The Ubiquitous First Post

There's no easy way to jump into blogging. I've tried it a few times but never got very far since I always felt like I was walking a thin line in terms of exposing too much about my personal life, and people who don't want exposure. But a food blog? There's not much drama involved in a food blog, right? I think I can do that.

I'm starting this today in honor of Vegan MoFo. See here or here for more information and a list of participants. Started by one of my vegan icons, Isa Chandra Moskowitz, the goal is to post every day this month about something related to vegan cooking. I'm a brand new vegan, I just this week completed the PCRM's 21-day Vegan Kickstart, and now feel I can officially proclaim myself a vegan. I've gone through the hardest part - the dairy detoxing - and am truly amazed at how wonderful I now feel.

Now the challenge is the cooking. I've been an ovo-lacto vegetarian for years, so meat-free isn't so much a problem, but I definitely leaned on the ovos and the lactos in appeasing my (omni) family. I'm also guilty of being a bit of a junk-food-atarian. French fries are vegan, after all, and I can eat my weight in them. I'm fat, and there've been days in the not so distant past where I didn't consume a single vegetable. I like bread dipped in olive oil, and vegan waffles slathered in Earth's Balance. Clearly, that needs to stop.

So! That's where I am now. I'm hoping that I'll be in a different place by the end of this month. I really want to EXPLORE vegan cooking and discover new family favorites. I personally want to amp up the fruit and veg consumption and cut down on the breads and oils. I'm doing a weight loss challenge with my friends starting this month and I can't help but hope that going deeper into vegan-land will help things on that front too.

I'm going to linky on the sidebar to some of my favoritest vegan blogs, which I've been reading for months. They helped encourage me in going vegan, whether they know it or not (probably not, since I never comment), so I'll say a big THANK YOU to them right now. And I'll probably be swiping many of their recipes to use over the next month, so THANK YOU again for that. :)