According to a recent poll, 90% of people are totally thrown for a loop when they find out someone they know is a vegan. And by recent poll, I mean a random statistic I just made up. Not that I don’t have the evidence to back it up. Nine times out of ten, when a polite, generous individual offers me some food, the conversation goes something like this:
Polite, generous individual: “Would you like some (insert name of meat-, dairy-, or egg-based product here)?”
Me: “No thank you. I’m vegan.”
Polite, generous individual: “Oh. So…what do you eat?"
Most of the time, the question comes from a place of genuine curiosity. Vegans are, after all, still fairly uncommon, and people don’t often see us in our natural habitats. Of course, most people know we exist, but their understanding of us has been shaped by a combination of hearsay, myths, and internet memes. Pop-culture often paints us as pretentious, smelly, pocket-composters who subsist entirely on tofu-dogs and wheatgrass tea. So I’m not surprised in the least when the people I meet assume that I can’t eat any baked goods, that all my meals taste like cardboard, or that I’m hovering on the brink of starvation (which, I can assure you, I am most certainly not). Some members of my own family have trouble wrapping their heads around the intricacies of an animal-free diet. My good old German Grandpa (God bless him), is fully convinced that the only things vegetarians eat are veggie pizza and salad, and I don’t think that anything I or anyone else says is going to change his mind.
I’ve started this blog to share the magic of vegan food with the world (or, at the very least, with the 3 – 5 friends and family members who will end up reading this blog). My mission: to answer, once and for all, the age-old question, “what do vegans eat?” I’m not trying to ‘convert’ anyone, or get into a philosophical debate about food morals…I just want to show people that there are a whole lot of things that vegans can eat, and that most of it is pretty darn delicious. I’ll post recipes, pictures, the occasional musing, and other vegan-related content when the mood strikes me. Some recipes will be my own, some will be borrowed from other places, and some will be adaptations of recipes given to me by family and friends. All of them will be prepared and tested in my home kitchen, and photographed for you to enjoy. I welcome your questions and comments, and hope that you’ll visit regularly as I stumble my way through the world of vegan blogging.
Bye for now,
<3 Dana
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