Meet Louise

For close to 40 years now, I have been enjoying and creating vegan cuisine to satisfy the western palate. Originally based on the complete protein base soyfoods, this quest expanded to include beans, seed, nuts, and grains from cultural cuisines around the world. A healthy vegan diet should include a wide variety of these protein foods as well as wide variety of fruits and vegetables.

I am one of the pioneers for introducing vegan cuisine to the US. I ate my first tofu in Seattle as a teenager in Japanese restaurants, intrigued by it from the start. Little did I know at the time what a big part of my life the soft white curd would come to be.

Recipe development began with experimentation on my own, trying to recreate the dishes I really liked by replacing meat, cheese, and eggs with vegetarian protein forms. I shared recipes with friends in early communal living experiences in small groups. After moving to The Farm Community in Tennessee in 1971, I learned and experimented along with other community members developing a tasty, economically friendly, healthful soy-based vegetarian diet for anyone, anywhere. It was our shared knowledge that really made it possible to put it all together. We were idealistic about all aspects of life, and believed that the world’s food supply could be increased at least 20 fold if everyone was vegetarian.  We thought that if everyone on earth became vegetarian, no one would go hungry.

At first, living in converted school buses and vans, we made our own tofu at home on wood stoves. We experimented cooking with all kinds of beans, grains, seeds, nuts, and fruits and vegetables. As the community grew and developed, we established our own Soy Dairy to make tofu, soymilk and tempeh for the whole community.

This experimentation resulted in the first community cookbook we put together --The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook-- which gives basic recipes for beans and grains which are the protein mainstays for vegetarians and vegans along with fruits and vegetables and egg-free cooking. This was the first cookbook that I put together and edited which contained recipes contributed from the whole community. Tofu Cookery was our next community cookbook, a full color photo project. We wanted people to know what this wonderful “new” food could look and taste like, and what amazing versatility it had potential for. Tofu Cookery has become a classic and best seller in the natural food trade, with the newly revised 25th Anniversary Edition off the press in early 2008. This new edition of Tofu Cookery has been revised and re-written to bring it up to date for ingredients and nutritional content, with the addition of many new recipes.

Since the first community cookbooks, I have written five more books on my own, including Tofu Quick & Easy, Soyfoods Cookery, Lighten Up! with Louise Hagler, Meatless Burgers, and, Miso Cookery. My focus has been to present a wide variety of tasty, easy-to-prepare, familiar dishes, incorporating soyfoods of all kinds and vegan ingredients from cuisines around the globe. Traditional cultures over time have all figured out food combinations that give them complete protein from the food locally available.

I teach cooking classes introducing these tasty foods wherever I go. In my cooking classes, I focus on quick and easy recipes featuring all kinds of soyfoods and other vegetarian foods prepared in ways that will be warmly welcomed into daily menus.

In the past few years, I have been teaching nutrition and cooking classes in undernourished communities in Mexico and Guatemala for Plenty International, introducing soyfoods as an alternative protein.  I have also been providing technical support for soy dairies in those countries, some of them started by Plenty over the last 25 years. Spending this time in these other cultures has introduced me to other lost or neglected indigenous protein sources. Food security has become a global concern and what works locally is going to become more and more important.