When Sharon Wu’s mother passed away from colon cancer, it was a nutritional wake-up call for her daughter.
“I grew up on a very junk food diet; microwave everything, 99-cent noodles… Slurpees for lunch and hot dogs for dinner,” Wu says.
“I didn’t really ever have a connection with food, and I think part of it had to do with my upbringing, but it was also just what was convenient at the time. It wasn’t until my mother passed away five years ago that something triggered inside of me that made me realize, hang on a minute, what we eat affects everything about us.”
So she took it upon herself to learn more about food and nutrition and studied to become a raw food chef.
It was a life-changing journey and persuaded her to switch her relatively new vegetarian lifestyle for a vegan one. It inspired her to launch a business offering local, raw, vegan, organic food – four important elements of her own eating plan.
“You’re working with these beautiful, organic, seasonal fruits and vegetables and they still have their life force and their prana and, when you put them into your body, your body wants them and it feels great.”
Her farmers’ market stand, The Simple Spoon, she says, “is a small way for me to give back… to feed people nourishing foods that can also sustain our community and our economy, and support local farmers.”
Moreover, she’s not just started one business but several and finds that juggling her time is among the biggest challenges at the moment.
“I’m doing catering on the side, running a café seven days a week and doing back-to-back farmers’ markets,” she says, explaining that she’s definitely feeling the strain but knows, ultimately, that The Simple Spoon is where her passion lies. “That’s what I really want to pursue.”’
This is her second year at the Squamish Farmers’ Market and she loves bumping into regular shoppers and building relationships with visitors to her stand, an aspect she finds especially rewarding.
Those who stop and chat often gravitate towards her gluten-free Gangster Granola, which contains sprouted buckwheat, coconut, hemp hearts, almonds, goji berries and pumpkin seeds with just a little maple syrup for sweetening. She says it’s a great food to start the day.
She also offers smoothies with berries that she frequently picks herself, and a linguine lunch-to-go with zucchini from local farms.
Sometimes exploring raw, vegan food can seem like a bit of a mental challenge, she says, so easing into it with something sweet can be a great way to start out, and she recommends treats such as her coconut cashew cream parfait or granola bars.
“Desserts and sweets are definitely an easy one to start with. Everyone thinks vegans only eat carrot sticks and salads, but it’s not true.” And she says simply adding nuts and seeds to everything is a great way to boost nutrition.
Her ultimate dream, she says, is to one day open a café and juice bar in Squamish, and she welcomes feedback on this vision from visitors to her stand.
The Simple Spoon is at Squamish Farmers’ Market for a limited time; Wu’s last stand is this Saturday, Sept. 5.
