Synopsis:
Part memoir, part cookbook, and part health-and-nutrition how-to, Blue Moon Vegetarian chronicles Kentucky-born former nurse Paula Marie Coomer as she and her fiancé go vegetarian—and ultimately vegan—while also planning their wedding, adopting a pound hound, and remodeling their two-story Victorian. Writing with honesty, humor, and sometimes despair, Coomer tells the story of two people alternately thriving and suffering as they adjust to a new way of eating, living, and loving. With advice from a former public health professional and over fifty original, tried-and-true, plant-based recipes, this thought-provoking book is perfect for anyone concerned about their own health, the health of their loved ones, and the health of our planet.
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Excerpt:
Some years ago I journeyed to magical British Columbia with my friends Kathy and Patty to attend what they described as a “ʺWise Woman Retreat,”ʺ at which I had agreed to read from my first poetry chapbook. It is true that I am now a university English instructor, but I am also trained as a registered nurse with a significant history as a public health nurse. Patty, Kathy, and I had all been working for the Coeur d’ʹAlene tribe in Plummer, Idaho. Kathy was a clinic nurse; Patty was a nurse practitioner; and I oversaw community health programs. It was my thirty-eighth birthday, and my last day on the job. My team of nurses and nursing assistants and I had designed the first public healthprogram on an Indian reservation to serve both Indian and non-Indian clients. They had all received national awards, and I, as a commissioned officer with the U.S. Public Health Service, had been decorated. I still have the small, striped bar that was meant to be worn on my Navy‐issue uniform. The goal was to celebrate my separation from the USPHS and my decision to become a writer. Six months prior, I had given notice of my resignation and the surrendering of my commission.
British Columbia in September is dreamy, with crayon‐blue skies and foliage tricked out in the shades of autumn. The air snipped at me and I didn’t mind, reminding me as it did of the inhalation of each breath. Patty, Kathy, and I wound our way up a mountain road to a wilderness lake and camp, talking about the intoxicating scenery, the mysteries of life, and the stop we had made at a winery to sample iced champagne.
The retreat turned out to be a gathering of Wicca practitioners. Pagans. The exact opposite of Christian fundamentalism. We were all sworn not to reveal our activities to the outside world, but I am here to tell you that the drumming circle pulled a thunderstorm from a sky star‐laden enough to navigate the seas, and the packed earth of the great assembly shelter shifted while the walls trembled from the accompanying winds.
But I was less impressed with that than I was with the savory, fresh, organic, vegetarian fare and the express assertion by conference organizers that good, natural food was everyone’s first priority. The second night, after a meal of soup, hummus, homemade bread, and a soul–‐‑stopping dessert called “Death by Chocolate” (which I can only describe as a tumbled combination of cake, brownie, and pudding—again, all organic, not too sweet, and a bona fide drug), I held my poetry reading in front a medieval‐sized fireplace and a room packed with physically fit women of all colors, ages, and sizes, all buzzing from the chocolate and cups of coffee. I was so glad to see that no wine came out. No alcohol of any kind. Those women didn’t need it.
Had I never understood the power of the feminine before, I did then. The potential in the room was hugely palpable. It raised the hair on my arms and filtered through me like champagne bubbles.
Although I used my time and inspiration at the retreat for writing rather than attending “witchy” workshops, I did succumb to a Tarot reading—which predicted I would find true love, live my life as a writer, and find happiness after a long stretch of difficulty—and a Reike treatment which left me feeling buoyant and youthful. At one point I also attended a “ʺNaming Circle” meant to reveal to us our representative icon. Perhaps thirty of us stood in a large ring around a high priestess who walked the inner circle, facing each of us, stopping briefly and declaring to the crowd and the world our single defining characteristic.
Mine was fire.
Once the naming was finished, we each traveled, one at a time, the same path the high priestess had walked, “sharing” our named energy with other participants by “sending” our energy out towards them.
In the last moments of the ceremony, she revealed to us what she described as her single most important message: Avoid processed food. “It contains the death crystals,” she said, “and will rob you of your power.”
That sentence finds its way to my forebrain on a very regular basis even still, almost two decades later, and became so predominant in my thoughts at the end of 2009 that I couldn’t ignore it. For years I have started New Year’s with a three‐day fast, a ritual of renewal I learned from a Nez Perce friend. As I prepared myself in mind and spirit for the beginning of 2010, the urge to return to a vegetarian lifestyle came with it.
These words also haunted me during my stay at my son’s in Boise as day after day we
contemplated what to prepare for dinner. My dear daughter‐in‐law Susannah one afternoon admitted with profound apology that she craved beef; this for the first time in nine months. Throughout her pregnancy she was unable to tolerate the smell of meat, whether raw, cooked, or refrigerated. Privately, I considered the possibility of the gestating fetus’s ability to protect itself from growth hormones and cow antibiotics by generating the whims of the pregnant mother. (Of, course, we now know, almost three years later, little Leah was a born vegetarian. She refuses meat entirely. Won’t touch it.)
And so I stood quietly by as my son and I shopped for a meal at Walmart. He had been laid off from his web designer job for a year. Walmart, he explained when I protested, is part of how they were surviving. I bit my tongue at the eight‐dollar package of overly red ground beef product, wanting badly to say that three pounds of organic legumes would be less than half of that. And so the family ate burgers made from that two‐pound package of Walmart ground beef, which contained so much dye that despite cooking the meat until it was almost too dry to eat, it remained pink.
I was thankful for my un‐dyed leftover Herbed French Lentil Soup and my open‐faced cheese and tomato sandwich on potato bread from the Boise Co‐op.
At the very least, everyone came to the conclusion that they would no longer purchase meat from Walmart. I wished I could convince them to stop shopping there, period. It worried me, their dependence on food that came preformed and conformed. Although it didn’t happen all the time, Malory lunched occasionally on dinosaur‐shaped chicken nuggets, which we now know come from a meat by‐product called “pink slime,” and breakfasted on pancakes from a freezer bag. And one midday, a kiddie TV dinner.
At least I could rest knowing baby Leah, for some time to come, was privy to her mother’ʹs milk—the last perfect food any of us gets to consume.
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Praise for Blue Moon Vegetarian:
“Blue Moon Vegetarian is a book that will feed all the essential parts of you: your body, your
mind, your soul. It’s a love story, a health journal, a cookbook, a lyrical memoir–the perfect
recipe for anyone who desires to live a deliciously examined life.”
—Kim Barnes, Author of the internationally-acclaimed novel In the Kingdom of Men
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Buy Blue Moon Vegetarian:
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About the Author:
Paula Coomer’s fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have appeared in many journals, anthologies, and publications, including Gargoyle, Knock, and the acclaimed Northwest Edge series from Portland’s Chiasmus Press. Ms. Coomer has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize and was the 2006 writer-in-residence for Fishtrap, Oregon’s renown advocacy program for literature in the West. Her books include the short story collection Summer of Government Cheese (2007; 2011), the poetry collection Devil at the Crossroads (2006), and Road, a single-poem chapbook (2006). Her first novel, Dove Creek, was published in 2010 by Booktrope (formerly Libertary).
Visit her blog HERE.
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