Thank you T!

Every once in a while I get fan mail that makes my heart pound. This one came from T and I’m so glad they wrote me.

Hi Sarah,
I am an aspiring vegan chef myself and loved La Dolce Vegan. Awesome recipes without some of the pretentious ingredients I can’t afford. I love to cook and cooking through your cookbook has been great.

But I’m also a recovering anorexic and someone that struggles with severe depression. And while paging through, looking for recipes I think that I could manage to get out of bed and eat, I stumbled upon spicy corn chip popcorn which is “a great snack for when you’re sitting around with your girlfriends watching Americas next top model and reveling in the fact that you can eat without guilt and that you don’t have an eating disorder“.

I love your recipes, your style, and your sense of humor but please keep in mind that not everyone is so fortunate as to not have an eating disorder. Please think about what you say and write; words have a profound impact. It won’t stop me from buying your cookbook but I’m definitely going to sharpie that part out in my AND the library copy so that nobody else has to feel the way I felt when I read it: ashamed of myself and disappointed. I have tons of respect for you and know that you are better than that part of the book.

Sincerely,
T

I wrote T back immediately and apologized. What a stupid weak attempt at a joke. I can’t even believe I wrote that passage. Ugh. Not funny.

I wrote about my struggle from an early age with an eating disorder in Garden of Vegan and when I had my mastectomy in 2013 it really brought back a lot of those issues I had when I was younger. It’s a daily struggle and a challenge and I am mortified that I wrote that joke or thought it was funny. Ugh. Apologies to everyone.

To quote Oprah quoting Maya Angelou: “When you know better. You do better.”

I’m going to ask my publishers to remove that passage from any future pressings of LDV. I like the idea of everyone taking a sharpie to that joke and blacking it out.

Love you T. Thanks for writing me today.  🙂