SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla.

A new mother is fighting for custody of her son, who she hasn't been alone with since he was 12 days old, because of her vegan beliefs. Sarah Markham's baby was taken from her because she opted not to take him to the hospital when he was losing weight. Instead, she told investigators she wanted to try feeding him vegan formula. Now she's fighting to get him back while she faces criminal charges. They've kept a child away from mom, said attorney Mark OMara. My client can only see her child once a week or twice a week because they're requiring the child be out of county. Sarah Markham was arrested in June when her son was less than two weeks old. He had lost 10 percent of his body weight. But instead of taking the boy to the hospital under doctors' orders, Markham wanted to try supplementing breast milk with vegan formula. Markham is a Seventh-day Adventist, according to an arrest report, and holistic healing is in line with her beliefs. Channel 9s Karla Ray asked OMara if it rose to the level of child neglect. Not even close, OMara said. It's absurd. It's a mom trying to do the best she can, acting as a vegan which she has the entire right to do taking care of her child. O'Mara said Markham is only allowed supervised visitation a few times a week at the order of Seminole County Child Protective Services. Markham is set to face a judge on Nov. 12 to fight to regain custody of the now healthy boy while she faces criminal charges. She has done everything they've asked her to do: Mental health evaluations, drug evaluations, parenting classes, everything they've asked her to do she's done and she's done it very well, and yet we have to go to trial on this tomorrow. It's absurd, said O'Mara.

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Vegan mom arrested over unhealthy newborn fights for babys custody

A Seminole County mother wrapped up in a controversy over medical treatment for her child has regained custody of her baby.

Casselberry police charged Sarah Markham with child neglect after she refused to take her newborn, Caleb, to see a doctor in June. She told officers she wanted to pursue a treatment that was based in her faith.

Markham and Josh Cooper, Caleb's father, said Wednesday that they can be a family again. Markham must provide the court with the visit she had with her nutritionist and make a new appointment with the pediatrician.

Caleb is 4 1/2 months old and has been in the care of his grandparents since his mother was arrested for child neglect.

Casselberry police got a locksmith and opened Markham's door after they said the mother refused to answer it. Investigators said she refused to take what doctors called her "dehydrated" newborn to the hospital. Caleb was 12 days old at the time.

According the arrest report, Markham wanted a second opinion and did not believe her son was dehydrated.

As a vegan and Seventh-day Adventist Markham asked the doctor if he had a "vegan" alternative. The child's pediatrician called the Florida abuse hotline.

"It's a travesty. It never should have never happened," said Caleb's grandfather, Bo Markham. "He does all the things that a 4 1/2 month old should be doing and he eats a lot."

Mark O'Mara, Markham's attorney, said he would like to hold the pediatrician to task, Dr. Chaban Carlos, who called the abuse hotline. But the family wants to move on and enjoy spending time with their baby.

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Vegan mom regains custody of infant after abuse allegations

A mother accused of refusing to feed her underweight newborn formula was given back custody of her baby on Wednesday.

Sarah Markham was arrested in August on child neglect charges because she didn't want to feed the baby the formula the doctor gave her, citing her vegan beliefs, according to authorities.

Markham said the formula the doctor recommended to her had animal byproducts and wanted a vegan option.

According to Casselberry police, a pediatrician told Markham that her baby needed to be admitted to Florida Hospital South for treatment because he was dehydrated and was losing weight. She was arrested at her home in August, and the baby was given vegan formula at the hospital.

In a Department of Children and Families hearing on Wednesday, she received custody of her baby, and in a few days, the complaint should be dismissed, according to Markham's attorney, Mark O'Mara.

Markham will be back in court next week on child neglect charges.

"After more than five months of fighting DCF, Sarah can still not be with her child unsupervised," O'Mara wrote in a post on his website. "The babys father put his job in jeopardy to make important court dates. Their lives have been turned upside down, and now we have to focus our attention on defending Sarah against the pending criminal charges. That is disgusting."

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Vegan mom gets back custody of baby, still facing criminal charges

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. (MyFoxBoston.com) A new mother is fighting for custody of her son, who she hasn't been alone with since he was 12 days old because of her vegan beliefs.

Sarah Markham's baby was taken from her because she opted not to take him to the hospital when he was losing weight.

Now she's fighting to get him back while she faces criminal charges.

"They've kept a child away from Mom, said attorney Mark O'Mara. My client can only see her child once a week or twice a week because they're requiring the child be out of county."

Sarah Markham was arrested in June when her son was less than two weeks old. He had lost 10 percent of his body weight.

But instead of taking the boy to the hospital under doctors' orders, Markham wanted to try supplementing breast milk with vegan formula.

Markham is a Seventh-day Adventist, according to an arrest report, and holistic healing is in line with her beliefs.

WFTV's Karla Ray asked O'Mara if it rose to the level of child neglect.

O'Mara said Markham is only allowed supervised visitation a few times a week at the order of Seminole County Child Protective Services.

Markham is set to face a judge on Wednesday to fight to regain custody of the now-healthy boy while she faces criminal charges.

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Vegan mom arrested over unhealthy newborn fighting for custody

12 November 2014 | Food | By: Sejal Sukhadwala

In this series, we review restaurants from an entirely vegetarian angle. While some restaurants will be specifically vegetarian, others will be mainstream. Well be tasting everything from veggie burgers, to posh meat-free menus. Along the way, well try to find out, as far as possible, whether chicken stock, cheese made from animal rennet, gelatine, fish sauce and so on are not lurking in the supposedly vegetarian dishes.

Eponymous dessert

Londonist Rating:

If autumn were a colour, it would be the burnished orange of roasted pumpkins. If it were a smell, it would be the damp smokiness that invariably creeps up on you doesnt it? when youre walking down the street, leaves crunching under your feet. And if it were a taste? Earthy, for sure. Its as if the essence of soil, roots, leaves, trees and woods have been distilled together, and permeates the seasons vegetables, fruits, beans and grains. Ingredients somehow seem more connected to nature; and its this very earthiness thats prevalent on the small vegetarian menu of Plum + Spilt Milk.

But first, we have to be honest: we only wanted to visit Plum + Spilt Milk because of its name. An intriguing nod to one of our favourite autumnal fruits, the name appealed to our childish side, the one that grew up reading fairy tales. Perhaps we also had a dim recollection of the restaurant opening to largely positive reviews last summer; and we vaguely remembered that Mark Sargeant is the executive chef. Sargeant was the launch chef at Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, and was part of the Ramsay empire for many years before becoming a food director to the Canteenrestaurant group. He grew up in the Kent countryside, and it shows in the choice of ingredients used in the Modern British menu here.

Located just outside the recently-regenerated Kings Cross and St Pancras stations, Plum + Spilt Milk is on the first floor of the Great Northern Hotel. A swish elevator or an equally swish staircase will take you up to the classically elegant dining room that evokes the romance of old railway journeys. Done up in muted blues, browns and creams with clusters of pendant lights in the centre, the bright, airy space is wrapped by large windows on three sides. You can easily sink into a slinky curved leather banquette here and while away an afternoon with a copy of Agatha Christies Murder on the Orient Express; or meet relatives visiting from out of town, or colleagues for a business lunch.

To be honest, the vegetarian section is tiny, with only three main courses (well, thats two more than most Modern British restaurants with not a mushroom risotto or goats cheese salad in sight). An appetiser, a couple of starter salads, and a few side vegetables and potato dishes make up the remainder of the veggie offering. More meat-free choice would, of course, be welcome. Theres a great selection of wines including very many by the glass plus champagnes and fabulous-sounding cocktails. Service from friendly, smiling staff is impeccable.

So then, earthiness abounds in a mound of black and white quinoa salad, studded with chunks of pumpkin (apparently roasted in ginger and maple syrup, though these flavours are barely discernible), topped with crunchy toasted pumpkin seeds. The virtuously healthy plate is enlivened by a lightly piquant lime juice and raspberry vinegar dressing, sliced red chillies, and fresh coriander and mint leaves. The earthiness is then turned up a notch or two in a main course dish, attractively presented in a small cast iron cocotte, of tiny puy lentils braised in vegetable stock with shallots and swiss chard, with a perfectly poached egg perched on top. Its scattered with ruby chard stems, crisp little toasted croutons, pea shoots and fennel fronds. Although a touch salty, its deeply flavoursome.

No earthiness, however, is found in the eponymous dessert of plum and spilt milk, which seems to be from a different realm altogether. Surely only the sugar plum fairy could have created something as lovely as this: a sugar-speckled slice of warm brioche, topped with wedges of baked plums in a pool of jammy, jewel-pink plum sauce, with a scoop of smooth, creamy milk ice cream on the side. This is where earthiness meets enchantment for a warming, hearty meal on a chilly, rain-drenched day. We paid around 50 for a three-course lunch with a glass of prosecco, bottle of water and service.

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Vegetarian London: Plum + Spilt Milk Restaurant Review

Kitchen 388 (388 Grand Ave.) is a popular brunch spot in Oakland's Adams Point district that's known for its fried chicken and waffles and for serving about a dozen pounds of bacon on any given Sunday. So it was with a certain sense of mischievousness that chef Kevin Schuder chose the cafe to be the site of his new vegetarian dinner series, which he's dubbed Veg 388 a vegetarian pop-up that takes over the normally meat-heavy restaurant five nights a week.

At Veg 388, the seasonal menu of "inventive and inspired vegan and vegetarian cuisine" might feature a salad of koji-marinated carrots or house-made pasta served with a lobster mushroom ragout. Every dish is served vegan by default, though customers can add a poached egg or grated cheese to certain dishes if they want.

Schuder isn't vegetarian himself; he eats sustainable seafood and, on occasion, meat. But the chef explained that he cut his teeth working as a line cook at Millennium, San Francisco's most well-known high-end vegan restaurant. And when it came time to develop his own restaurant, he decided that he wanted to promote some kind of environmentally sustainable idea. But when he looked around at the other vegetarian and vegan food that was out there, Schuder felt that much of it wasn't very good or, at the very least, it wasn't being done in a way with which he could identify.

"What we don't do is label food in quotation marks," he explained, referring to the practice of many vegetarian restaurants to describe dishes in relation to meat-centric cuisine: "chicken" parmigiana or shiitake mushroom "bacon." As Schuder put it, "'Chicken,' in quotation marks, isn't chicken."

"I guess I do want [the food] to shine on its own merits. People shouldn't shy away from good produce," he said.

What that means, from a practical standpoint, is that Veg 388 serves significantly fewer beans and soy products which are traditionally deployed to emulate the taste and texture of meat than your typical vegan restaurant. In addition, a foam that Schuder makes with fermented cashews is listed on the menu, simply, as "cashew foam" not "sour cream," in quotes.

Schuder's resum is dotted with such prominent San Francisco restaurants as AQ, Izakaya Yuzuki, and, most recently, Bouli Bar. But Schuder said he identifies most with two of the city's best-known permanent pop-ups, Mission Chinese Food and Pink Zebra known for their punk rock, modern edge.

According to Schuder, what he shares with the chefs of those establishments is a fine-dining background that he's decided to apply in a more casual, accessible setting "to strip away the pomp and circumstance of it." Like the chefs at those pop-ups, Schuder uses a blend of traditional and modernist cooking techniques. He does a lot of smoking, drying, and fermenting. But he'll also add xanthan gum to a pasta sauce to make it adhere better to the noodles, and he uses an iSi canister to aerate the aforementioned cashew foam. Several of those techniques, old and new, come together in a dish Schuder says is his current favorite: a salad that features baked sunchokes, smoked apples, cashew foam, and rosemary oil. He explained that eating the dish, which is made up of various ingredients you might find together in nature, is "kind of like having a campfire in the woods."

Veg 388 is now open for dinner from Thursday to Monday, from 69 p.m. Schuder also just launched Kitchen 388's new happy hour program, which includes food and drinks, and isn't strictly vegetarian, from 46 p.m. those same nights.

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Veg 388: A Vegetarian Pop-Up with a Modern Edge

Most people are aware that organically grown food is free from exposure to harmful chemicals, but that is only one small part of what organic is about.

A larger part of organic agriculture involves the health of the soil and of the ecosystems in which crops and livestock are raised. Organic agriculture is born from the idea that a healthy environment significantly benefits crops and the health of those consuming them. In addition, organic practices are also viable in the long term, since they are efficient in their use of resources, and do not damage the environment and local communities like large scale "chemical agriculture" does.

LocalHarvest does not restrict its listings to organic producers only, since our mission is first and foremost to support small growers, and then to promote Organic agriculture.

We do track our growers' organic status with the following categories:

There are many organizations worldwide that certify produce as being grown in a manner that does not harm the environment and that preserves or improves soil fertility, soil structure, and farm sustainability. Farms that are certified organic are shown as such in LocalHarvest.

Some of our farms prefer not to pursue an organic certification, but do follow organic principles in growing their produce.

CNG is a grassroots certification program created specifically for farmers that sell locally and directly to their customers. CNG's certification standards are based on the National Organic Program but with some variation, including improved livestock living conditions and more explicit access to pasture requirements.

Organic certification standards are very strict, and it usually takes years for farms the achieve them, as all pesticide and chemical residue from the soil is slowly broken down and leached away. Farms marked as "Transitional" are farms in the process of getting their certification, but that are not quite there yet.

Conventional farming does not necessarily have to be as destructive as large scale chemical agriculture. There are many small farms worldwide that sparingly use chemicals when needed, and that otherwise follow good guidelines in the care of their environments and communities. We list those farms in LocalHarvest too.

Based on a series of lectures given by Austrian philosopher Rudolf Steiner in 1924, Biodynamics is a method of agriculture which seeks to actively work with the health-giving forces of nature. It is the oldest non-chemical agricultural movement, predating the organic agriculture movement by some 20 years and has now spread throughout the world.

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Organic Food - LocalHarvest - Local Harvest / Farmers ...

"Youve got all these processed foods, which is the main reason people are getting fat. Theyre not actually good for you - they dont give you strength, they give you weight.

"I eat vegetables and fruit. I dont eat meat. I believe meat is bad for me so I dont eat it. Its also bad for the animals.

"If there was a movement to produce more organic food and less of the horrible food, then organic food would obviously be a good value price, wouldnt it?"

In the interview, for 5 Lives Afternoon Edition, Dame Vivienne spoke about her environmental campaigning.

"We need to change to a green economy and a green world and that is easy to do. The alternative is hell," she said.

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Vivienne Westwood: People who can't afford organic food should eat less