December 1, 2025
Hi Friends,
🎉 We hit 250,000 subscribers on YouTube this week, and I just want to say THANK YOU. Truly. Every view, every comment, every shared recipe, every encouraging message… it all adds up, and it all means so much to me, especially this year. I never take your support for granted.
I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving holiday. Mine was wonderful! We hosted over 30 friends for a vegan potluck.
I was a busy beaver cooking all the recipes I made in my community cook-along, plus a few extra desserts that I’ll be demonstrating live for Forks Over Knives on Thursday, December 4th at 10:00am PACIFIC time. You’ll be able to watch it here.
Our Thanksgiving celebration actually lasted three days. On Friday I was joined by plant-based royalty—Mary McDougall, Heather McDougall, and Cathy Fisher—as we combined our talents to bring a full Thanksgiving meal to our dear friends Larry and Ann Wheat, now in their 90s. The Wheats used to own the famous Millennium restaurant in San Francisco. It was especially wonderful seeing Mary, as this was the first time I’ve seen her since Dr. McDougall’s passing.
On Saturday there was yet another fun potluck with my local Meetup group that many people attended. If you live in the area or plan to visit, you can get all the information about my free monthly potlucks here:
Healthy Living in Lincoln with Chef AJ on Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/healthy-living-in-lincoln-with-chef-aj
I feel like my health is improving—albeit slowly—and I’m grateful for having far less pain. I don’t know if it’s because of the steroids I’m on, the restrictive diet, or just getting further and further away from the ravages of Keytruda, but I’m happy that things seem to be moving in the right direction.
I saw a GI specialist at Stanford, and they believe that my chronic diarrhea was actually caused by constipation. The CT scan revealed that my colon was full of stool, even though I’ve been having severe, unrelenting diarrhea for months. I don’t have a complete blockage, but they feel that this is overflow diarrhea, and that there is a large stool burden there, so they’re recommending an intense bowel cleanse. It turns out that all the people that thought I was “full of 💩” were actually correct. 🤣
On Monday I was seen at the Anesthesia Preoperative Evaluation Clinic at Stanford. This is where they evaluate people who are at high risk for anesthesia or who have had previous bad reactions. The reason I have elected not to have a complete left lower lobe lobectomy is because I’ve had two unexplained severe allergic reactions to general anesthesia—one where I actually stopped breathing and almost died. No one has ever been able to figure out the cause, but with this specialty clinic you don’t even need to have surgery scheduled for them to evaluate you. I’ll share the findings in next week’s newsletter after I see the thoracic surgeon.
This year’s Thanksgiving was especially poignant because it marks the fourth holiday since discovering the tumors in my lung. I’m constantly reminded of the fragility of life, so each opportunity to celebrate feels even more meaningful.
And I’m still on a mission to incorporate even more fun into my life on a daily basis. After my first love—which is improv comedy—I’ve always enjoyed having experiences with people that don’t just involve food and talking, like playing games or going to escape rooms. This week we had our new friends over, a lovely younger couple we met at Weimar, to play the classic games of Clue and Bananagrams. So much of our interactions with people is only about the food, but I really enjoy stimulating my mind even more than my gastric juices. 🤣
Many years ago, my friend Michelle gave me a beautiful hand-painted rock with the Serenity Prayer on it: “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
I’ve decided to add four words to the end of it: “and still be thankful.”
So my new mantra is “being thankful, no matter what.” In fact, that was the title of the show I did on Thanksgiving Day with my dear friend, Peter, who has been a quadriplegic for over 30 years. You can watch the replay here.
And in case you missed it, you can also watch the other show from last week:
- Dr. Matt Lederman & Dr. John Abramson – How Big Pharma Broke American Health Care and How We Can Fix It👉 Watch it here
However your week is going, I hope you can find one tiny thing to be thankful for—no matter what. Thank you for being here, for caring, and for reminding me that I’m not doing this alone. Your love, messages and prayers, mean more to me than you’ll ever know.
With love and gratitude,
💜 Chef AJ, Charles (and Shiloh 🐾)