Vegan 101

Everything you need to get started or keep on cooking healthy, delicious, gourmet vegan cuisine

Heather Bell and Jenny Engel are sisters and founders of Spork Foods, a renowned L.A.-based gourmet vegan food company and cooking school. They have taught countless time-strapped Angelenos and celebrities how to create gorgeous vegan food using local, organic and seasonal ingredients.

With the launch of their first book, Vegan 101 (Callisto Media), gourmet plant-based food is now easily accessible to everyone! Here are some recipes—and a cheat sheet on the
Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen fruits and vegetables—from Vegan 101 to get you started.

Dirty Dozen & Clean Fifteen

A nonprofit environmental watchdog organization called Environmental Working Group (EWG) looks at data supplied by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) about pesticide residues. Each year it compiles a list of the best and worst pesticide loads found in commercial crops.

The Dirty Dozen represents fruits and veggies that tend to have the highest pesticide load (meaning you should certainly buy them organic when you can), and the Clean Fifteen tend to have the lowest pesticide load (though, again, we recommend buying organic all the time). You can use these lists to decide which fruits and vegetables to buy organic to minimize your exposure to pesticides and which produce is considered safe enough to buy conventionally. This does not mean they are pesticide-free, though, so wash these fruits and vegetables thoroughly.

These lists change every year, so make sure you look up the most recent one before you fill your shopping cart. You’ll find the most recent lists as well as a guide to pesticides in produce at EWG.org/FoodNews.