Hello Everyone

I'm excited to begin the maiden voyage of my first blog!


This blog is going to chronicle my family's adventure of "going vegan" for a month. A try before you buy, so to speak. Dad is vegetarian, Mom (me!) is an occasional omnivore, and Baby is, well, still a 'lacto-baby' who enjoys the occasional avocado or banana. Even though I eat fish a couple times a month, we never cook meat at home, so essentially, we're a vegetarian family, making 'going vegan' a much smaller leap than a family that eats a typical American diet.


Our reasons for going vegan are ethics and sustainability. Since so much has been written about these issues and how they are related to veganism, I won't go into detail. If you want to do some reading, Animal Liberation and The Ethics of What We Eat, both by Peter Singer, and Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman (cattle rancher gone vegan!) are great. The Omnivore's Dilemna, by Michael Pollan, is good for learning about the food industry in general.


We're using The Complete Idiot's Guide to Vegan Cooking as our culinary inspiration. I know, it's not very gourmet, but the meals are simple enough for Mr. S to follow and all sound reasonably edible. Plus, hello modifying recipes! Besides that, the book contains lots of information on doing dairy, egg and meat substitutions that make it pretty easy to veganize what we already like to eat.


A note on the basic format of the blog--I'm basically going to "cook my way through" the Guide to Vegan Cooking, evaluating recipes, and post recipes/how-tos for my own vegan creations.


Let the vacation begin!