100%?

2. What's your opinion of soy, after reading chapter 9? Did your thoughts change?

3. Were you surprised to learn that "populations that consume more dairy products are MORE prone to bone fractures"? What surprised you most about milk/dairy in chapter 10?

Please leave your comments below or at Goodreads, where you can see and comment on last week's questions as well.

Also, if you want to buy/order next months book, we will be reading The Starch Solution by John and Mary McDougall.

Before we left Montreal, Scott & I made a trip to Aux Vivres. I've been to a lot of vegan restaurants in my travels but I've never been to a restaurants as busy as a NYC vegan restaurant outside of NYC, until now. Aux Vivres was crazy busy and I loved that excited energy.

We started with the cornbread which was good, but the dipping sauce was OUTSTANDING.

I ordered the tempeh burger (which was okay) and Scott ordered the Aux Vivres burger (which I tried a bite of) and it was delicious. We also ordered dessert, of course.

I picked the brownie which tasted just like the brownies my mom used to make in my prevegan days. Scott ordered a banana-chocolate pie, which I didn't try, but he loved, especially since it had a nut crust.

Pinterest has been all the rage lately and I'm sorry to say that I was late to the party. Actually, if it weren't for my sister I might still not be using it!

Actually, not really late, I've had a pinterest account for a while. It's just that I never really used it, until my sister got hers and feel in love and then I really got into it as well.

I've got several different boards, from Elephants to Fashion & Hair to Books & Films. Of course I have my favorite ingredients and fan favorite recipes as boards too.

Yes, all the pins in the Fan Faves are repins of what others have made and pinned first - so try one and let it become one of your favorites too!

It's fun to see what other people like, whether it's ideas for their house (or dream house) or various crafts that they want to make.

I love all the cute dog pictures too - you know I'm a sucker for pugs!!

Instagram is another story, as I've just started using it. It's a fast and easy way to share photos with your friends from your phone. You take a picture, edit it (or leave it as is!), add a caption, and publish it to all of your followers.

What most people don't realize is that there's a community feature built into Instagram, the same way Twitter built a community - through hash tags. A hash tag is a pound or hash symbol followed by a word, I'm sure you've all seen them: #vegan #anyotherphrase.

You should enter the hash tag into the caption of your photo. For example, we recently posted a picture of fiddleheads and tagged it as "#vegan #happyherbivore" so that we could find other Herbies! You can use the #happyherbivore tag on your meal photos to be a part of a collection of photos from other plant strong, tech savvy, Herbies!

When you're signed into Instagram, you can also search for a tag and find new users with common interests. You simply go to 'Search Instagram' in the settings section. After that, you press 'Search tags' and you can enter any tag you're interested in finding.

So go check them out, and follow me on Pinterest and on Instagram at @happyherbivore.