— Aruna Durbin

So I'm gonna give you a very short version of my story. But I was working as a pastry chef. I had gone to culinary school quite a bit later in life. My kids were already in junior high school. And um, then I got a job as a pastry chef and I was really happy with this job. I loved it and my stomach hurt all the time, but I had had stomach aches my whole life. I just thought that's just the way it is. So I had to leave my, my dream job and I happened to pick up a book by Dr. Emery Colbin called Food and Healing. It was the first time I thought about what we ate, could affect how we felt. And so I went, became vegan overnight, although it was pretty much macrobiotic because I didn't know any vegans and I felt great. I just felt great. Then the other reasons for being vegan, you know, I learned about the animals. You, you can't unlearn what you start to learn. Um, and I never looked back. And something that's very important I feel for me to say is that I never felt deprived. I in fact thought that my food choices expanded. There was so much more to eat, you know, than I had been eating. So I really loved that and I hope that answers your question. Um, then, you know, the only thing that wasn't really right available for me were desserts because they were awful 30 years ago. And some of you have heard me say, well, my son said, you're not putting a candle in a big sweet potato and telling me that's my birthday cake. So I set up a test kitchen and I just kept going until my tasters. My first breakthrough cake is the chocolate cake to live for, which is still my most requested cake. And this is a double version of it. Um, people have no idea. It's vegan. You shouldn't know it's vegan. But I had to learn about vegan products and sweeteners and so on.