Quiana "Que" Broden
Hiyeeeeee!!!! I'm Quiana "Que" Broden, owner and blogger of Cooking With Que, a place where Vegans and Meat Eaters coexist. The mission is to teach people how to EAT TO LIVE; by introducing more plant based meals into everyday lives.
My Story...…
Soooo before you understand “Que” I gotta let you in on some things … ok?
I have not been Vegan my whole life. Surprised? Don’t be. It’s been about 7 years now. And I mean 7 of the GREATEST, LIFE CHANGING YEARS.
Please understand that this story is not fancy by any means. It’s just real life, as it happened no fluff.
It is said that children tell you exactly what they love, if you just watch them and pay attention to the things that they do. Everything that you are created to be, you were already born with it. How crazy is that.
Close your eyes and think about all the things you loved to do as a child. You don’t remember it all, but you remember the things that brought you extreme joy, or pain.
For me as a child, I remember Family. I remember Love. I remember Church. I remember the people around me always helped someone else. Even if it was their last, if it hurt to give it to them. I remember them giving. I remember unconditional love. Wether you did something wrong or not. I remember being told that God is Good, All the Time and All the Time God is Good. I remember.
My fondest memory as a kid was going into some dime store, maybe Kresges, or Woolworth, and seeing a pretend Kitchen. You know the plastic one, no bells and whistles, because we weren’t.. rich.. but we were good. Like I never missed a meal, a holiday or a flower dress good, ( like I hated flowered dresses until I came into myself and realized someone tormented me with flowered dresses, and I didn’t have to wear them…lol). We walked into this store, and I remember seeing this Kitchen, and I remember wanting it. Like… Bad. Like, I’m not a kid that threw tantrums … but this might have been worth it, bad. I wanted that kitchen. I don’t remember telling anyone how I felt about this Kitchen, but Momma (Grandma, but Momma in our House… Okay saint!) , and Mommy (my Mommy Mommy… like out of her Vagina Mommy) knew!
Young Que
Christmas came, and I remember seeing this Kitchen, and it made my life. LOL. That’s what it felt like, I remember the dolls head (because I loved to comb hair… (it totally got me through my trial college lifespan). Barbie had just this upper torso Barbie head (which is weird now that I’m thinking of it, but hunty.. it’s probably where all of our Hair Stylist come from!!). So this Kitchen was like someone gave me a new house. All I remember is begging them to let me put Christmas Dinner it. I wanted to cook and serve out of the dishes that came with it. I remember it like it was yesterday, the blue plastic pots, and “play” China I got as an accessory. For dinner there was Potato Salad, Chittlins, Mommas Macaroni and Cheese, Dressing (in our household, yall might say Stuffing), Greens, Sweet Potatoes, Corn Bread and Turkey! Why do I remember all this? Couldn’t tell you. But I wanted to put the food in my dishes….and I can’t even tell you if I could talk or not, but huntyyyy my brain was like.. give it here, put it in here.
Then something happened.
They actually gave me what I was asking for!!! I was cooking on my play kitchen from the Dime Store, and there was no imaginary food!! They put real Christmas Dinner inside! It’s so Vivid in my memory that I’m excited and antsy just talking about it. All I kept hearing my brain say was theres real food on my plates! They let me do it!
If that wasn’t a sure sign of my future. I don’t know what is!
When I shared this with My Mommy, she’s like, I don’t know how you remember that. You had to be like 5!!!
Surely, I was meant to be In a Kitchen… helping people eat.
Fast forward, I don’t think I ever aspired to be like a world known Chef, and surely I don’t think my goal was to ever open my own business. It’s just now what people did in my family.
The true spark, was getting sick. Different symptoms at different times. I was just under 30 and I didn’t understand why I was getting so sick. I always had a cold. Always had a sinus infection. Skin rashes everywhere. The most horrible eczema you have ever seen. Got pneumonia like it was a common cold. Then, after my second pregnancy, I developed Asthma. I coughed like I smoked 20 packs of cigarettes per day. Then, a few years later, I woke up and one day I couldn’t move my feet. Like literally, I woke up and my feet looked like I had elephantitus. My ankles, calfs, and feet were swollen to the point where I couldn’t walk. My Daddy (grandfather) and Mommy had to literally come to my house to carry me out of the bed and take me to the hospital. Nobody could tell me what was wrong. I felt like I was a real life episode of House (are you old enough to even know what that is)……. Moving along! They told me I had everything under the sun, but I refused to believe it.
Then, a specialist told me they wanted to do a biopsy of my lung, because the one of my leg showed nothing. It was the first time I was going to have to be put under, but they needed to see the cause of all these weird symptoms. I was afraid, but I went through with it. Sure enough, when I came to, they told me I had Stage 4 Sarcoidosis. Most annoying auto immune disease ever. Same time, I learn that I have a dairy allergy. I literally wanted to punch myself. With all these diagnosis, they had to reevaluate all the meds I was taking. Most of them contained dairy (no wonder I could never get better), then I had to add new pills. Steroids.
No human on the planet wants to take steroids on purpose, especially me, not 2-3 times a day. All I remember thinking is that, they are trying to kill me for sure. I have a family. I. DON’T. WANT. TO. DIE.
So I did what anyone would do in this situation. Especially seeing that I graduated from Google University…. I freakin Google’d It. I mean I looked high and low. Everything pointed to being plant based. I couldn’t believe it. I wanted to SCREAM! At the time, Momma (my Grandmother) was living, and hunty she makes theeee best Mac N Cheese in the world. All I could think about was not being able to eat it anymore. Sigh. I knew if I wanted to give this Plant Based thingy a whirl..I didn’t have a choice.
So I jumped.
I did it. I thought it was gonna be hard and complicated. I thought I was gonna starve to death, and be malnourished. Boyyyyyyy was I wrong. I started reprogramming my mind. I had to find a way to remake the things that I loved, but make them vegan. I changed everything around me, in my home, cabinet, and fridge. Making the switch was not as complicated as I thought it would be. I live in a house with 3 other meateaters. They thought I was about to start giving them salad everyday. I changed basic things like butter, milk, everything was now organic. I read labels and threw out anything that I couldn’t pronounce. No more ramen noodles, no more high sodium, high fructose cornsyrup. I looked for alternatives. I started creating recipes that I already knew, but used different things. I stopped buying regular sugar, and got cane sugar. I am big on how long did it take to get from farm to fork. Instead of always using sugar I used dates for sweetener. I used agave instead of honey. Once you start reading and learning, it’s not that hard. And…..It was actually working? How could this be. Stop eating all the crap they were giving me, and I started feeling better.
In 30 days my cough went a way. A cough that was like commonly known to me. Like, Que’s here….everyone knew it. Couldn’t sneak anywhere. That cough. It was gone. In 60 days my rashes….just started disappearing. I didn’t want to scratch my arms, legs, and fingers with bricks anymore. In 90-120 days, my skin didn’t even look like snake skin anymore. It was crazy.
It made me want to know more. I read more, wanted to learn more. I wanted to eat to live. Crazy. We can heal ourselves through food. WHY IS NOBODY TEACHING THIS. I vocalized it everywhere I went. People started asking, me to send them recipes, cook for them, make the info available. Of course since I don’t know how to half do anything…I wanted to put my best foot forward so I said.. I’m going to start a blog. Now, when I say people, I’m talking Facebook Friends, people who grew up with me. People with new ailments trying to figure it out as well. It’s more common to for African American Women to have this disease. Folks wanted the information. What did I do. How did I do it. They were craving the information.
The blog was a place for people like me, not a RADICAL VEGAN, but not a Mean Meat Eater who thinks that people who are Vegan are going to do because they lack protein!
So I called this blog: Cooking with Que: A Place where Vegans and Meateaters Co Exist. I just wanted people to learn how to eat to live. I didn’t want to force veganism on anyone but I wanted people to understand the benefits of eating more plant based than anything.
In the midst of creating Cooking with Que, one of the matriarchs of our family got sick. My Momma. Momma was my everything, best friend, 2ndMom, her and my Daddy (they are my grandparents) are like…. Literally my life. Like the children I didn’t have, but I protect them with my entire being. Momma got diagnosed with Lung Cancer. Stage 4. Pissed off was an understatement. It hurt. It hurts to even talk about it right now. I watched her be diagnosed, I watched them offer her meds, I watched them offer her Chemo and Radiation. She was now the 4thchild of her 3 other siblings to have cancer. No one offered her healthy foods. No one told her how eating could help her insides fight for her outside. I offered and sometimes forced… foods that were known to help fight cancer cells. Soursops, Teas, herbs…. But everyone knows that women in their 80s are super feisty, and they think…. “well I’ve been eating this way my whole life” and “you’re not gonna change me” ……I wanted her to make the drastic change immediately but I can only control what I can control.
So I had to sit and watch the medicine kill her. I had to watch it deteriorate her little body. I watched her become sickly and in constant pain from the Chemotherapy. My brain knows that back in the day, when we would get sick, with a stomach ache…. Granny would go grab some roots out of that backyard in South Carolina, bring em in the house, boil em. Then tell you to drink it. I didn’t say it tasted like heaven, all I know is that my stomach ache was gone. What happened to that.
It hurts to feel helpless. It sucks to have to sit back and watch medicine kill someone that you love. Momma would tell me so many things. She would say, Quiana, they are going to know your name all over the world. You work so hard. Momma wanted to be a Nurse, she was going to Nursing school in New York and then she got pregnant. No one told her she could do both, so she left New York and moved to Detroit, where my Daddy was working to make their life better there. She always said “I wish I would have”……… I remember hearing her saying that, even when I was younger and in my mind, I never ever wanted to “wish I would have” anything. Momma died February 19, 2017. That day I wanted to give up. I didn’t want to fight for anything. I was angry. I was upset. I was frustrated. I honestly wanted her to fight to stay with me. I knew that was selfish. I knew it was my emotions getting the best of me. They had given Momma 6 months to live after she was diagnosed. She lived over 2 yrs longer. She did fight. She fought like a champ.
Momma taught me a few things. Keep God first, and you will be fine. Teach your kids to Keep God first and they will be fine. Make yourself happy, and don’t wait on anyone else to. (I WISH I UNDERSTOOD THIS EARLIER) When things are crazy, throw on some Red Lipstick and no one will know. (LIFE CHANGING) and don’t be like me, don’t wish you would have ever.
GOD IS CRAZY FAITHFUL. MY WORKS ARE MY FAITH JOURNEY.
There are tons of people in the world that will tell you what you can’t do. They will tell you that your idea is ridiculous. They will tell you how you won’t make money. They will tell you that you are doing to much. The one thing I know about people is they will give you advice even when you didn’t ask for it. What I do know, is that I don’t have to own anyone else’s thoughts. I don’t have to allow anyone to project their insecurities on me. I’m not just a little black girl with dreams.
I am a Daughter of a King. Everything that I want wants me. I am blessed. I have no choice but to be blessed. I am here to bless those around me. Leader, not a Follower. Head not the tail.
God created me to be one of the strongest soldiers in His army. My job is to Teach People How to Eat to Live. I will walk in my purpose until the day I level up to heaven.
And that’s how it all started. Now it’s the way I want to live the rest of my life. Helping people do just that. Teaching people how to Eat To Live.
Welcome Family! Now click around like you own the place 🙂
Que
