Liz Thompson
Today we are talking to another of our sister site green gals…Andrea Bertoli of Vibrant Wellness Journal! VWJ is all about nutritious recipes, yoga tips, holistic health advice, and news from around the globe on living green. You may remember Andrea’s free downloadable guide? If you have yet to get in on that great green tidbit, there’s no time like the present.
Now, I’d love to introduce you to Andrea…
Hi there! Why don’t you introduce yourself to our readers?
I am Andrea B, a vegetarian chef and educator living on Oahu. I currently edit and write for Vibrant Wellness Journal here on the Important Media Network, but you can also find my work on Eat. Drink… Better, Feel Good Style and Green Living Ideas. For the past years I’ve taught workshops and cooking classes, sharing the love of plant-based food and nutrition with learners young and old. I love teaching because of the joy that it can bring people: to see a new recipe taught before their eyes, with healthy swaps for ingredients or a twist on a favorite recipe, it makes it seem possible– and even exciting– to begin enjoying more plant-based foods. Currently I work for a food start-up as the marketing director, and spend time blogging and doing recipe development featuring our line of gluten-free, soy-free, vegan products.
What can folks learn about at Vibrant Wellness Journal?
At VWJ, readers can learn about a wide variety of health and wellness topics. There are lots of recipes to choose from, but also practical health tips from our contributing writers, including a yoga teacher, a Macrobiotic chef and a nutritionist. Our team is passionate about sharing their knowledge about wellness, and we work to make the site inclusive, featuring gluten-free, vegan, omnivorous, Paleo, and vegetarian recipes and health tips. There are also dozens of book reviews, product reviews and a few interviews too.
Can you share some of your most popular posts?
My favorites are our collection posts: 20 Best Bean Recipes, 10 Ways to use Oatmeal, and our 10 Best Kale recipes. These are easy, one-stop posts that highlight some plant-based staples in lots of delicious, easy recipes. Our most popular post is actually a collaboration with an acupuncturist. It addresses how different foods affect our menstrual cycles; Balancing your Hormones Naturally is consistently in our top five posts and has a ton of info about which foods can help us at all phases in our cycles, like seaweed, beets, spicy foods and more. It’s very interesting, and I’ve incorporated a lot of her ideas into my own diet. Another very popular post is our Vegan Cheesy Rice, actually submitted by our Publisher, Scott Cooney. This simple recipe is a great year round staple featuring everyone’s favorite condiment, nutritional yeast. And my most recent post features my newest smoothie obsession: Maca Mocha Smoothie made with herbal coffee, chocolate and maca.
What’s one little-known fact about Vibrant Wellness Journal?
VWJ is actually my second blog: I began writing five years ago at a personal blog named Bakery Manis (manis means sweet or cute in Indonesian, the language I studied in graduate school!). I’ve moved all my old stuff over and reworked it, because some of it was really pretty terrible! So VWJ is a compendium of all the foods I’ve cooked for the past five years, all the different food jobs I’ve had and all the new ingredients I’ve learned about. The site functions much like a journal, hence the name.
