When I learned Cheyanne Holliday, the recent head chef and kitchen manager of Golden Magnolia’s Stone Soup Community Kitchen, was moving to Montana with her fiancé, the news felt slightly crushing. Other than keeping me in stitches as a fellow student in my improv class, this creative powerhouse of a person has been designing meals, managing volunteers, and helping to feed Fairfield in the basement of the old Presby church (200 S. Main Street), which was transformed a few years ago into a multi-faceted community center. It has been such a pleasure to partake of Cheyanne’s donation-based vegan dinners, full of zesty flavors and healthy ingredients that leave me feeling well and happy—and don’t break my wallet.
The good news is, Stone Soup Community Kitchen has a fabulous new chef, Ronan Malloy, and has hardly missed a beat dishing up those tasty dinners.
The other good news is, Cheyanne is leaving behind a legacy in the form of a beautiful, brand-new, plant-based cookbook. Stone Soup Community Cookbook features recipes that are tailored for both home cooking and feeding the masses, soup-kitchen style—like Cheyanne and her team have done for the past four years at Golden Magnolia, averaging about 12,000 meals per year on a pay-what-you-may basis. The cookbook’s release date is July 11, with a party at Golden Magnolia from from 4:00–5:30 p.m.
By the way, all the proceeds from Cheyanne’s cookbook will go to the community kitchen.
I interviewed Cheyanne on the phone about her cookbook as she drove to Iowa City to pick up her moving van.
So, Cheyanne, when did your journey with cooking and creating recipes begin?
I didn’t have a distinct moment in my youth or anything … no one really taught me to cook. I just kind of figured it out. I’ve always been kind of a picky, particular eater, so I just learned what tasted good to me. I would cook for others, and I think I learned quickly that food was a really good way to connect with people.
Before I had my first restaurant, Plant, I lived in this large house with a bunch of college friends—we called it “veg frat”—and whenever we’d throw parties, I would make a ton of food, and people would always love it. About this time, I really wanted to create an eco-village, and I was like, “I need to raise money to build a community, so let’s start a restaurant because that will do both.” And … restaurants do not raise money. They’re extremely bad at that, I learned!
But the experience ended up providing me with the skill sets I needed for when I ended up meeting Tammy Haessler and Adriene Crimson [the founders of Golden Magnolia Sanctuary], who bought Plant Peace, my first cookbook I wrote after the restaurant closed. It feels like a series of events led to me fulfilling the role at Golden Magnolia.
What drew you to vegan food?
Yeah. So. I used to be a massive meat eater, like steak was my favorite food. I was a big-time animal-product person, and then one day I just randomly got sick, and I couldn’t eat anything except for smoothies for like a week. And the weirdest thing happened. Meat started repulsing me—and that was really strange because that had been my choice for my entire life. I started not eating meat as much, and then I watched the documentary What the Health? and made the decision to go plant based. I went from being a sort-of vegetarian to an animal rights activist very quickly … and there was no going back.
But if you entirely remove the ethical “stamp,” and if you only focus on the health aspect, so many of our top killers, disease-wise, are preventable and even reversible with a whole-foods, plant-based diet, which is the majority of what we serve at Golden Magnolia—whole grains, vegetables, beans. We’re not just wanting to feed people; we’re wanting to serve people nourishing food that is going to help their well-being for their entire life.
One of my goals is to hopefully help educate people with the cookbook. There are fun nutrition facts sprinkled in throughout, and we have a little section on why we’re vegan, which focuses on the health, the ethics, and the environmental aspects, too. Especially living in Iowa, we are facing a lot of the environmental consequences of factory farming.
I like to open people up to experiences like, “Oh, I just ate this plant-based meal and I walked away feeling good!” Right? “Not heavy. I feel satiated. Good in my body.” That experience might break the stigma that a lot of people have that, I don’t know, vegans are malnourished … or that plant-based food is just “bad.”
For somebody who’s never going to part with meat or dairy—what might they get out of this cookbook?
Almost everyone eats vegan dishes, even if they don’t call it that. The vast majority of the people who come in and eat at the kitchen are not vegan—like 95 percent. And for the many people who have come in and said, “Oh, I don’t really like vegan food,” I say, “Have you ever eaten fruit? Or French fries?” Or, you know … fill in the blanks! You don’t have to be adopting a plant-based diet to enjoy plant-based meals. And I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t enjoy our brownie recipe!
Or maybe you don’t plan on going vegan, but you want to support feeding people. Making a donation or buying this cookbook is a good thing to do. All of the profits support the community kitchen.
Give me little glimpse inside the book at a few of the recipes!
Some recipes are favorites from the community kitchen, but then I also have several recipes that I really enjoy making at home.
During the extensive period while I was writing this cookbook, I discovered my favorite soup! It’s called Tom Kha. It’s southeastern Asian—coconut milk, mushrooms, thin rice noodles, and it has this delectable spice to it. I was in love the first bite I took. I’m so excited for people to try it.
There’s a Borscht recipe that is insane. A Slavic beet stew. So yummy. And with cashew cream in it, it’s a crowd favorite.
My new favorite dessert is a Strawberry Matcha Cheesecake Crumble. So good. I made it for my final day in the kitchen, so lots of people got to enjoy this pink dessert with me.
There are some Chocolate Chip Cookies we taste-tested in the community kitchen. I made a big batch, and one of the volunteers, a kid, was walking around and having people try them and asking them what the cookies needed. And so I edited the next batch with people’s input and sent them out again. There were three rounds of feedback and edits, and that’s how this recipe got formulated.
And how about some Mac & Cheese for some warming, comfort food. Very creamy, very good.
And then … there’s the Seared Lion’s Mane Steak. Sooooooo good. Especially for someone like me, whose favorite food used to be steak. This is the closest replica I have found in ten years. I’m obsessed with it. It’s something that we don’t make in the kitchen because Lion’s Mane mushroom is very expensive, so it’s a specialty recipe I make at home.
I also included the Balsamic Vinaigrette salad dressing we make that everyone is obsessed with, Terry Kuehnemann has a section on his famous Sourdough Bread, and some of the recipes are from Tammy Haessler as well.
For somebody who’s pondering starting up their own vegan soup kitchen, do you have any advice?
A section of our book is dedicated to cooking recipes in soup kitchen portions—100-plus servings—so anyone who is interested in starting this kind of operation has a cookbook that’s already been designed to help get them off the ground.
I would also say, start with a core team of people who are really dedicated. Establishing a core team is the most important thing because it is a lot more labor than you might anticipate. Ideally, you want to have four or five people who you know are in it for the long haul—or at least for several years.
And, learning from our first few years, I would say: get active on social media from the get-go. And network in town—put effort into corporate sponsorships and into community outreach. We’ve had good relationships with local farmers and gardeners, but I feel like the community outreach portion is the most essential part.
What’s next for you? And what’s next for the Golden Magnolia community kitchen?
I would say that while the kitchen was something I really wanted to help get off the ground, I’ve learned that my passion is actually my creative writing! Ronan Malloy, the next chef at Golden Magnolia, has a real passion for cooking—and I think he’s going to bring something really special to the table. But if anyone misses any of my dishes, just ask him—he has all the recipes!
A big part of this cookbook is to encourage people to get involved in Golden Magnolia in whatever way they can. That could be coming to dine in, volunteering, marketing, becoming a committee lead—there’s a section in the book about projects that the kitchen needs leads on. There are many ways in which we want the project to grow and expand, and we need people in order to make that happen.
We really want this to be something that’s long-lasting—and even serve to be an example for other communities. I love that. Yeah, I think this project will speak to people, like, “Oh, I could learn from this.” We would love for this model to pop up all over, you know? Not just Iowa.
Where can people get a copy of the Stone Soup Community Cookbook?
If you’d like more of your dollars to support the kitchen, buying a hard copy directly from Golden Magnolia is the best, either in person during serving hours, at the release party on July 11, or through the link on the Golden Magnolia website. I’m also hoping a team of volunteers will set up a booth at the local Farmers Market. Please reach out if you’d like to help with that!
That said, a free PDF of the entire cookbook will also be available on the Golden Magnolia Sanctuary website. Yes, selling hard copies will support the community kitchen! But, ultimately, getting the cookbook out there is kind of the most important thing.
Golden Magnolia Sanctuary is located at 200 S. Main Street in Fairfield, Iowa. Pay-what-you-may vegan dinner serving hours are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 5:30–8:00 p.m. Buy the cookbook, donate, or sign up to volunteer at GoldenMagnoliaSanctuary.org.