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Chef Zuliya Khawaja is known simply as Zuzu and she can cook up a storm. Mushrooms are her favorite meat replacement, which she's whipping into Mushroom Souvlaki in this episode. Though she looks incredibly fit and healthy, she said health problems originally drew her to a plant-based diet. Once she tried it, she never looked back and decided to ditch her high-stress, high-paying job climbing the corporate ladder and follow her passion: vegan cooking. She is a self-taught vegan chef, food stylist and recipe developer.

Raised in Uzbekistan, in Central Asia, she immigrated as a political refugee to the United States in 1997 when she was in her 20's. In 2019, she gained her plant-based nutrition degree from eCornell Nutrition Studies. She quickly gained national recognition in media outlets such as Mantra Yoga Magazine, VegOut Magazine, FeedFeed, Women's Health Magazine, PopSugar, Best of Vegan and many other popular social media platforms.

In 2020, she auditioned and was cast for the first Top Chef Amateurs show on Bravo TV and won the title of Top Chef on National TV. Now, on the set of New Day New Chef, Zuzu is showing us how to make a marvelous and meaty Mushroom Souvlaki.

Along with Zuzu, this season of New Day New Chef features actress/activist Jamie Logan, who has a show called Jamie's Corner on UnchainedTV and starred in The Next Girl, also on UnchainedTV. Her co-host is TV journalist and New York Times bestselling author Jane Velez-Mitchell, who happens to be the founder and president of UnchainedTV. Jane speaks with Jeff Hoffman, a tech executive who is the owner of the LA mansion where this season was filmed. Jeff is a proud supporter of Loving Farm Animal Sanctuary, a California sanctuary that rescues cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys and ducks from the horrors of factory farming. If you would like to learn more, please visit: https://www.lovingfarm.org.