Hello world!

Well hello! I am inviting myself into the world of vegan blogging. To start off this thing right, I want to tell you a little about myself.
Now I am from the “tell-all” generation of Facebook and Myspace; where everyone’s business becomes everyone elses business. I do not want to exploit myself and tell you every little detail, but I am always dissappointed when I start reading someone’s blog and see that they have absolutely no information about themselves. I understand that some people are private and don’t want the whole world to know about their personal lives, however, whenever I read that they are at “work,” well, where’s work? They mention their “family.” Do they have kids? The talk about their roommate. Do they live in a dorm? If so, do they have a kitchen? If not, then how do they cook/bake so much? These are the questions I am always curious about.
So, without any more blabbing, here goes…
First if all, I am a college student. I am about to finish up my freshman year in about 2 weeks. Currently, I live in a dorm with extremely limited access to a kitchen (I live on the third floor of my dorm and there is a partially working kitchen on the first floor). After this year, though, I am transferring to a state school (I am currently at a private, liberal arts school), and have decided to commute–giving me full access to a kitchen! Which is the reason I am finally starting one of these things.
Second, I am no grammar aficionado.While I can take the time to write a pretty good paper, I don’t see the point in making my blog elegant. Afterall, it is about the food, right?
Third. I am not a photographer. I got a pretty nice point and shoot digital camera for my birthday and I have been snapping shots here and there, but it does not compare to some other pictures I have seen with nice, expensive cameras. So don’t expect to see beautiful pictures with a perfectly places background and sunlight pouring onto my food. Sure, I would love to have pictures like that someday, but it’s not really my thing.
Fourth: I am no chef (I feel like I am explaining the “rules” of my blog to you ). I have only been vegan for a short time (more on that later) and I obviously haven’t gotten much of a chance to cook for myself. So, when I do cook or bake, it is usually following a recipe step by step. I have not once in my life come up with a recipe on my own. Not only that, but during my “pregan” days when I was still a vegitarian, I loved to bake because everything I baked came out perfectly (my first baking project ever was a chocolate cake from scratch which turned out amazing–especially for my first try EVER!) but I never did cook anything other that macaroni and cheese (from a box) and cheese quesadillas (Mom did all the cooking for me). So, long story short, now that I am vegan, it seems like there is a whole new art to baking which I have not yet perfected which caused me to turn to cooking, which I am gettng better at, but by no means in any condition to know what spices go together and such to create my own recipes.
Lastly, I want to explain in short how I became vegan (I always see long posts for these types of stories, but for some reason mine is super short)
My mom has told me that when I was a baby I always had a natural attraction to vegetable flavored baby food. As I got a little older and my parents would stick a one-bite piece of meat on my plate for me to try, I would put it in my mouth and chew on it for 30 minutes at least until they gave me permission to spit it out. I have never liked the taste of meat. I would eat the ocassional chicken nuggets or hot dog and sometimes bologna, but never any red meat…not even fried chicken. I used to always call myself a vegitarian, but I would still consume those few things, until eventually I decided to commit and become a real vegitarian. Part of this, came with help from a girl who told me what hot dogs were made of as she had hot dog bits all over her face. This disgusted me and I never ate meat again. So anyways, I was about 12 years old when I officially became a vegitarian.
The relationship between me and cheese, however is a different story. I loved cheese! It went with everything as a perfect meat replacer. Also, as I mentioned before, I love to bake. There is something about cracking open eggs and unwrapping sticks of butter that got me so excited. It wasn’t until the end of my senior year in high school that things changed. A lady came to my school and gave a presentation on ethical eating. I was so excited because I had never met another vegitarian or vegan in my entire life and I wanted all my classmates to be told the right things. But this lady didn’t give the presentation I expected. You see, I had never really given up meat for ethical reasons. I knew I was eating dead animals and that always bothered me, but when people asked me why I was a vegitarian, I would tell them that I simply didn’t like the taste because “me not eating meat isn’t going to save any cows, so what would be the point otherwise?” So, back to the speaker. She explained how cow’s milk has all sorts of nasty stuff in it including pus, antibiotics, and any diseases the cow itself may have had. Also, she explained how chickens are stacked 4 or 5 in a cage, spending their whole life standing on uncomfortable wire. It kind of made me think, but I was also very ignorant because I felt like I was already doing everything right. I grabbed some flyers to give to my omnivorous friends and family and went on my way.
About a week or so later, my friend mentioned something like “I have a hard time drinking milk after that lady told us about all that pus in it.” I had forgotten about this! Already! Immediately after she said that I forced my mom to buy organic milk. How could I drink pus? Well, my life continued on that way for a while. I went to Costa Rica that summer and ate my weight in cheese and cream sold off a dirty cart (ew!) and indulged in plenty of ice cream there as well.
Once I started college, I was at home one weekend and felt like I had very unhealthy and needed some vegetables. I started eating some soybeans and carrots as I was reading one of the flyers the lady had given us (that I took for my friends, mind you!) It explained that vegetarians should try going vegan for 3 weeks (it takes 3 weeks to make a habit) and if it’s not for you, the so be it. So I told my family and my friends. They were not so much shocked, as they were asking me why and telling my all of my favorites that I wouldn’t be able to eat anymore. Also, when going grocery shopping, my mom made it a point to point out that all my food was so expensive.
All this was really hard for me at first. I would never eat cheese, ice cream, butter, etc. directly (I had kind of weened myself off milk and eggs during my pregan days anyways), but I would buy things I loved at the store knowing that they had milk in them. I did this until halloween when I decided I would give myself a “cheat” day. Where during the whole day I could eat anything I wanted. Well, of course I started with milk chocolate, then whipped cream, and for dinner pasta with alfredo sauce! It sounds good…but it made me so sick! It ruined my halloween because my body was so used to not having dairy that eating that much made me ache all over. From them until Christmas I kind of danced arund veganism–especially at Christmas when it was still new to my family and all I could eat was fruit salad and steamed broccoli. I decided, well maybe this bread has non dairy margarine on it, or I bet this stuffing is made with no eggs and vegetable broth. I was a “bad vegan” as they are called. But then I knew, just like when I danced around vegitarianism, that I had to commit. Ever since then (About December 28) I have been completely cruelty free (with the occasional accident) and proud of it!
Ok, well I said my story was short, and now I can see why everyone’s is so long. There’s a whole life to explain!
So with that said, I will probably leave this blog alone until summer when I can actually post some food porn for you. So, to my many fans: Stay tuned!!