Hiya!

I'm 29 and I just starting eating, I mean really eating, vegetables about 3 months ago. Umm...and to make that worse, I have a four year old. I did choke down some veggies when I was pregnant, I swear!

I kinda just tried not to think about it, and I'm lucky enough to have stayed pretty healthy. I can see now that my diet had obvious tie in to my lack of energy and weight gain, though....but I'm married to basically Paul Deen. Cy makes friend chicken, chicken and dumplings, biscuits and bacon, pesto cream sauces...dude. Say no to that after 10 hours wrangling toddlers. I dare you!

But the guilt has been gnawing slowly at me, and a few months ago, I read Eat To Live, by Joel Fuhrman. It's pretty difficult to keep eating the processed junk after reading something like that. Around the same time, my rational, analytical physician's assistant friend Jess became vegan. Her main reason was pretty simple- cancer. Awesome. The evidence was overwhelming, and I have been about 90% vegan in my diet, at least, since then.

And guess what? Red peppers taste good! And I love clementines! And turns out, chipotle is really delicious! And I lost 20 pounds with out even exercising! And I feel really freaking good about the environmental and ethical impact of this diet: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/oct/26/palm-oil-initiative-carbon-emissions , http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kathy-freston/top-10-recent-development_b_372351.html , also, if you've got the stomach for it, the book Skinny Bitch by Rory Friedmann played a big part in my decision.

So not only has my diet changed, but for the first time in my life, I am cooking on a regular basis. And I have some awesome resources, online and in print- especially Veganomicon, by Isa Chandra and Terry Hope Romero. But I love talking about food with friends, and I want an easy platform for that. So email me or leave a comment if you have some recipes to share! some basic guidelines:

1. Vegan- obviously! I am not really hardcore here, I eat cheese on occasion, and if some esoteric ingredient is not totally vegan, I'd probably use it. I don't know the backstory on V8, and I cook with it all the time.

2. Photos and colorful commentary encouraged! I'm particularly interested in how easy a recipe is, how time consuming, how spicy, and how intimidating it might be for kids or carnivores.

3. Give credit where credit is due. Source your recipe if you didn't make it up!