Hi, Cara! Let’s begin with a little introduction: tell me who you are, the place you call home, and the space you work within!
Hi there! My name’s Cara and I'm a thirty-something creative living in Rochester, New York. I do a lot of different jobs (from freelance brand photography to teaching social media workshops) but my main work is running the indie vegan lifestyle magazine Chickpea. I do everything from writing, editing, recipe creation & testing, photography, lettering, design, and way more. I find myself pretty much constantly working, but it's (almost) all the things I enjoy in life, so it ends up being something I love so much.
I’d love to begin by diving into your passion for writing, taking photographs, and running Chickpea Mag. Where did these creative passions stem from?
I always knew I wanted to work in art, but didn't know what specifically I wanted to do. I tried a bunch of different mediums in high school and university - everything from book making, to printmaking, to photography and drawing and painting, and loved the process of mixing mediums. When I graduated university, it left me feeling even more confused. I loved it all and didn't want to give anything up. The process of working so much left me burnt out, so I took a break post-college and finally went vegan when I got my first apartment. As I grew my knowledge there, I also started getting back into creating - this time, through food photography, and that blossomed into utilizing everything I had learned in the past, all in one place.
Tell me a bit about Chickpea Mag!
When my original Tumblr blog took off, I was really sick of blogging and all that went into it - the nasty comments, the constant push to create content for content's sake, the lack of pay, the system that got certain blogs popular when others never picked up traction. I wanted to create something more timeless, more thoughtful, and something that wasn't just mine. I grew up being obsessed with magazines, loving their mix of subjects and tips, but hating the deep consumerism that seeped into every page. Creating Chickpea was my way of bringing together everything I loved, in a way that felt right that blogging couldn't do for me. Our magazine is a modern vegan lifestyle guide that showcases our love of a holistic way of improving and examining ourselves, with others' work of any skill level and interest. It goes into minimalism, activism, zero waste, living vegan, and much much more.
Tell me about this idea of working within the intersection of creative expression and vegan eating. What does that look like in Chickpea Mag?
For me, it's what veganism is all about! I can totally get why people are wary of it, but veganism for me is just another extension of how I can enrich my own life by being creative. I'm constantly learning about new types of food to make, whether vegan or not. There are new techniques, new ingredients, that I love rising to as a creative challenge. Veganizing diner food? Nothing sounds more fun to me than that. And then, when I can try to share my experience doing it, and translate it into something easy for most people to try, it's another exercise in creativity for me.
I’d love to hear about your day to day processes of what running Chickpea Mag looks like! What types of things are your days filled with?
My life kind of revolves around cycles of work! Some weeks I'm just keeping up with our mailing list, social media, and shipping orders, and it's more low key. During issue production weeks/months, it's all of that, piled on top of super busy days of shooting, editing, and recipe testing. On an average day, I start out by finishing any food prep, then go into shooting, cleaning up, and editing photos. Somewhere in the middle of that, I'll spend about a half hour a day on social media. When the sun goes down (super early right now, in lake-effect winters, around 3PM) I do writing, editing, and layout design. We usually eat leftovers from the day's shoots for lunch and dinner. Once a week, my partner and I spend time after he gets off his day job to go through customer service emails and ship any open orders. He spends one other day a week after work dealing with our wholesale accounts.
Let’s dive into this idea of slow processes and taking time with creative work.
What is your perspective on this and how is that related to the work you do with Chickpea Mag?
I am hugely skeptical of the value of social media for meaningful work. While I've found so much there, it's drowned out by the mass volume of content-for-content's sake, or drowned out by my unconscious flipping between apps, and going on to the next thing. These platforms are designed to keep you there longer, not actually help you, as a human being. I bring it up because it's the best example I can think of to show how a fast pace doesn't mean value, for the creator or for the viewer. What are you actually getting out of more and more content? Do you feel happier? Or pulled in different directions, more than ever? So, for me, slowing down was essential. I felt at one point that I was just creating "content", not something with intention that would actually connect with or help people. We started out as a blog sharing three short posts a day, and it did incredibly well to help us grow. But those posts were awful, looking back. We then switched to sharing four 96 page magazine issues per year. I was working at an extremely fast pace, without being able to actually ruminate on anything I was sharing. Since slowing down to two 125 page issues per year, I can learn new topics and explore them fully, I can try out new recipes and test them two dozen times, I can reflect on the world around me and make clearer statements.
"It has a similar effect to taking a break from social media, like stepping out of a fast-moving river. No matter who you are, getting off the quick-paced content machine can bring you back to yourself and help you notice more about what's happening in front of you. Slowing down can bring you such valuable perspective."Top 3 books on your bookshelf at the moment.
I'm currently reading (and loving) The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, and Creative Food Photography by Kimberly Espinel. Gotta keep it varied, haha.
You open your music streaming platform. What are you clicking on to listen to?
I've probably clocked more hours on Chill-Beats-To-Study-To than anybody else! It’s the only thing that keeps me focused while writing.
What meal are you feeling nourished by as of late?
Burrito bowls, always. So so good and easy to switch up.
Thank you so much for chatting with me, Cara! Lastly, for those looking to follow along with your content and support you,
where can they find you?
You can find (and grab issues of) Chickpea at chickpeamagazine.com, on Instagram at @chickpea_mag, or on my personal Instagram at @serifandscript. Thanks so much!