We Ate Well, New York, NY (2026)

Our mission is to help you eat mindfully, joyfully and sustainably on a vegetarian diet.

10/26/2026

I’ve spent years thinking about vegetarian food in terms of protein, fiber, carbohydrates and fats. And those things still matter enormously to me.

But studying Ayurvedic nutrition introduced me to another dimension of food that I hadn’t fully appreciated: the intelligence embedded in its preparation.

In Ayurveda, this is called Sanskar. The idea that the qualities of a food can be transformed through the way we prepare it.

For my recent research project, I studied how traditional vegetarian cultures around the world prepared their protein-rich foods. And what struck me wasn’t how different the cuisines were, but how often they arrived at remarkably similar techniques.

Soaking, grinding, fermenting, cooking with moisture, spicing, adding fat and acid.

These weren’t necessarily developed with modern nutritional science in mind. But many of these techniques have effects we can now explain through food science, from softening tough plant structures to changing antinutritional compounds and improving the availability of certain nutrients.

What I find most fascinating is that the nutritional intelligence of a dish may lie not just in its ingredients, but in the sequence of decisions that turns those ingredients into a meal.

Maybe the recipe itself is nutritional information.

And perhaps there’s something worth rediscovering in the way traditional kitchens have always approached food.

Which of these transformations do you use most often in your cooking?

10/19/2026

If you’re a vegetarian trying to eat more protein and fiber, it can start to feel like a full-time job.

Count the grams. Add more beans. Add more tofu. Add a protein shake. Make the portion bigger.

But I don’t think eating well should mean constantly trying to cram more into your plate.

I’ve been vegetarian my entire life, and after being diagnosed with prediabetes in my 30s, I had to rethink the way I was building my meals. I learned to prioritize protein and fiber, be smarter about carbs, and most importantly, layer protein from real foods so no single ingredient has to do all the heavy lifting.
And because I’m a food person first, the meal still has to be something I’m genuinely excited to eat.

Around here, you’ll find flavorful vegetarian recipes, simple ways to build more balanced meals, plenty of ideas for lentils, tofu, tempeh, paneer, yogurt, eggs, nuts, seeds and whole grains, and increasingly, what I’m learning from Ayurveda about digestion and nourishment.

More protein and fiber. Big flavor. Without overdoing it.
If that sounds like how you want to eat, you’re in the right place.

Comment INFO and I’ll send you all my resources for protein-rich vegetarian meals.

10/16/2026

Every Navaratri growing up, there was sundal.

A bowl of chickpeas or another legume, simply seasoned with mustard seeds, curry leaves, chilies, hing and coconut. It was prasadam, something we made because that was simply what you did during Golu.

I loved it enough to include my own version in my cookbook, The Vegetarian Reset. But when I wrote the cookbook, I was thinking about sundal largely through the lens I knew then: a delicious, naturally protein- and fiber-rich vegetarian dish.
After studying Ayurvedic nutrition, I see that little bowl very differently.

We tend to look at chickpeas through a modern nutrition lens: protein, fiber, carbs.

But Ayurveda asks another question: what happened to the chickpea before you ate it?

It was soaked.
Cooked until tender.
Tempered with pungent and aromatic spices traditionally used alongside legumes.

Finished with fat and fresh coconut.

In Ayurveda, these transformations are called sanskars. Preparation can change the qualities of a food, which means the recipe itself becomes part of how we understand its nourishment.

And this was one of the most fascinating things I discovered while researching vegetarian protein traditions around the world.

Traditional cuisines didn’t simply identify nutrient-dense foods and put them on a plate. They developed techniques around them. Soaking. Grinding. Fermenting. Cooking. Spicing. Adding fat and acid.

It’s funny to look back at a recipe I put in my cookbook years ago and realize there is another layer of wisdom in it that I’m only beginning to understand now.

The chickpea may be the ingredient. But the wisdom is in the preparation.

Happy Navaratri. And if you have The Vegetarian Reset, consider this your reminder to pull out the Sundal recipe this week.

10/12/2026

Turns out, tadka was never just about flavor.

Cumin, mustard seeds, hing, ginger, garlic, chilies and curry leaves are bloomed in hot ghee or oil, then poured over the finished dal.

Of course, it tastes incredible. But many of these spices have also traditionally been used to support digestion. Cumin and hing are considered carminative, while ginger has been studied for its effects on gastric motility. Ginger, garlic and chilies also stimulate digestive enzymes. Blooming spices in fat helps extract and disperse their fat-soluble aromatic compounds.

And through an Ayurvedic lens, the fat plays another role as an anupana, or carrier.

What I love about tadka is that flavor and function were never really separate.

That’s something I kept seeing throughout my research into traditional vegetarian cuisines: some of the most delicious cooking techniques also served a practical purpose.

What do you put in your tadka?

10/09/2026

Maybe it’s not lentils. Maybe it’s how you’re preparing them.
As a lifelong vegetarian, I’ve spent years thinking about how to get enough protein from foods like lentils and beans.

But while studying Ayurvedic nutrition, I became interested in a different question: How have cultures that relied on these foods for generations traditionally prepared them?

Take dal.

It’s not simply lentils boiled in water. The lentils may be split and hulled, soaked, cooked with salt and turmeric until creamy, balanced with something sour, and finally finished with a tadka of spices bloomed in fat.

And when I expanded my research beyond India, this is where things got really interesting.

Across traditional food cultures, I kept seeing variations on the same techniques: soaking, fermenting, grinding, slow cooking, digestive herbs and spices, fat and acid.

My biggest takeaway?

Traditional cultures didn’t just figure out which foods nourished them. They figured out how to transform those foods into something the body could receive.

And I think there’s a lot we can learn from that in our very modern quest to eat more protein.

Save this for the next time lentils are on the menu. And stay tuned, because I’m going to show you how these same principles appear in traditional kitchens around the world.

10/05/2026

Invest in gold they said…so, meet Sunny, our new puppy! He’s perfect, and we are all completely obsessed. 😍

A few things we’ve learned about Sunny so far: he loves his squeaky duck, his Snuggle Puppy® and his ball. He gives a paws up to boiled carrots, Greek yogurt and peanut butter. Cheese is strictly okay, apparently, although he might make an exception for paneer.

Other hobbies include being impossibly cute, following us everywhere, and getting away with pretty much anything because... look at that face.

Safe to say, you’ll be seeing a lot more of him around here. Hope he brings a little extra sunshine to your feed, too. ☀️

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