The most common question I hear when people learn I am a vegan baker is “How do you bake without eggs or butter?” To this I always say, “It’s easy and I’m happy to show you how!”

There are quite a few helpful lists online that provide good ideas for veganizing recipes. One Green Planet’s dessert substitution guide is an excellent resource and I also find Vegan-Nutritionista.com to be very complete and clearly written.

Our earliest ancestors didn’t drink milk and didn’t need to worry about calcium at all. Milk didn’t appear in human diets until around 10,000 years ago, and even then it was common only in certain population groups. But anthropologists speculate that the diets of early humans were rich in calcium—with intakes higher than today’s RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) for this nutrient—because they dined on calcium-rich greens.

Really?? OK, we secretly don’t mind this question, and we especially like it when an esteemed newspaper like the New York Times publishes an article covering this topic (in their ‘Science’ section no less!) . If they can, why can’t we? This question allows us to get into a quasi-scientific debate with people and helps us make a few valid points about what’s wrong with eating animals in the process.

Although most U.S. citizens are opposed to the slaughter of animals too sick or weak to even stand for human consumption, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) currently allows this deplorable practice to continue. As a result, many farm animals are forced to endure immense suffering across the country.

Why bother going vegan? Aren’t there a million more important things to worry about? What about world peace? What about poverty? What about human suffering? What about plant suffering? Vegans just seem like misguided idealists; moreover, isn’t veganism extreme, inconvenient and ultimately only for people who are hippies, animal rights nut jobs