By Amelia Tarallo
Hometown Weekly Special Correspondent
Cooking and baking can be therapeutic for many people. However, when taking on a new diet, some ingredients must be eliminated. Heather Mayer Irvine’s new book, “The Runner's World Vegetarian Cookbook,” tackles this issue, providing healthier alternatives to some classic dishes.
For example, the red velvet brownies found in the dessert section of her cookbook utilize beets instead of red food coloring to give them their traditional coloring. “They’ll not only add color but also moisture and sweetness that don’t over power the chocolate flavor,” she notes in the recipe.
Heather Mayer Irvine is the former food and nutrition editor for Runner's World. She grew up in Medfield and was part of Needham’s 2005 graduating class.
The idea for the book began shortly after Irvine started working at Runner’s World magazine. “A few months after I started as food and nutrition editor at Runner's World, one of the Rodale book editors approached me in Boston while we were working the Boston Marathon, asking if I'd be interested in writing a vegetarian cookbook for the brand. I said I was, and a few months later he asked me to write a proposal for how I envisioned the book,” she says. “I'm not a vegetarian (I love a good burger!), but as a runner and a nutrition editor, I understand the importance of a varied diet that includes lots of plants. So that was the approach I took when compiling recipes and writing the book: no matter your food-with-a-face preference, you can eat more plants to fuel your runs and recovery.”
Finding recipes that did not employ meat was the least of her problems, even as a non-vegetarian. Instead, it was finding the motivation to write about food during her entire day. “The biggest challenge … was finding the time and brainpower to write the book,” she recalls. “During the day, I wrote and edited food and nutrition pieces for the magazine and the web. So when I got home, the last thing I wanted to do was dive into more food and nutrition; while this was a brand book, it was a side project for me, so I had to do it on my own time. Many weekends were spent writing and editing and writing and editing.”
Writing the book came with additional technical challenges, as well. “There was the time when I was 95 percent done with the manuscript and I lost it. Like, the manuscript was gone from my computer and gone from my Apple iCloud backup. I cried. I cried and cried to an Apple tech person. I just cried while he sat there in silence listening to me cry. Yes, I had emailed myself versions, but I hadn't done that in several days, so I had lost hours of work,” she remembers. “And then … Jeff, my husband, took my computer and found it in the bowels of some Word backup. So I cried some more. And started emailing myself a copy every time I touched the document.”
But writing the book resulted in an overall great experience for Irvine, giving her the opportunity to work with some of the best athletes around. “I'd say the best part was working with elite runners like New York City Marathon winner (and Boston native!) Shalane Flanagan and Matt Llano to incorporate their recipes. One of the coolest things about my job and being the editor/author of this cookbook is working with these amazing runners, whom I admire and who really give back to the community that helped build them up.”
Irvine handles cooking much like a painter handles a canvas, looking at it and adding to it to make a masterpiece.
“I love that you can get creative. You can't do that much with baking. But with cooking, I can take a recipe and change it up. For example, we have a favorite veggie fried rice recipe from Shalane Flanagan and Elyse Kopecky's first cookbook, ‘Run Fast. Eat Slow’ … We made it a bunch of times, but then started changing up the ingredients and the spices, so now it's our own,” she says.
“I love going out to eat, but there's something really nice about cooking your own meal and sharing it with your family. And that's what I hope my book brings to people, runners or not: that you can prepare a healthy, nutritious, and of course, tasty meal relatively quickly and then sit down with your family and friends and enjoy it.”
“The Runner's World Vegetarian Cookbook: 150 Delicious and Nutritious Meatless Recipes to Fuel Your Every Step,” which comes out on October 9, is currently available for preorder on Amazon.
