When I first started seriously cooking at fourteen, I did so because I had to. I had decided to stop eating meat-- poultry, fish, and shellfish included-- and my very steak-and-potatoes family more or less stopped inviting me to the dinner table. What was I going to eat? Salad? I don't think I'll ever forget the evening my grandfather said I could eat with him and my grandmother, because "chickens aren't animals." As frustrating as it was to get my family used to the fact that I wouldn't be dining on turkey with them at Thanksgiving and I would be making my own non-meat-marinara sauce on spaghetti night, I am pretty grateful for their resistance to my lifestyle change. If I hadn't been more or less forced to fend for myself, I would not have discovered my life's greatest passion.
This is the most cliche thing I think I've ever written, but it's so true. When I'm in the kitchen, baking vegan blueberry scones or whipping up a soba noodle stir fry, I feel so at home. I find so much fulfillment in preparing meals for myself, my family, and my friends. I love working with my hands, I love discovering new techniques and ingredients, and I love the gratification of having a delectable finished product at the end of an evening's work. Hopefully the recipes, product reviews, meal plans, and grocery lists I post here will inspire all my readers to eat compassionately, healthfully, and most of all to get in the kitchen and create!