Martha Stewart has invited me to be a guest on her knitwear show on February 25th! I’ll be teaching how to make the decorations for the knit night cupcakes I made back in June.

I’m really excited (and really nervous!) but I’m sure it will be a blast. Don’t forget to tune in to the Martha Stewart Show at 10 am on Monday, February 25th!

I’ve got to get back to preparing for the show. I’m up to my eyebrows in marzipan! I leave for New York tomorrow, so there won’t be any blog updates until late this week. Wish me luck!

Hello! I’m Lolo. I’m 25 and I live in Boston with my husband, Stewart, and my two kitties, Dory and Pekoe. I quit my “day job” and am now busy writing a cookbook. I’m not a chef, I’ve never been to culinary school, and I’m certainly not a professional photographer. I have a lot of fun pretending, though!

I’ve always enjoyed cooking, and when I went vegan four years ago the kitchen became my favorite room in the house. I love experimenting with all sorts of food. Except for beets. And garlic. And pretty much anything that has been pickled. But hey! We all have our weird preference and dislikes, right?

If you like flickr, you can check my page out here. You can StumbleUpon me here. If you’re a knitter and on Ravelry, say hi to me here.

I do my best to make vegan food tasty and appealing to vegans and non-vegans alike. It seems to be working! See the press section to read what people are saying about VeganYumYum!

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of camera do you use?

I use a Canon EOS 30D; any photos taken after June 2007 use the 30D. Before that, I used a Canon Rebel XTi, and way back when I first started I useda point-and-shoot Sony cybershot. With the Canon cameras, I use two lenses: Canon EFS 60mm/2.8F Macro and Canon USM 50mm/1.4f. If you’re really curious as to what camera/lens combination I used for a particular photo, click on the photo. You’ll be taken to my flickr page. If you click the “more properties” link on the bottom right of the screen you can see all the juicy technical data for that picture.

How do you get such nice photos? Any tips?

Practice, forethought, and a few easy tricks. I use colored backgrounds (spray painted foam boards or large sheets of construction paper), and take care to use natural light. I buy a fun dish or two whenever I go to Target. I think about what the setting should look like, how I’ll plate the food, and what colors would go nicely with it before I even start cooking. I don’t have a studio, so all the food you see is made by me in my kitchen, placed next to the window, photographed, then eaten. I use a tripod (never a flash!) and shoot a LOT of photos. I’d say that I take over 100 for every blog post you see, and then I delete the vast majority during the editing process. I use Adobe Lightroom for corrections (cropping, color boots, contrast, white balance, etc). I have a simple rule: if I don’t have a good photo of it, it doesn’t go on the blog. Period.

Can I use your images on my blog/in my magazine/to advertise my product?

If you have a blog and you’re not selling anything, you’re free to repost my images there as long as you link back to my blog and identify the photos as mine.

If you want to use my images for any other reason, contact me first. I generally do not allow my images to be used for commercial purposes, as stock photography, or to advertise your company/product/whatever. I suppose there are exceptions to every rule, so if you’re really interested in them email me.

What is Earth Balance/That weird ingredient you called for?

Earth Balance is a vegan margarine. It’s my favorite! I call for it in a lot of recipes, but sometimes I forget to specify what exactly it is. If you see a confusing ingredient, most likely google will answer your questions, but I’m always happy to chat via email if needed.

Press

On February 25th I was a guest on the Martha Stewart Show! Here’s the clip:

It’s official, VeganYumYum.Com is the Best Food Blog of 2007! Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the Blogger’s Choice Awards!

Mojito Cupcakes have been seen on Slashfood, Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen, Metafilter, Tastespotting and several blogs.

Knit Night Cupcakes have been featured on BoingBoing, Craft Magazine Blog, SuperVegan.com, and several knitting blogs.

Ellen on AOL.com even featured them as some of the Best Cupcakes in America!

The mini donuts were featured on theVegan Cupcakes Take Over the World blog, and they were one of PETA2’s “Things We Love” in April, 2007.

These were featured on Slashfood

If you have any questions, feel free to email me at lolo AT veganyumyum DOT com

I’ve closed comments on this page because there were getting to be too many, so please email me instead!

Hi! Has the dust cleared? Thank you so much for the overwhelming response to the knit night cupcakes. I don’t quite know what to say! Perhaps we should just move right along and talk about something new and totally different. Raw food.

I admit that I used to think about raw food the way that many omnis think about vegan food in general. What do you eat? Could it really be good? I couldn’t possibly make it myself – it seems too hard.

Then on a trip to San Francisco a few years ago, my eyes were opened. My husband and I went to the San Francisco Vegetarian Festival and there we tried some raw cheesecake from Alive. We were stunned. So stunned we had to find out if they had a restaurant. And they did! We went there that night for dinner.

I was admittedly nervous. Having never eaten fully raw meal on purpose, I had no idea what to expect. At that point I hadn’t even seen recipes, cookbooks or blogs about raw food. I had only been vegan for five or six months, so a lot was new to me.

We ordered a dehydrated cracker pizza starter. Stewart had a fettucini alfredo and I had a sundried tomato lasagna. We also had two tall glasses of almond milk to wash it all down. Dessert was a chocolate-y pie. How is it that I can remember every detail of a dinner I ate more than three years ago? IT WAS AMAZING! That’s how. You would think I would have delved into the world of raw food right then and there, but it’s taken me three years to decide to try some raw meals every once in a while.

So here is my very first attempt! I blended the brazil nut based sauce in a brand-spankin’ new vita-mix (thank you to my husband for that!) and used a mandoline for the cucumber noodles. I know most people use zucchini for raw noodles, but all I had on hand were cucumbers. They were very wet, so I rolled them up in paper towels while I was preparing the rest of the dish; that seemed to help the texture immensely.

It ended up being a really simple dish: cucumber noodles, fresh sweet corn kernels, the sauce, and some fresh mint and basil from my garden. I loved every single bite, and I can’t wait to make more raw food!

A friend of mine is having a going away party tonight. She got a great job in NYC, and they want her there immediately! Good news for her, but bad news for us here in Boston!

The party is also a Knit Night, so I thought I’d bring some appropriately decorated cupcakes. This was my first time working with marzipan, and what fun it is! Like, four hours of fun.

Speaking of the party, I gotta go! Forgive my lack of words; I hope I can make up for it with the ridiculous amount of photos!

On February 25th, 2008 I was on the Martha Stewart Show showing Martha how to make these. Here’s the clip!

Photo tutorials here.